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Reviews
Ek Din Pratidin (1979)
Life is Ugly
Mrinal Sen has a sharp perception of the bitter realities experienced by the lower middle class, presumably born of personal experience. This one is pretty despairing.
We have a large family comprising three generations living in a tenement comprising a room or two. Many other family's are crowded into this congested bee-hive of a building, with people all but peering into each other's quarters and lives. There is a single tap which serves all tenants. Neighbors can be civil, helpful, interfering or judgmental. As the title implies, life is a continuous, repetitive and bitter struggle to make ends meet and to retain dignity and decencies in a rigid and unforgiving society. His Kharij is set in a similar if not the same group housing building.
Chinu (Mamata Shankar), the eldest of four siblings, is the sole earning member in the family. One day she fails to return home. What could have happened-was she held up at work, or involved in an accident, or, hard to imagine, is she seeing someone? The alarm mounts as the day deepens into night and soon the whole neighborhood are observers and participants, each with their own theories and surmises, mostly derogatory. Why do they have to send a daughter for work and depend on her earnings? Police are not helpful and there is a tense sequence where the younger brother visits the morgue to identify the dead bodies found by the authorities. Finally the family bonds explode in mutual recrimination and accusations.
This is certainly depressing material, perhaps unnecessarily so, but it should hit us in a vulnerable spot. If Ray soars in hope and optimism even as he portrays extremities of suffering, Sen's world is an insider's dreary and claustrophobic vision. He sees no glamor in the curse of poverty.
Mercifully, India has been changing dramatically since the film was made.
Kharij (1982)
Everybody's Innocent
A pre-teen ager servant boy dies of carbon monoxide poisoning on a cold winter night. He was employed by a young working Calcutta couple (Anjan and Mamata) with a small boy of their own. Taking money from a neighbor's friendly daughter, he slipped away to watch a movie on a cold winter night. Finding his usual sleeping corner below the stairs too cold, he bolts himself inside the kitchen, where a fire was burning. The next morning we witness a powerful discovery scene like on the morning after Macbeth's murder. The door is forced open and we see the commotion in the apartment block which is the stage of the drama.
Who is responsible? The landlord who failed to provide ventilation in the kitchen ("it's not a bedroom"), the couple for employing what is legally child labor and failing to provide reasonably comfortable sleeping arrangements? The police takes over and a post mortem is performed. Meanwhile a procession of the boy's relatives arrives and the father is inconsolable but lifts no accusing finger, his head bowed in acceptance of the nature of things. The film ends on a heart rending note of under-stated sadness.
Comparison with the titanic Ray is inevitable. Sen is also gentle but has a more steely and masculine quality. Ray has a child's sense of wonder, but Sen's tragic vision is touched with youthful anger. He has been called Marxist in outlook but the present film does not point an accusing finger at anyone, but does dramatically bring out a class divide almost as of two different species. The deceased boy's father Hari seats himself deferentially on the ground. He has no capacity for anger. He wails like a lost calf, while remaining meek and respectful to the end.
Shakha Proshakha (1990)
Good wombs have borne bad sons
This is Ray's second last film made when he was just short of seventy. The tree is Ananda Mazumdar, a retired industrialist famed for his honesty and philanthropy, to the extent of having his town named after him. The branches are the four sons and two spouses. Mazumdar suffers a heart attack and as he hovers in the danger zone, the progeny converges around him. Ray is a good spinner of yarns and he knows how to play the heartstrings. Here he gives us a taut drama about old age and family relations with the background of Bengali society of the eighties (there is a family picnic and one of the cars is a Maruti 800).
Unlike some of his more acclaimed films which are about youth and childhood, this one is about aging with which comes cynicism and tolerance. He is able to turn an eye more understanding than indignant towards the corruption and rot in society. This somewhat lame anger is voiced through the youngest of the four sons, who chooses to opt out from the bribe driven business world. Ray was often accused of not being sufficiently concerned about the ills of society. He is after all no activist or reformer: he is a mere genius, an artist and a truthful mirror of the society to which he belongs.
Ray's women are more the expression of his ideals of humanity. The men are more often pathetic shadows, as in this one. Lily Chakravati as one of the wives gives a bold and charismatic portrayal of a woman disappointed in her marriage, with a mind and strength of self acceptance beyond her era and milieu.
This is a more complex film which expands the canvas to depict an era and a society. It achieves a high level of dramatic tension, even though it lacks the compassion and innocence of some earlier movies. It definitely limps at many places, as Ray is affecting a piety not his own. It is not his nature to judge people, as if to say, that might have been me. On the whole, a gripping film for all it's negligible weaknesses, easy and enjoyable to watch.
Dao ma zei (1986)
Lean Outleaned
This is a movie about human beings living in the stark and pitiless land of Tibet. Tibetans have a clear if not too numerous a presence in North India and I always felt deeply curious about these strangers from a land not too distant yet strange and mysterious. My first memories of these people are of tattered nomads moving in groups. Today they are educated, vocal and have prospered economically on Indian soil.The present film is like a response to an inborn craving to visit this land.
It is set in 1923, thus steering clear of political controversies in China, of which Tibet is now a part. Tibet is the highest plateau in the world, with an average altitude of 16,000 feet. Going by this film, it also seems the most wind blown place. The mists are always floating swiftly away and the pennants planted near temples fluttering noisily like an array of weathercocks. I cannot remember any movie with such splendor of cinematography, not even David Lean at his best. It is a world of transcendent beauty. There is nothing of the picture postcard tailor's dummy prettiness. The azure mountains, snow deserts and water bodies live and breathe as though with the presence of stern deities. The musical score , comprising natural sounds, muffled incantations and a continuous drone punctuated with funereal beats of percussion unspoken script or reverent commentary on this extra terrestrial world.
Norbu is a poor member of a nomadic tribe. He has a wife and small boy to support. Though devout he is forced into stealing horses for survival. He is expelled from his group under sentence of amputation if he should return. The film follows his journey through different regions in the course of which he loses his son to disease and sires another one. Religion and ceremonies dominate the life of these simple minded and plainspoken folk. Probably they need this belief as a necessity in their lives with death and starvation constantly dangling over them. Norbu is a god fearing person and it is only to save his offspring from the jaws of starvation that he is driven to stealing. He contributes a good part of his "earnings" to the temple.
Both the mood and the score is reminiscent of Tarkovsky's Stalker. These snow blown mountains and deserts are also inhabited by a mysterious presence hinting at realities other than the familiar. The word mesmeric applied to this film is not a cliché but an accurate description of it's power.
At the end of the day, people are the same--in Tibet, Calcutta or in the US.
Jana Aranya (1975)
Can't lick 'em, so join 'em
This film is unique among Ray's films in that it concludes on a note of profound despair. It shows us society at a stage beyond redemption, where people are helplessly sucked into a life without honor, hope or human dignity, and are beyond caring, having accepted rottenness as a way of life.
The film opens on a note of utter cynicism as we see a sight that most of us are familiar with--flagrant cheating going on in an examination. The invigilators close their eyes making routine hollow noises of "silence! silence!" perhaps for the gods or passers to hear. We have heard to students who go to the examination hall armed with a knife A man comes from outside and passes a sheet of paper with all the answers. The invigilators shrug indifferently as they pace up and down the aisle.
Somnath Banerjee is a bright boy, the hope and pride of his idealist father. However the examination results are far below his deserts, a result of clear mis-checking. But there is no remedy and he joins the sea of job-seekers where there are a hundred thousand applicants for ten jobs. His girl friend is forced to marry someone else because he has no means of support. His friend Sukumar languishes in destitution with his ailing family, depending on the earnings of a sister who, we are soon to learn, makes a living from the ancient profession. The two friends call on a legislator with their predicament, to be turned back with platitudes, tinged with sarcasm and even gloating.
He is drawn to business by an old friend of his. He starts buying and selling commodities on a commission basis and is soon earning decently, much to his family's satisfaction. Finally, to clinch a crucial deal he must arrange a woman for an important client. We are introduced to a series of brothels. The girl he manages to arrange is none other than the sister of his best friend Sukumar, who meanwhile has become a taxi driver.
The film would be melodramatic in lesser hands or if it was not so searingly close to realities. In the hands of Ray, it turns into a brilliant X Ray picture of a society which has hollowed out with canker.
Seemabaddha (1971)
Seed of decay
This is Part 2 of the Calcutta trilogy. Stepping forward from the unemployed rebel of The Adversary, we have a view of the workaday life of a rising executive Shyamal Chatterjee in a British owned fan manufacturing company (Peter Fans) in Calcutta. He has climbed rapidly to become the sales manager and is eying a directorship.Their son is schooling in a boarding in Darjeeling. There seems hardly any cloud of discontent in their monotonously blissful routine of office politics and evenings spent at clubs and restaurants.A sister-in law (Tutul by name) visits from Patna and we see the routine of innocuous flirting. The sister is only mildly impressed by the prosperity and adroit social climbing of her brother-in-law.
We get a nostalgic and somewhat drab recap of that period when there were only two brands of cars made in India, fans were more ubiquitous and air conditioning a rarity, television were still a decade ahead, and the villainies were also on a humbler scale, even in Bollywood. The world population was half the current figure. The wheel of life ambulated at a more leisurely pace. The ceiling fan and bicycle are appropriate symbols of this fleeting era..
And then there is real big trouble when a costly consignment of fans meant for Iraq is found liable for rejection on account of faulty painting. Shyamal's future is in jeopardy because the sales agreement includes a heavy penalty clause for late delivery. He has come a long way from the clever student and humble schoolteacher that he was as he conspires with the personnel manager to brew up labor trouble culminating in a temporary lockout and an explosion in the factory which leaves the guard badly, but not fatally, wounded. So what if he had died, joke the conspirators complacently, so many die in Calcutta every day, and the company would have sent a wreath. Both achieve their coveted career advancements, thus cashing in on an adverse situation.
The movie ends as Tutul returns the watch lent to her by Shyamal.
Not a masterpiece but certainly a vignette and a memorable slice of real life. No character is wasted and Harindranath Chattopadhyaya, as the worldly wise wog director of the company is particularly amusing as he gives a trade-mark performance. Ray is incapable of dishonesty or exaggeration for the sake of popularity and he paints the era as drab as it was.
Pratidwandi (1970)
Rebel with a Cause
There are as many Rays as there are movies made by him. Having seen a good number, I find the present one different from any of the others. This is not the gentle poet of Pather Panchali nor the romantic chronicler of India's past of Charulata. This is the first of the so called Calcutta Trilogy. The film depicts the agony of youth stranded at the dawn of adulthood, in the specific context of Calcutta in the late sixties.
This was the age of hippies and budding Naxalism, of Woodstock and the Vietnam war.The film reflects the bitterness and anger of an intelligent, sensitive youth man engaged in the herculian task of finding a job.
Siddharth has recently interrupted his medical studies after losing his father. His sister is earning, but that is more because of her youth and femininity, and although nothing specific is imputed, her activities are perceived to be dishonorable. The younger brother is drifting towards shady political activity. Siddhartha's own encounters with women are sensitively portrayed. One charge that can never be made against Ray is lack of realism or anything less than utter honesty. He tells it exactly like it was.
Ray seems to have indulged in some cinematic innovation. There are a number of eery dream sequences which reminded one of the opening sequence in Wild Strawberries. At some points the surrealism definitely seems artificial and overdone as when a whole crowds of job seekers waiting to be interviewed turns into skeletons in his imagination. Like Siddharth, Ray is in love with Calcutta, city of revolt and history and squalor.
He has an unusual ability to condense everything into a short statement of a minute or so. These inspired climactic moments of dense compression punctuate Ray's work. In the present movie this comes towards the end when the seething dammed emotions of the young man explode in a demonstration of rage, as the long wait of the job seekers waiting to be interviewed is prolonged by another hour.
Not his best but his worst is ahead of other's best.
Agantuk (1991)
The bison of Altamira
Satyajit Ray died in 1992, at the age of 72. This movie is his last. The movies of his youth are simple and lyrical with melodies of leashed emotion. His latter work tends towards more complex themes, murals in which he wants to express the complex workings of society or address the human condition in it's entirety. To what extent he succeeds may be questioned, but they represent ambitious projects. He once remarked that unlike his western counterparts, he matured early in his career.His stream of innovation and creativity never flattened out and he continued to evolve till the very end, springing fresh surprises with every new film.
Ray's identification and admiration is clearly more for his women characters. His women are brilliant, beautiful, intelligent, compassionate and humane and the men dunderheads more often than not. The male characters often seem to be supporting roles. It is arguable that the credit for most ills of the world goes more to the male animal. They are certainly more violent, and have been proved to be no cleverer.
Anila, the wife of an executive and mother of a growing boy, receives a letter from a person purporting to be her maternal uncle--one who had left the family thirty five years ago, when she was two months old, and was never heard of again. The uncle is in town and wants to spend a week with his niece, if they are willing to entertain him. The question is, is this person who he claims to be, and even if he is, what are his intentions in barging in out of nowhere? Anila is keen to have him over, doubts notwithstanding, but her husband is disinclined to entertain a probable fraud. Anila has her way and Uncle Manmohan, or a person who claims to be him, brilliantly portrayed by Utpal Dutt, is in.
There is a slow and delightful unpeeling of the persona of the Uncle, who seems to have traveled to strange places all over the world, and the quest to establish his identity and intentions takes us through many a comical and poignant twist and turn. In the process, Ray treats us to a kind of Socratic symposium, and addresses through dialog, music and dance the nature of life, art, religion and society. What prompted Uncle to leave home, he says, was the painting a bison in the pre-historic caves of Altamira in Spain. Which art school can teach that? So he became an anthropologist. He has poured out his own heart and mind through the enigmatic uncle. Anila, superbly played by Mamata Shankar, acts as a shimmering mirror to Ray's emotion. Ray was old though not really sick when he made this movie. Perhaps he had premonitions of the end and the film has an air of a quick winding up of things.
At a certain stage of life, one's feelings take a backseat behind our analytic side. However even in this, possibly the most intellectual of his films, Ray's language is of the heart and his capacity for love and awed wonderment is very much in evidence. The tribal dance which concludes the film is a wrenching paean to life. I am inclined to take this sequence as his artistic adieu.
Ghare-Baire (1984)
Love in the days of patriotism
The story is set in the first decade of the previous century. Bengal is to be partitioned into two states, a Hindu Bengal and a Muslim Bengal. Lord Curzon is the current Viceroy.The freedom movement is in it's nascent state and is being spearheaded by the upper class intelligentsia. British goods flood the market. There is a move on the part of the rebels to boycott imported goods.This on the other hand is likely to hit the poor since imported goods are cheaper and of better quality.
The complex social and political situation is narrated by Ray through the medium of a bold and torrid love triangle triangle, bold for the year when the movie was released, bolder for the milieu in which the film is set and even by present standards of Indian cinema. The level of intimacy depicted is perhaps unprecedented in Indian cinema, since kissing on-screen still is likely to shock sections of the audience.
India is a confluence of civilizations and Ray is an individual who embraces contradictory multiplicities. One of the opening images is of Bimala (played by Swatilekha Chatterjee), traditionally cloistered wife of the aristocrat Nikhil (Victor Banerjee), as she is tutored in Western vocal music by her teacher (Jennifer Kendall). Nikhil decides to liberate her from the traditional role of housewife and introduces her to ex college mate and firebrand freedom fighter Sandip (Soumitra Chatterjee), who is currently campaigning for Swadeshi, or the boycott of foreign manufactured goods. Ray clearly aims to portray the shallowness which underlies much revolutionary fervor. This is particularly evident in the ritualistic greeting of the Swadeshi-ists, which is artificial and comic. Bimala is completely infatuated with Sandip, till events disclose the duplicity and self serving motives which underlie his chest thumping patriotism.
The film is not up to Ray's best. This is perhaps due to it's complexity and scope of ambition. Ray is not one to distort for the sake of simplification. He seeks here to portray some still continuing realities of India's multi religious and multi cultural society through the microcosm of a family living through a turbulent period of nascent nationalism. This is just before the appearance of Gandhi, when the serious business of confronting colonialism really started. Certainly cannot be missed.
Swayamvaram (1972)
Bonds of poverty
Poverty is a disease and in many parts of the world it has epidemic proportions. This powerful film is set in such a milieu. Poverty becomes unbearable if you are severed from your roots of family and village in such a society. The middle class has the worst of all worlds because it doesn't know where it belongs.
Vishwam and Seetha elope from their village and we are introduced to them on a seemingly endless journey through the rural landscapes of this lush riverine state. A few days of honeymooning in a humble but respectable motel soon ends and life begins it's nose dive.Thet are educated and probably hope to make a living but this is not to be. The little money they have is running out and the wolf in many garbs is snarling. He can't publish a book he has written and loses his first job as a zoology lecturer. Many a ruffian eyes Seetha lasciviously and maintaining respectability on an empty pocket is as difficult as bodily survival. First the spirit breaks an then the body. And then a child comes along.
This is Adoor's first film and we find the mastery and restraint of his maturer work evident only as a future promise.But this is a slice of reality, scary, painful and bitter in which we can see our own reflections. Both the leads (Madhu and Sarada) have given powerful performances well supported by the remaining cast. The social realism of the film reflects a point of view widely prevalent among the intelligentsia of the period.
This is a depressing, powerful and true film getting to the heart of the realities of the life of ordinary people which Bollywood has only been caricaturing and turning into tomfoolery.
Nichiren to moko daishurai (1958)
Flawed but Informative
The first and foremost flaw is the failure to project the persona of the protagonist. Instead, we see a teary, sentimental and overacted depiction which remains wooden and lifeless. We see none of the towering conviction or the humanism. Perhaps the greatest injustice to him is to have portrayed him as a mere nationalist, whose concerns do not extend beyond the Mongol threat. The truth is that he was propounding a universal teaching altogether different from anything that preceded it. The tampering with historical factuality is a lesser flaw which one can compensate for. It does give you an idea of the historic milieu in which the events took place, placing the biography in a coherent sequence, even somewhat inaccurate. Among the historical inaccuracies following may be mentioned: 1. Nichiren visited his mother in 1264 and not vice versa as shown 2. The Mongol invasion occurred after his return from Sado and not before as shown, nor was it the reason for his pardon from exile. The ending borders on the ridiculous. It is difficult to discern the POV of the film-maker. Most objectionably, he has made the protagonist, through his persistently grim teeth clenched lack of human expression, look more comic than anything else. He has completely missed out on the human persona of Nichiren, which is no doubt hard to portray. It is likely to prove painful and distressing to those who hold him in reverence as a great philosopher and leader of Buddhism.
Cinematic-ally large tracts resemble as a samurai story with hordes of warriors criss-crossing the screen at considerable speed with much sound and fury.
The best justification for seeing the film is because it is there, the only portrayal on the subject on the screen.