Gangor

Director: Italo Spinelli


I remember reading Mahasweta Devi’s ‘Choli Ke Pechhe’ (‘Behind the Bodice’) some ten years back, when the memory of the rage this Khalnayak song had stirred up was still quite fresh. It was amazing, and excruciatingly painful, to experience how this Bollywood song was ironically used to bring home the unspeakable plight of a tribal woman. The sexual titillation of the seductively choreographed song with a voluptuous Madhuri Dixit gyrating with occasional bosom-thrusts was frowned upon by the censor board; but the way in which Mahasweta Devi used it gave a complete new meaning to the sensation the song had created. The story not only obliquely questions the shameless parade of female sexuality for public consumption; it also unravels the woman’s vulnerability in a society where beastly sexual hunger for the female body lurks in every corner. Reading Gangor with reference to the hardcore commercial flick Khalnayak is extremely important. While Khalnayak puts the modern day Sita (renamed Ganga) through the fire-test of keeping her chastity inviolate in a defenceless world of lustful men, and makes her emerge victorious, Gangor hammers home the reality of the powerlessness of the woman, doubly marginalized.
However, the Italian-Indian production Gangor, based on the short story, reverses the irony, to some extent, as it were. The story was about how the picture Gangor’s exposed breasts (a journalist from the city captures her feeding her child and publishes the picture in the papers) spells disaster for her; how she is raped multiple times and is transformed into a prostitute. The film has to a great extent ameliorated the grotesqueness of the story, the effect of which was mind-boggling. But, nonetheless, the message is more or less the same. However, the irony is reversed in the sense that the film by literally exposing the bosom of the protagonist cashes in on the same thing it goes out to critique. What a literary text can do without being sexually titillating, the film cannot afford to.
I agree that there wasn’t any pretension in what the director was aiming at. Priyanka Bose, as Gangor, has dropped all inhibition and has believably animated the character. Yet I am sure the film would never be released in India. The censor board would certainly step in and recommend several cuts. The irony is that even when a song like Choli ke Peeche can play uncut on national television with all its licentious suggestiveness which is more objectionable (as regards to the representation of women in films), the ruthless reality of a woman’s sexual vulnerability would come under the censor-scissors.
However, I thank KFF for showcasing this film. I am not sure about its fate, though.

"Meherjaan"

Director: Rubaiyat Hossain

Meherjaan, primarily a love story, is bitingly political; the setting of the film, the 1971 war involving East and West Pakistan, is a terrible historical milieu etched in blood in the collective consciousness of the people on both the sides. The film unearths those painful experiences amidst a lyrical rendition of a beautiful love story.
Meherjaan is saved by a Khan soldier of West Pakistan; and the latter, in turn, is given shelter by the girl. Caught in the dilemma of whether to betray her own nation by falling in love with the enemy, Meherjaan holds her emotion back for a long time. But, she does fall in love eventually: Wasim’s humanitarian world-view that calls into question the grand narrative of aggressive nationalism wins her over. The greater part of the rest of the film is devoted to help Wasim return to his country safely.
While Meherjaan’s personal world unwittingly merges with the political, the war grows more intense with each passing day. A new nation is about to be born, but the political vision of its makers is seriously challenged. Feudalism is soon to be replaced by a new social order that anticipates communism; but, the positive dimensions of feudalism cannot be totally ruled out. An affectionate zamindar, the father-figure of the unnamed village in the interiors of East Pakistan, becomes the principal target of the Peace Committee. Eventually, he is murdered, and the village is set afire. A new country is on the verge of birth, but the bloodbath that precedes it is grotesque.

And, of course, interspersed is the tale of the woman who loses her lover to partisan animosity, and is raped by the soldiers. These tales have been often deliberately evaded by history; nobody has ever bothered to record the trauma and the unspeakable suffering of these women molested brutally during the war. Neela’s daughter born out of rape comes back to Dhaka to research on these women to find very little.
Then there is Salma. Her world is confined to a huge wooden almirah; her fantasies, her dreams and all her idiosyncrasies play themselves out there. She is looking for her knight in shining armour, who, eventually, comes. One good thing is the film, despite the agonies and pains, it portrays is not too awfully dark.
One drawback of the film is that the screenplay is a tad convoluted. It could have been slicker. However, Meherjaan, like Guerrilla, deserves to be released commercially in Kolkata. Bangladesh art-house cinema is certainly going places. It’s time they got wider international recognition.