Ritwik Ghatak was forever haunted by the memories
of the 1947 Partition; that, combined with his defiant Marxist lens, meant that
the uprooted, the displaced and the dispossessed formed a recurring motif in
his filmography. His ‘Partition Trilogy’
comprised of three radically and ferociously beautiful masterpieces, viz. Meghe Dhaka Tara, Komal Gandhar and Subarnarekha,
and the latter remains the most unforgettable of the lot. Ishwar (Abhi
Bhattacharya) and Haraprasad (Bijon Bhattacharya, a doyen of left-bank Bengali theatre),
refugees from the erstwhile East Bengal, join hands to rehabilitate a refugee
camp in Calcutta; however, to his friend’s utter dejection, Ishwar takes up a
conventional job (courtesy a schoolmate, a typically philistine petit-bourgeois
businessman) and, along with his kid sister Sita (Indrani Chakraborty),
relocates to a remote village on the banks of the Subarnarekha river; he also
takes along the orphaned Abhiram who, unbeknownst to Ishwar, belongs to a lower
caste. His tranquil, secured life, years later, takes a debilitating hit when
the adult Sita (Madhabi Mukherjee) defies his commands, borne out of
selfishness and prejudice, and elopes with Abhiram (Satindra Bhattacharya). And
it gets shattered a few years later when, upon getting reconnected on a fateful
night with the now-irrevocably disillusioned Haraprasad and after a night of uncharacteristic
revelry – captured with Felliniesque dash – he has a tragic chance encounter
with Sita. Ghatak was mesmeric in his infusion of harsh realism and melodramatic
bursts while portraying the elusive quest for home and thus roots, and the
accompanying loss of innocence and idealism; that, along with Ustad Bahadur
Khan’s stirring Classical score, and incredible cinematographic compositions – the
abandoned airstrip sequence was especially memorable – made this a lacerating,
haunting and brutally poetic cinematic experience.
p.s. This is a revisit. My earlier review can be found here.
Director: Ritwik Ghatak
Genre: Drama/Social Drama/Family Drama
Language: Bengali
Country: India
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