Hirak Rajar Deshe (The Kingdom of Diamonds) [1980]

 Eleven years after his enduring anti-war masterpiece Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne, Satyajit Ray returned to his two everyman comrades possessing magical musical capabilities – Goopy (Tapen Chatterjee) and Bagha (Rabi Ghosh) – with the prescient, dystopian and terrific political satire Hirak Rajar Deshe. In place of the former’s playful humour, Ray resorted to Marxist agitprop devices for a ferocious denunciation of totalitarianism. His allegorical target is the titular monarch (Utpal Dutt in a towering performance), a narcissistic and authoritarian dictator who lords over his fiefdom, sycophantic minions and disenfranchised citizens – impoverished farmers and exploited workers in a diamond mine that gives him his power – and despises education as it ignites dissent by increasing knowledge and critical thinking. Anyone he can’t buy with glittering diamonds or terrorize by unleashing violence, he indoctrinates through state propaganda – brilliantly conceived couplets drenched in irony and disingenuity – and a machine invented by a loony, self-serving scientist (Santosh Dutta) that turns people into brainwashed automatons. His arch-nemesis, unsurprisingly, is Udayan (Soumitra Chatterjee), a freethinking rebel-teacher, who, unlike the despot and his unctuous lackeys, doesn’t speak in rhymes, openly disobeys state diktats, and inspires his students to question authority. Goopy and Bagha join the dissident teacher’s ragtag resistance in dismantling the tyrant’s oppressive empire from within. Made in low budgets – the static visuals, spare set décor and minimalist setup ensured that the core subtexts were never subsumed under fancy glitter – the fantasy-musical contained a string of memorable compositions by Ray himself, and, in particular, three moments of rousing political protest – the haunting folk song “Kotoi Rango Dekhi Duniyay”, the furious anti-fascist anthem “Nohi Jantro”, and the climactic battle-cry for liberation “Dori Dhore Maaro Taan, Raja Hobe Khan Khan.”

p.s. This is a revisit.

Director: Satyajit Ray

Genre: Black Comedy/Political Satire/Musical/Fantasy/Adventure

Language: Bengali

Country: India