Aranyer Din Ratri [1970]

 Aranyer Din Ratri marked a pivotal shift for Satyajit Ray. While he’d already made a terrific transition to contemporary Calcutta settings earlier, and had tackled defiant topics already – from religious dogmatism and quackery to tyranny and war hysteria to crumbling feudalism and gender roles – he embarked on a more overtly political cinema with its cutting critiques on class entitlements, fragile masculinity, sexual tensions, exploitative attitudes, urban privileges, and brewing social conflicts. It, consequently, served as a fascinating segue to his radical masterpiece Pratidwandi that he immediately followed this with; both films, incidentally, were adaptations of feral novels by Sunil Ganguly. The tale’s premise – viz. the weekend getaway of four close friends and the women they meet there – was indicative of a light-hearted comedy; however, despite its loose-limbed structure, it was anything but one. The four friends – the haughty, fast-rising corporate executive Ashim (Soumitra Chatterjee); erudite, reserved labour welfare officer Sanjoy (Subhendu Chatterjee); brash, petulant cricketer Hari (Samit Bhanja) fresh of a heartbreak; self-effacing, unemployed Shekhar (Rabi Ghosh) who’s the group’s unintentional comedian – find their shallow, self-centred and vulgar self-confidences shattered by the intelligent, self-assured Aparna (Sharmila Tagore) who Sanjoy becomes besotted with, her widowed sister-in-law (Kaberi Bose) who challenges Sanjoy’s “bhadralok” sensibilities, and impoverished Santhal woman Duli (Simi Garewal) who the egotistic Hari seduces leading to a violent comeuppance. Ray underscored the jaunty tone with sharp undercurrents of cynicism and irony, while Soumendu Roy’s terrific B/W cinematography – along with ingenuous inter-cutting that, accompanied with shots of Santhal dance, took the narrative to an edgy crescendo – gave the film a compelling audio-visual language. Ghosh’s turn was arguably the best of the lot in this funny, provocative, tense and cynical work.

p.s. This is a revisit. My earlier review of this film can be found here.

Director: Satyajit Ray

Genre: Drama/Road Movie/Buddy Film/Romantic Drama/Ensemble Film

Language: Bengali

Country: India

Padatik (The Guerrilla Fighter) [1973]

 Padatik – the thrilling, fierce, sardonic and meditative final chapter in Mrinal Sen’s extraordinary ‘Calcutta Trilogy’, preceded by Interview and Calcutta 71 – was political cinema at its most blazing, dialectical and fearlessly radical. The electrifying work was infused with Godard’s self-reflexive style and Costa-Gavras’ pulsating aesthetics, in solidarity with the spirit of internationalism while embedded in the turbulent zeitgeist of 1970s Calcutta, powerfully advocating Marxist ideals and agitprop principles of ‘Third Cinema’ and cinema of praxis, and interweaved with dazzling formal and stylistic choices. Sen interspersed observational and conversational chamber sequences with energetic hand-held cams on the streets, documentary footage, newspaper reels, mock advertisements, striking protest photography by himself, Brechtian interludes, POV shots, jump cuts and freeze frames. The film consequently alternated in its championing of revolutionary fervour, class consciousness and political dissent; takedown of apathy, rigid obedience and shallow consumerism; and introspections on the Left confronting the state while grappling with internal conflicts. Splendidly shot by K.K. Mahajan and scored by Ananda Shankar, it follows a few days in the life of Sumit (Dhritiman Chatterjee), a militant Communist who’s been provided refuge, upon escaping from a police van, at an upscale apartment owned by a Punjabi-Bengali woman (Simi Garewal) who’s employed with an ad agency, sympathetic to revolutionary causes and engaged in feminist activism. Sumit’s inner turmoil – which turns towards disillusionment while stationed in the flat – is manifested through his long, intimate conversations with his hostess, changing camaraderie with a younger comrade, and his fraught relationship with his ageing father (Bijon Bhattacharya), a former freedom fighter and now an exploited factory labourer. Chatterjee’s terrific turn, and the film too, incidentally, made for a fascinating complement to Ray’s masterful Pratidwandi.

p.s. This is a revisit.

Director: Mrinal Sen

Genre: Drama/Political Drama

Language: Bengali

Country: India

Calcutta 71 [1972]

 In Calcutta 71, Mrinal Sen constructed a fierce and subversive examination of impoverishment, deprivation, exploitation and the seeds of revolutionary politics, with irony, eclectic influences informed by European New Wave and Third Cinema, and a powerful Marxist lens. Shaped like a multi-act piece, the second film in his magnificent ‘Calcutta Trilogy’ – bookended by Interview and Padatik – was as ferociously political and biting in its social observations as it was dazzling in its blend of formal choices, narrative devices and cinematic styles ranging from classical to experimental. Following an arresting montage, The droll prologue – in the veins of farcical political satire – finds the protagonist from the previous film (Ranjit Mallick) facing an absurdist trial for having exhibited anti-capitalist angst by defiling a mannequin, and featured a hilarious anti-proletarian war waged by the bourgeoisie. That segued into four thematically-linked episodes (adapted from stories by Manik Bandopadhyay, Probodh Sanyal, Samaresh Basu and Ajitesh Bandopadhyay) – a destitute family in the 1930s who’re forced to seek an alternative shelter from incessant rains; a family forced to meet ends through prostitution, while struggling to maintain middle-class respectability, during the 1943 famine; a group of rebellious teenagers smuggling rice by train, braving righteous cops and overbearing middle-class men; and a cocktail party filled with self-centred wealthy humbugs. The first three were made in the neorealist tradition, while the fourth was a quintessential Felliniesque parody. The film ended with a scorching agitprop epilogue where a young Naxal revolutionary, killed by the cops, holding the audience to account. The ensemble cast included Utpal Dutt as a sneering prosecutor, Haradhan Bandopadhyay as an irate judge, Madhabi Mukherjee as a troubled working woman, and Ajitesh Bandopadhyay as a pompous hypocrite.

p.s. This is a revisit.

Director: Mrinal Sen

Genre: Drama/Social Drama/Political Satire/Black Comedy/Omnibus Film/Experimental Film

Language: Bengali

Country: India

Interview [1971]

 Mrinal Sen made a fabulous entry into radical political cinema – blending plucky insouciance, subversive wit and searing angst – with Interview. It, in turn, laid the foundations for his blazing ‘Calcutta Trilogy’ – which also comprised of the scorching Calcutta 71 and the scintillating Padatik – and demonstrated his love for counterpointing Marxist discourse and dissent with formal bravura and postmodernist playfulness. The slice-of-life dusk-to-dawn premise is centred on the titular interview. A young, personable, middle-class guy (Ranjit Mallick) – eager to ascend the social ladder – has landed an opportunity for a lucrative job at a foreign corporation, thanks to his uncle. All he must do is arrive in a dapper Western suit. His plans, unfortunately, go haywire, as his only suit is in a laundry which is shut on account of a flash labour strike, and thereafter for being unable to remain insular in a crowded bus. The only option left to him, ultimately, is to arrive at the prized interview in a scandalously inappropriate attire. The film, interestingly, began with the dismantling of a statue representing colonial past and culminated with the disrobing of a mannequin embodying consumerist present, whilst the tone transitioned from wry and amusing for most parts to seething fury at the end. Around the one-third mark, the protagonist dramatically breaks the fourth wall while traveling in a tramcar, and sheepishly informs that he’s an actor being followed by a movie camera, his onscreen mother is played by Karuna Bannerjee (Pather Panchali’s Sarbojaya), and his story is real despite the artifice. This Brechtian departures, combined with satirical liveliness and ingenious use of street photographs and footage (shot by Sen himself), made it a work of impish, idiosyncratic audacity.

p.s. This is a revisit. My earlier review of this film can be found here.

Director: Mrinal Sen

Genre: Drama/Political Satire/Experimental Film

Language: Bengali

Country: India

Amar Lenin (My Lenin) [1970]

 While Ritwik Ghatak’s staunch political beliefs and leanings remained largely beneath the complex dramatic surfaces of his films – imbuing the themes and proceedings with additional context without making them overtly political – they were far more articulated elsewhere, be it in his writings or in his iconoclastic documentary Amar Lenin. Once a holy grail for Ghatak aficionados as it’d been rendered obscure by censorship woes and formal unavailability – it was, in fact, banned by the country’s Censor Board, which was eventually overturned by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi – and it continues to exist today in the fringes through low-quality bootleg copies, and denied public screenings on the rare occasions that anyone attempts to do that. What’s particularly ironic is that, this 20-minute work, made in order to commemorate the birth centenary of Vladimir Lenin, was anything but inflammatory or provocative; rather, made on a small budget, it was completely devoid of hyperbolics, belligerence and harangue, and its tone was gentle, restrained and quietly uplifting. “Jatra”, a traditional form of folk-theatre popular in rural Bengal that’re generally focussed on religious and mythological topics, was often used during the 1960s and 70s by Communist collectives and playwrights to raise social and political awareness; the docu begins with a footage of one such performance at a village, with Marx and Lenin in Western outfits but speaking in Bengali, and then ending with a joyous recital of L’Internationale in Bengali. A young farmer, upon seeing this, is inspired to read more about Lenin’s ideas and activism, and then takes a trip to Calcutta to witness the processions, events and speeches celebrating the centenary, and finally participates with other farmers in a land collectivisation drive.

Director: Ritwik Ghatak

Genre: Documentary/Essay Film/Short Film

Language: Bengali

Country: India

A Night of Knowing Nothing [2021]

 Payal Kapadia’s stunning hybrid docu essay A Night of Knowing Nothing – alternately hypnotic and urgent, intimate and shared, impressionistic and pulsating, melancholic and feverish, fragile and radical – fluidly glided between epistolary narrative, found footage and defiant activism. The ‘Film and Television Institute of India’ graduate made her institute both canvas and springboard for her inquiries into individual and collective memories, and invoked Milan Kundera’s powerful statement in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”. The delicately muted yet boldly shapeshifting work, unsurprisingly, bore eclectic cinematic traces – from being informed by Chantal Akerman, Chris Marker and John Abraham to directly nodding to Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Pasolini and Ghatak. Set to the heartbreaking voiceover of an unnamed film student – lamenting, over letters to her estranged boyfriend, the breakdown of their relationship as she belongs to a lower caste, and thereby touching upon how love is as much political as it’s personal in an intensely patriarchal and caste-ridden society like India – it expanded into a rousing testament to dissent, disobedience and resistance by students. Starting with the massive protests that’d rocked FTII upon the outrageous appointment of a loyalist of the country’s reactionary government – which Kapadia had herself fearlessly participated in – it then segued into student activism movements that erupted across various public universities, and the violent wrath of the state machinery that they faced. The film’s contrapuntal texture – interlacing elegiac meditations and dream-like images with the thrilling here-and-now verité of archival footage – was magnificently woven through its amorphous structure, exquisite photographic compositions – grainy, low-fi, 8mm and 16mm B/W images, interspersed with shots of saturated colours – and deeply absorbing sound design.

Director: Payal Kapadia

Genre: Documentary/Essay Film

Language: Hindi/Bengali

Country: India

Jana Aranya (The Middleman) [1976]

 ‘Calcutta Trilogy’, which represented a radical shift for Satyajit Ray – into terrains that were darker, themes that were furiously political, and a form that was edgier – culminated with the Dickensian parable Jana Aranya, arguably the bleakest, murkiest and most cynical of the troika. While the books that Pratidwandi and Seemabaddha had been adapted from were excellent too, the novel by Shankar was the richest and most dazzling of the lot, and the wry, ironic and episodic tale – which progressed towards a desolate climax through seriocomic vignettes – couldn’t have provided for a more apposite finale, and in turn a mirror to the troubled times, and therefore the moody subtexts that Ray had in mind. The film’s caustic opening sequence – students nonchalantly cheating in a university exam, surrounded by classroom walls laden with political graffiti calling for armed rebellion against the state – provided a deadpan introduction to Somnath (Pradep Mukherjee), who doesn’t cheat himself but passively enables the illegitimate act. Though he struggles for a conventional job before being drawn into self-employment as a middleman by an street-smart elderly acquaintance (Utpal Dutt), Somnath doesn’t possess the existential angst or political consciousness of Siddhartha in Pratidwandi; rather, he goes on to demonstrate the elastic moral compass and willingness to participate in rat race of Shyamalendu in Seemabaddha, even if his milieu is his polar opposite – viz. the city’s underbelly where everything is purchasable. This Machiavellian corruptibility is epitomised by Natabar Mittir (played with stinging brilliance by Rabi Ghosh), a “public relations expert”, who persuades Somnath into the sordid act of pimping to win a lucrative contract. Despite its many amusing moments, the film’s vision of urban desolation was simultaneously unnerving and transfixing.

p.s. This is a revisit.

Director: Satyajit Ray

Genre: Drama/Urban Drama

Language: Bengali

Country: India

Seemabaddha (Company Limited) [1971]

 Seemabaddha strikingly contrasted Pratidwandi and Jana Aranya, the two films which bracketed it in Satyajit Ray’s stunning ‘Calcutta Trilogy’. The latter films evoked angst, disillusionment and desolation through college-educated young men struggling to land white-collar jobs. This, instead, delivered a coolly sardonic glimpse into a world of privilege, entitlement, contemptuous indifference towards those not belonging to their exclusive world (from the faceless working-class to those battling to dismantle the system), and corporate rat race, where everyone is outwardly cordial while slyly pushing their selfish interests. Adapted from Shankar’s compelling novel, Shyamalendu (Barun Chanda) is affable, charming, intelligent and articulate; he’s also fervidly ambitious and casually amoral, thereby making him a captivating anti-hero, who we root for even when he’s making ethical transgressions. His choices are revealed through the uncorrupted perspectives of his beautiful sister-in-law (Sharmila Tagore), who’s come over for a few days to his posh company-paid flat. She’s held him in high esteem since long – he was once a brilliant student with scholarly bent – and is amazed by his material successes. As the fast-rising executive in a prestigious British firm, gunning for a big promotion, he’s faced with an acute hurdle when an export consignment is found defective; he – along with a self-serving labour officer (Ajoy Banerjee) – concocts a wicked ploy to turn this challenge into an opportunity, to use “corporate-speak”. In a delicious choice, Ray left it until the midway mark to introduce the central conflict, exquisitely shaping the context until then, which made this dark morality tale’s unravelling that much more biting. The climactic stairway ascension, shot in real-time, was as physically exhausting as stingingly allegorical, in this sharply enacted and incisive critique of consumerist ideals.

p.s. This is a revisit. My earlier review can be found here.

Director: Satyajit Ray

Genre: Drama/Black Comedy/Urban Drama

Language: Bengali

Country: India

Pratidwandi (The Adversary) [1970]

 Satyajit Ray had touched upon political themes on multiple occasions – from capital, corruption, crooked godmen and religious dogmatism to class, feudalism, despotism and war, along with stirring feminist expressions – without necessarily being a political filmmaker. With Pratidwandi – the bravura opening salvo in his fabulous ‘Calcutta Trilogy’ (it was followed by Seemabaddha and Jana Aranya) – he blazingly became one. Ray made the metropolis a complex and dazzling canvas, battle-ground and adversary in this edgy trilogy; the political, social and economic turbulence that’d rocked the city during the late-1960s and 70s, with egalitarian and progressive ideals in collision with employment and material aspirations, informed all three films, and in particular this electrifying tour de force that remains Ray’s most radical expression and amongst his greatest masterworks. Adapted from Sunil Ganguly’s similarly blistering novel, it begins with jolting immediacy as we see Siddhartha (in a powerhouse debut performance by Dhritiman Chatterjee) – shot in photo-negative – confronting his father’s funeral pyre. He’s forced to quit medical studies, and – sandwiched between an unforgettable interview near the beginning and a violent outburst of his pent-up fury towards the end – struggles to land a job. Meanwhile, his male ego is hurt as his sister (Krishna Bose) is the family’s sole breadwinner; his younger brother, displaying decisiveness that he lacks, has joined the Naxalite cause; his friendship with a cynical friend (Kalyan Chatterjee) is counterpointed with his growing intimacy with the lovely Keya (Jayashree Roy); and he’s faced with profound dilemma between political participation vis-à-vis staying on the sidelines as a troubled observer. The film’s thrilling here-and-now atmosphere was amplified by its striking B/W images, jerky handheld cams, smouldering angst, and provocative use of conflicts, memories and dreams.

p.s. This is a revisit.

Director: Satyajit Ray

Genre: Drama/Urban Drama/Political Drama

Language: Bengali

Country: India

Mahanagar (The Big City) [1963]

 While Mahanagar wasn’t Satyajit Ray’s first film set in Calcutta, it was the first where the metropolis formed an essential character, right from the arresting title sequence focussed on a moving tram’s trolley head. That, along with its stirring feminist subtext, eloquent portrayal of female solidarity, progressive expression of gender roles in contemporary society and compelling reflection of women’s experience from a female protagonist’s POV, made this a sublime example of films on women and the city. The first of his three remarkable back-to-back collaborations with Madhabi Mukherjee – this would be followed by Charulata, their most iconic collab, and the striking romantic noir Kapurush (part of his double bill Kapurush O Mahapurush) – follows the transformative journey of Arati (made unforgettable by the lead actress’ fluid interplay between restraint and vitality), who must overcome personal inhibitions, familial restrictions and social boundaries in her transition from housewife to working woman. While her conservative father-in-law is adamant in his refusal to support, her genial husband Subrata (Anil Chatterjee) wavers between reluctant encouragement on account of their precarious financial position, insecurity upon seeing her growing independence and success, and petulant objections triggered by his social conditioning. These are accompanied by Arati’s growing camaraderie with her Anglo-Indian colleague Edith (Vicky Redwood), who couldn’t be more dramatically different in her assertiveness and femininity, and which in turn gives her the moral courage to surmount professional expediency. The Nehruvian backdrop wasn’t just informed through the radio broadcasts that intermittently bled into the diagetic soundscape, it was also underscored by the underlying hopefulness despite the disappointments and setbacks. Ray’s outlook would take an edgier and more cynical turn by the time he made his blazing ‘Calcutta Trilogy’.

Note: My earlier review of this film can be found here.

Director: Satyajit Ray

Genre: Drama/Urban Drama/Marital Drama/Feminist Film

Language: Bengali

Country: India

Lal Darja (The Red Door) [1997]

 Reality, dreams, memories, and fantasy coalesced quite freely in Lal Darja, with its mystifying title referring to the potential path to freedom, escape and happiness, as well as – ironically – something that's destined to remain hopelessly unattainable. However, despite what its intriguing premise might suggest, it was also a film seeped in bleak realism, existential crisis, and despair. In this seeming dissonance – between its subtly grand formal crux and downbeat lyricism – and the heavy use of allegories, lay its strength as well as relative blemish, especially the weightiness and tonal unevenness in this otherwise wry, understated and melancholic work. The movie’s protagonist is Nabin Dutta (Subhendu Chatterjee), a dreary and increasingly withdrawn middle-aged dentist who’s in a clear state of quandary – the relationship with his wife has collapsed irrevocably, his teenage son refuses to speak to him, and he’s even started making some rather silly errors at work. His gloom and acute loneliness are manifested by an inexplicable disease that’s causing impotency and plaguing his emotional stability – and for which he visits a gaggling doctor (Haradhan Bandopadhyay) who possibly doesn’t exist –; sardonically juxtaposed by the sense of perplexity he continually experiences on account of his  easy-going chauffeur who’s happily married to two women, including the coquettish and alluring Maloti (Indrani Haldar) – something that could just be a figment of his imagination as well, even if that isn’t explicitly established –; and alleviated to some extent by his regular falling back to his memories of growing up in the tranquil environs of Cherrapunji when he believed that he had the power to open the eponymous red door, on the other side of which lay the answers to all his wishes.

Director: Buddhadeb Dasgupta

Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama

Language: Bengali

Country: India

Tahader Katha (Their Story) [1992]

 The understated palette, languorous pacing, and moody poetic realism in Dasgupta’s haunting and eloquent film Tahader Katha, were strikingly counterpointed with its bristling undercurrents of fury. It formed a fitting companion piece to the director’s next work Charachar, in that the protagonists of both films were fragile and eccentric outsiders – a disillusioned and tormented former freedom fighter, and a passionate bird-lover, respectively – who’re at complete odds with the society for being square pegs in round holes. Shibnath (Mithun Chakraborty), finally released upon India’s independence after having spent eleven years in prison during the British Raj, has been left utterly broken both physically and psychologically – he even spent three years in a mental asylum and still carries the ravaging scars of PTSD – on account of relentless torture, harsh conditions and solitary confinement. Further, the horrors of partition – during which his wife (Anashua Mujumdar) and kids who were forced into becoming refugees from East Bengal – and the pervading human corruption that he witnesses as he’s finally reunited with his family – manifested in particular by his former comrade Bipin (Dipankar De) who trumpets himself as a great patriot in his efforts to become an elected politician, despite minimal contributions – leaves him angry, cynical and disenchanted… so much so, that he alienates everyone around him and withdraws into a melancholic shell. Buoyed by Mithun’s alternatively muted and ferocious turn, and the sublime portrayal of rural Bengal – through long takes, gentle pans, sublime vistas and disarming 360-degree camera turns – its circular arc reminded me of Angelopoulos’ devastating tour de force Voyage to Cythera, where too a former rebel finds himself stranded in an alien land upon returning home after many years in political exile.

Director: Buddhadeb Dasgupta

Genre: Drama/Political Drama/Existential Drama

Language: Bengali

Country: India

Charachar (Shelter of the Wings) [1993]

 Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s Charachar – adapted from a Prafulla Roy novel, and made in a phase when he was crafting one acclaimed arthouse film after another – is a tender, understated and poignant parable on the existential crisis of an eccentric, misunderstood man – a misfit and an outsider, like most protagonists in his oeuvre – who’s finding himself unable to reconcile to his livelihood. Lakhinder (Rajit Kapoor), a young and simple guy residing in a tiny hamlet with his wife (Laboni Sarkar), earns his living as a bird-catcher. He spends his days with the middle-aged Bhushan (Sadhu Meher) – whose beautiful teenage daughter (Indrani Haldar) has a soft corner for the dreamy Lakhinder – in uninhabited fields and forests in order to cater to a local dealer. He, however, has developed such a deep love for birds, that he’s finding it increasingly difficult to accept them confined within cages, and hence keeps releasing them. As a result, his debt and therefore impoverishment are constantly on the rise, which in turn has taken his marriage to the brink of collapse, as his intensely frustrated wife has secretly started an affair with another man (Shankar Chakraborty) who bestows gifts on her. As he keeps sliding into an alternate world unencumbered by practical expectations and daily rigmarole, that transition gets permanently sealed upon a trip to Calcutta, in order to sell their birds to another dealer (Manoj Mitra) at a higher price, that ends on a devastating note for this sensitive guy who was already teetering on the edge. The film is filled with marvellously photographed vistas of rural Bengal and a lonesome, poetic atmosphere, thus ironically making it an incredibly benign counterpoint to Hitchcock’s The Birds.

Director: Buddhadeb Dasgupta

Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Rural Drama

Language: Bengali

Country: India

Grihajuddha (Crossroads) [1982]

 The sub-genre of paranoia/conspiracy thrillers – covering political corruption, institutional malfeasance, sordid machinations of large corporations, covering up of inconvenient truths using compromised agencies, and unravelling of the rut, amidst an atmosphere of secrecy, disillusionment and fatalism – was incredibly relevant to the political zeitgeist of the 50, 60s and in particular the 70s. Buddhadeb Dasgupta, rooted to the Bengal/Calcutta milieu, but surely well-aware of this genre trend, amalgamated its facets into the backdrop of Naxalite movement and its explosive face-off with the industry-government nexus, into his early film Grihajuddha. Quite atypical to his oeuvre, it was gritty, confrontational, discomfiting, and defiantly positioned to the left in its bristling critique of the state, big business, and complicity of those aspiring for class transition. When a senior labour union leader, who’s stumbled upon some murky information involving the steel giant where he’s employed, dies under mysterious circumstances – ostensibly in an accident, but possibly murdered by his powerful employer – and firebrand union leader Prabir gets beaten to death by lumpen elements thereafter, lives of three people get transformed irrevocably. Nirupama (Mamata Shankar), the latter’s soft-spoken but morally resolute sister, is arm-twisted into relocating and forced into taking a job in the same organization due to severe financial stress; Bijon (Anjan Dutt), once an idealistic guy who followed Prabir and had a relationship with Nirupama, is compelled to go into hiding, but returns completely changed into a cynical guy who’s decided to move on; and Sandipan (Goutam Ghose), a journalist who’s committed to uncovering the conspiracy despite his slimy boss’ stonewalling. The film’s production and post-production aspects were rough, even stilted, at times, but its political and moral compass were fierce, uninhibited, and unwavering.

Note: My earlier review of this film can be found here.

Director: Buddhadeb Dasgupta

Genre: Thriller/Political Drama/Conspiracy Thriller

Language: Bengali

Country: India

Once Upon a Time in Calcutta [2021]

 Aditya Vikram Sengupta’s 3 films are a study in contrasts and commonalities. Where Asha Jaoar Majhe was a marvellously muted tone-poem and Jonaki a haunting, surreal tapestry on memories, Once Upon A Time in Calcutta – his most narratively ambitious effort thus far given its multiple characters, interlocking sub-stories and highfalutin title – is a bold mix of broken marriages, crumbling cultural citadels, nostalgic artefacts paving way for the future, and new-age business models selling false hopes and disenfranchising the disenfranchised. Yet, despite their narrative divergences, one can still perceive here the aesthetic minimalism, urban loneliness and elegiac reflections that his earlier films were suffused with. Ela (Sreelakha Mitra), an enterprising woman who dreams of owning an apartment and works at a TV show peddling lurid astrological crap to gullible viewers, walks out of her dead marriage to a simple, middle-class teacher residing in a quintessential old North Calcutta house, upon a terrible personal bereavement. When hopes for bank loan fails, she tries convincing her obsessively reticent half-brother (Bratya Basu) to sell off the abandoned, dilapidated building he stays in – what was once an iconic theatre with a revolving stage – to realtors. Meanwhile she allows for a quid pro quo affair with her slimy boss – who has been openly salivating for Ela and also runs a nefarious chit fund scam for swindling the poor – in exchange for a flat, while also embarking on a relationship with an old acquaintance who’s in charge of constructing a flyover that necessitates the dismantling of a once famous T-Rex structure. The film’s soap opera storyline, charged socio-political undercurrents and quirky use of Tagore’s songs were surprisingly juxtaposed with luminous cinematography, intimate compositions and melancholic air.

Director: Aditya Vikram Sengupta

Genre: Drama/Urban Drama

Language: Bengali

Country: India

Open Tee Bioscope [2015]

The Bengali music band Chandrabindu wonderfully complements humour with nostalgic evocations that may be referred to as ‘Bangaliana’ (the pop-cultural equivalent of Americana, perhaps). The debut directorial venture of Anindya Chatterjee (one of the band’s prime vocalists and songwriters), Open Tee Bioscope, thus, as one may anticipate, is packed with flavours and memories of growing up in a milieu that’s distinctively ‘Old Calcutta’ – narrow meandering lanes, dilapidated colonial-era mansions, the co-existence of Karl Marx and lumpen proletariat, a love for football extending from “India’s Maradona” Krishanu Dey to Tele Santana’s Brazil, the ‘para’ (community) spirit, lamentations on ‘good ol’ days’ by the old-timers, and the act of growing up relived through tinted glasses. Understandably, it’s easy for a film like this to fall into the trap of sentimentality and clichés. While it does have these flaws, to the director’s credit he nevertheless managed to create ‘a simple tale simple told’ through a series of lovingly etched tableaus that made this enjoyable despite some of its unevenness. The coming-of-age tale’s protagonist is a troubled teenager (Riddhi Sen) haunted by memories of his dead footballer father and having a complicated relationship with his single mother (Sudipta Chakraborty) due to her potentially quid pro quo connection with a slimy local political leader (a top-notch Kaushik Sen). Three developments help in his transition – his friendship with a group of fun-loving street urchins; his falling in love with the girl who, unlike him, belongs to a ‘bhadralok’ bourgeois family; and his unlikely camaraderie with an ageing and volatile former football coach (Rajatava Dutta). The film comprises of quirky moments and characters, albeit tad forced at times, and an excellent soundtrack capturing both fun and melancholia.

Director: Anindya Chatterjee
Genre: Comedy-Drama/Buddy Film/Urban Drama/Coming-of-Age
Language: Bengali
Country: India

Subarnarekha (The Golden Thread) [1965]

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