My first impression upon viewing Raj Kapoor’s mythical Satyam shivam sundaram, an impression shared by many other bloggers, is that the Showman had purely and simply been manipulated by his lecherous pulsions, and had also manipulated us spectators! Gone are the days (I told myself) of the virtuous Vidya (Shree 420), and nobody buys his “real beauty is inside” formula while watching Zeenat Aman’s gorgeous and exposed charms. On the contrary, everybody thinks: oh well, since it’s cinema, let us at least enjoy the show. Who cares about the message (check here)? And so it all comes down to: mmm, she’s really tasty. Or if you’re a Shashi fan: he’s certainly dishy too (personally I think he’s rather pathetic, but as you guessed, I’m not a Shashi fan).

I was therefore in a classic suspension position, where I lazily followed the story and its avowed narrative intentions, while really ogling what RK was serving me under the pretence of a preachy and bungled story (you can read it on Nida’s blog – she has also very pics, thanks Nida!). It’s true that the sexual revolution, at the time (the film dates from 1978), was in need of good exponents, and perhaps such a revolution was necessary (thought I)… At any rate, Zeenat Beebie did it! Many people remember about SSS nothing but the missus’ curvy bronze flesh (I don’t mind saying I also find it very pleasant).

But there’s something (mostly in the first half) that woke up the dozing art critic: many scenes are placed in a timeless atmosphere, now oneiric (or psychedelic), now mythological, and so the reading of whatever happens can be interpreted along other lines. If indeed the story is no longer only that of Rupa and Ranjiv, but of a more archetypal pair (Krishna and Radha, and why not Adam and Eve, see later), then perhaps the movie acquires a purpose which otherwise one might think was sadly lacking. We’ll come to this in a minute.

Eyes wide shut

Also, while watching the movie, I couldn’t not think of a paradox which I have already met about Indian culture: why is the country so generally prudish on the one hand, and yet so free when it comes to celebrate the beauties and bliss of human loving? In the film, we see Rupa caressing the religious stone (Shiva’s lingam) in a very sexual way, but the tantric traditions of Hinduism also seemed to include a sexual dimension which didn’t pose problems to practitioners. At Khajuraho (below), among other places, such open acceptance of sexuality and eroticism is made clear. Could the film be seen, then, as a celebration of sensuality and innocent sexuality? Apart from the fact that such a possibility rings very much like a westernized perspective of Indian tradition (see The householder), the story doesn’t help a lot to uphold such a view, and we all know how easy it is to hide behind such pretexts.

So, what was left to save the film from cheap voyeurism and kinky grooviness? Well, in fact, luckily, quite a lot. The second part of the film, where we see Rajiv reject the Rupa he hates to look at in order to join and love the Rupa he thinks is the only true one, contains a promise of symbolism, for example the fact that Rajiv, the dam engineer (= the restrainer of natural forces) has to face the overflowing of truth coming from a pent-up source which he has been responsible in barricading. One can read the breaking of the dam and subsequent flooding of the downstream lands as the destruction which Rajiv brings about by sticking to a false picture of feminine value. By refusing Rupa as she really is, i.e., supposedly innocent and God’s creation, he brings about divine wrath and will need to save her from his own hubris. They accordingly end up atop the redeeming temple! Anyway Rajiv seems to be RK’s personal target – I wonder if lil brother minded! Remember how he divests him of his shashilicious hair under the waterfall shower?! What was left was just a few black sprouts in the middle of his chest – enough for the enamoured village girls, but for us?

Then we also have this strange opposition between the two sides of the same woman as represented by the two Rupas. Perhaps Raj Kapoor wanted to show that certain men harbour a schizophrenic image of femininity, and Rajiv (poor Rajiv) could then be seen as the picturization of this masculine tendancy to love and hate Woman at the same time. Under this perspective, Rupa’s scar might stand for the various wounds which affect idealized beauty as dreamt by romantic and passionate lovers, the most obvious of which would be childbirth and the transformation of the woman’s exclusive femininity into the shared condition of maternity and family life.

But more fundamentally, I think some men are deeply insecure (if not terrified by) about women, and women’s relationship to life and death (symbolized by menstrual blood), and cannot relate to them beyond this idealized picture they have of their mother. Rajiv would then excessively represent this type of infantile men, keeping in mind that all men probably have some trouble with their representation/fascination of women, or at least have to fight against forces within themselves and to replace fantasies by reality. Many men are apprehensive of femininity and maternity, and hopelessly long for a eternally youthful figure which doesn’t exist.

In the first half, we have the allusion to Radha and Krishna’s relationship, with Rajiv representing a dark Krishna, whose darkness (goes Rupa’s story) is caused by Radha’s black eyes. Zeenat Aman’s eyes are indeed black, but her skin is darker than Shashi Kapoor, which makes the whole situation rather funny. But to stick to the mythological frame, or perhaps not to stick to it, I have found (here) this quirky picture of “tantric marriage” with a half black, half bright Shiva figure:

and it is said in various places (one such) that the film’s title is a designation of Shiva: Shiva in the Hindu pantheon is the Destroyer. What Brahma creates and Vishnu preserves, Shiva wipes out so that creation can start again. Now this divine cycle must be in coherence with the human cycle of birth, life and death. Death in such a cycle isn’t only understood as a negative force of destruction, but as a positive one of transformation so a new life can flourish. In the film, Rupa and her scarred face figures this necessary deathly process: Rajiv sees in her not only an ugly and unfortunate girl, but he’s shocked by what is really a death-face (and even more precisely a death-in-life face).

What he sees in her nobody else sees; this horrid decomposing skull is a visualization of a transformation, the mutation of beauty into horror, of grace into evil, because it is seen through Rajiv’s fears. I believe nevertheless that Raj Kapoor doesn’t want us to adhere to his prejudiced hero. His negative reaction is the reverse side of the teaching which he will accept later on in the movie. The painful vision contains a truth (Shiva’s truth), which, unpleasant as it is, must be confronted: all flesh, all beauty decomposes ultimately and becomes ugliness and horror. And there is something even more unpleasant in that it is connected to feminine beauty, because women are the carriers of human life. So when he sees Rupa (a word which means beautiful) for the first time, he exclaims:

This question is the movie’s whole question. He asks her (twice) “Kaun ho tum?”, and not aap (the polite form), indicating that he is still sufficiently intimate with the different person he believes he is facing. He might of course, as a dignitary, say tum to all women, known to him or not. But anyway what’s clear is that he faces somebody who is both looking like Rupa and enough different from her for him to reject the identification. One line of scenario might have been Rajiv’s breakdown upon realizing that his one and only Rupa is defaced. But what happens is altogether different. He is confronted with a stranger, Rupa’s disfigured twin so to speak, Rupa’s negation in a way. Rupa’s evil double. Symbolically, the moment her veil is up, Rajiv is confronted with a truth (there’s no veil any more) which is death, and he can only refuse it at first. It will take the rest of the film for him to accept this truth, ie, that his beloved and her deathly appearance are one and the same (divine) reality.

The Apsara

It’s normal that Rajiv, because he has seen in Rupa Shiva’s destructive power, should feel such a jolt and revulsion. The story turns him into a sort of visionary, and Rupa’s veil becomes the symbol of what hides her mystery to the rest of humanity. She symbolises the womanly forces of life and death, the Shiva-cycle present in the human race. One could say that’s her truth (satyam), but this divine (shivam) aspect makes it fitting for Raj Kapoor to have chosen a very beautiful (sundaram) representative such as Aman. On the other hand, all women are concerned by this male tendency to sense in them more than just their counterpart. Look at these paintings by the Belgian painter René Magritte:

Wouldn’t you say he has represented something of this male complex? Doesn’t it seem that he has understood that for men, women are a scary power and a mystery, and that they (the men) need to be reconciled with them? I am also reminded of the classic associations of women and death (this is a mental structure, of course, please all ladies reading this, don’t assume I am making a statement about the reality of women!) through such artistic symbols of  Death and the maiden, and to come back to RK’s movie, there’s the theme of the casting of the spell, which again goes back to Woman’s phantasized destructive power upon men. The question “who are you?” resonates against this background. It corresponds to this fear within the masculine psyche of a feminine power linked to life and death, and feminine seduction as a threat to his integrity, to his own power and pleasure.

I said I would volunteer a word about Christian mythology, which as I well know, shouldn’t perhaps be brought about here, seeing as we are clearly in a Hindu environment. My defense nevertheless is that I believe there are universal archetypes that can bring together different cultural ensembles, and it seems to me that Satyam shivam sundaram presents us with a readable (if limited) Adam & Eve motif. Both lovers meet in a sort of primeval, ideal garden, where clearly realism is sacrificed to make us understand that the place is a projection (this is what we have in the Genesis). The waterfall (above) could well speak of the Fall itself, and Rupa’s deformity could be seen as the curse for her sinful act. And let’s not forget Eve is the instrument by whom death inflicts the human condition according to the Bible. Well, even if these parallels shouldn’t be strained, the film’s evocative folktale symbolism suggests associations which in themselves make it more interesting, especially in this case!

All in all, the movie, with its often underlined flaws, contains enough symbolism for us to say something about RK’s attitude to women and cinema. He’s not here to answer any more, but I would have liked to ask him the question: how much has the cinema (this maya, this art of illusions) taught him about women, and how much has he lost through unreined desire and experimentation? I had already tried answering this question in Sangam, but it’s also posed again here, even if through the filter of allegory. I’d say that what he’s gathered in terms of art has been tremendous, but probably to the detriment of his peace of mind.

Here are some reviews (on top of those already quoted) which I selected for their thoughtful remarks: Adeline’s (in French), Beth, who watched the movie with Carla, and not forgetting Philip’s short but insightful comments. And there’s a comic take at P-pcc.blogspot!

Do you have an hour to spare? 74 minutes to be precise? WATCH THIS NOW. And then come back to read. « This » is Satyajit Ray’s little marvel called Kapurush (1965, The Coward), a marvel of economy and inspiration. The story begins at night (it ends also at night), in a countryside road station; Amitabha Roy (Soumitra Chaterjee, as superb as ever), a successful scenarist who is touring for ideas on his next book, is blocked by a little mechanical snag and his car can’t leave before a few days.

In the shop at the same time is present a middle aged tea-planter, called Bimal Gupta (Haradhan Bannerjee, who plays the boss in Mahanagar, a film whose evocation of the balance of powers between the sexes is very close). Naturally enough, he offers to take him down the road, telling him he needs company. The proposal seems honest enough, and Roy accepts. But when they arrive at the tea-planter’s estate, and he meets his host’s wife, Kuruna (Madhabi Chatterjee, as cunning and charming as ever), we immediately understand that something is happening, that the shock expressed on Roy’s face is the beginning of the story.

Thanks to a flashback, we learn that the two, Amitabha and Kuruna, had been lovers before her wedding, and that her uncle had refused the match. She had come in a rush one night to his “three-corner flat” to tell him of her imminent departure, and asking him to leave with her. But he had wavered, unsure of what this meant for the future, and had asked for some extra time. Unfortunately, there was no extra time to be had: Kuruna instead realised that Ami lacked a fundamental “something” which would weigh heavily for both of them. She left, and was married to Bimal.

So now they confront, oddly enough, after a few years, and of course ready-made patterns automatically superimpose themselves as to what might happen: are they going to fall in love once again? Is she going to explain that it’s too late? Are they going to be spotted by the husband and branded as cheats? The eternal trio is once again present for us to wonder. But in fact Satyajit Ray is going to choose a route which is more than puzzling. Kuruna is neither going to react sentimentally (either positively or negatively), nor vocally (there will be no row); her character comes out as a rather frigid one, true to say, but one understands that she’s made up her mind a long time ago, along lines that she can’t or won’t disclose to him any more. During the night, kept awake by the memories that break down upon him like waves on the shore, and also by her very presence a door away, he leaves his room, stumbles upon something in the dark and makes her open her door:

He then asks her whether she’s happy now, which we understand as: did you make the right choice? Do you not regret anything? At this point, a word about the husband is necessary. Ray goes out of his way to characterize him in depth: he’s the manager of the plantation, a job he finds boring, and we understand he misses a life of entertainment and challenge that the humdrum life in the hills cannot supply. He has become an advocate of drink as the best way to forget the dreariness, but this also blurs the edges of his moral standards. During one conversation, he plays with conscience as if it were a useless artefact one doesn’t need in good society. He’s pleased to suggest that Roy might find his wife proper material for a heroine to add in his new story, something which normal self-respect in him should have reproved. And even if this wasn’t meant wrongly, his wife’s silence doesn’t help. She has clearly decided to dissociate herself from such low taste suggestions.

So when Roy asks her is she’s happy, it isn’t only with the hope that perhaps seeing him again (at night, when the husband is asleep…) will make her go back on her (maybe) over-hasty decision. With such a husband as hers, he has good grounds to believe that she’s obeying the good-wife code in spite of her better self. After all, what sort of woman is she? A very pleasant flashback shows her as a fiery young student courted by a phlegmatic Amitabha in the bus, where she’s asked for her ticket by the conductor, can’t find it and he pays for her seat. She then thanks him in an adorably playful way:

The fun of this little scene is that we don’t know at first if it shouldn’t be understood as the beginning of their relationship, and the tongue pulling suggests that perhaps not, perhaps they already know each other, perhaps it’s a sort of game:

- I bet you I can pretend when the conductor comes that I don’t have a ticket!

- No you wouldn’t dare, I know you.

- You wanna bet?

- Come on, you’re a serious, law-abiding person aren’t you? Why would you do that?

- You bet I can do it?

- Okay, if you insist…!

And so her tongue–pulling could be her victory, won over her doubting lover and the “serious” social values that stop women from playing with them, and in effect, being free once in a while.

This is the gist of her intervention, the night she had come to his place and had said she was refusing to follow her uncle. She had bitterly criticised her relative for wanting to “put her in her place”, to make her play her feminine role, she, the artist, the free-thinker! But then she had realised something else as well. Amitabha is paralysed by his respect of social conventions and propriety. He tells her, for example, that he knows she’s used to a certain degree of comfort, a level which he’d come to her house to ascertain. She didn’t know of this checking of his, and exclaims: “you came to my house and didn’t ask to see me?!” and he has nothing to answer. The little crisis thus puts the difference between the two of them, which she knew of (“you won’t get rid of me so fast”, she says), in a stark light.

Kuruna’s strange answer about her happiness comes later that day, when the couple take Roy back to the train and stop on the way for a picnic: the husband has walked off, leaving them alone, and Roy attacks one last time, underlining how utterly unmatched he finds the two of them. But she answers him he’s only judging on a day’s impression. Fair enough. Now when this comes:

Perhaps I didn't want to be happy

what is he supposed to make of it? The easy answer is that she’s avoiding a proper answer about her wife’s duty to her husband, because it would alienate her from who she’s posing as in front of her old flame. Perhaps I don’t seem happy the way you think (she could say), but I have reached a happiness which it would take too long to explain to you – you would have to know Bimal as a man and husband. I wonder though if Satyajit Ray – because of what we know of her thanks to the flashbacks - isn’t suggesting a different idea. Amitabha’s idea of happiness doesn’t suit her. She would have wanted a life of risk, of creation, of freedom, a life which is reserved for men, which only men are allowed to enjoy. That day in his tiny flat she understood that the “something” he lacked was a certain spirit, which we have to put in correspondence with the courage she mentioned during one of their conversations:

Amitabha’s “cowardice” therefore refers not so much his lack of resolve on that night. It refers to a more serious flaw, the unquestioned acceptance in him that women can only be “happy” in life, “happy” in a flat and conformist way. But why then has Kuruna accepted to marry Bimal Gupta? She could have fled on her own, and judged both her uncle and her lover as poor mettle for the life she wanted. There’s a sort of mystery here, but part of this mystery can be lifted, if we listen to what she says and observe what she does. First the film doesn’t enable to answer that her relationship with Bimal isn’t the adventure she had hoped for. We don’t know what their it is, and there’s sufficient room for speculation. The fact that she’s really cold towards Amitabha could mean she’s fulfilled at least part of her dream.

What's kept sleeping?

Then the sleeping pills. He can’t sleep, and asks her for some, and she does have some. What’s more, she needs them for herself. Now of course she could be medically or psychologically in need of them. But the importance of the pills (if you’ve seen the film, you know!) means that she probably depends on them. She knows the risk of taking too many, because she gives the bottle to Amitabha and says “only two” in a meaningful way, and adds that she knows he wouldn’t abuse them. This remark can only mean one thing: once a coward, always a coward. On the other hand, she has the pills in case the life she has accepted must be terminated. Her freedom is preserved insofar as she’s the master of her fate. And the lost, empty look which Ray shows us of his face indicates that he’s, alas, a prisoner of his:

You’ll find here a look at Mahapurush, which is presented by the Official Satyajit Ray website as a double bill with Kapurush. I still have to see Mahapurush, but Kapurush can unhesitatingly be watched alone. Apparently in Bengali, Kapurush means “the bad man” whereas Mahapurush is “the good man” (its official translation being “The holy man”). I’m not sure that Amitabha is really a “bad” man – he isn’t, he’s just weak and conventional. If he were worse, it might have been better, almost. But he isn’t, and that’s his tragedy.

I'm very pleased to add this request to go and read what Beth says about the movie: it's brilliant.

After having watched Kapurush (see previous instalment), I was strongly urged to see Mahapurush, Satyajit Ray’s twin production in the tandem that came out in 1965. The theme of the manipulative bigot is a famous one in French culture (see for example Molière’s Tartuffe, and the many lovers of Asterix and Obelix will also remember the immortal Le Devin!) and so Ray’s opus struck a familiar chord.The tricks used in order to create credulity and at the same time to expose them thanks to humour were very recognizable. Even so, Ray’s short film works as a superb satire of religious manoeuvring, and is naturally aimed (like Ganashatru) at targeting Indian shallow and irrational religiosity, here personified by a  forlorn lawyer called Gurupada who (back from Benares with his daughter Buchki) meets the travelling guru Brinchi Baba (and his eye-rolling assistant). The witty sage immediately senses the prey and gets himself invited tax free at the home of his new supplier of good fare and limitless trust.

The two parasites are marvels of characterization: first the assistant (who was already Narsingh the Kshatriya’s wily servant in Abhijan) serves as a perfect foil for this other master of his, pretending to be the spineless disciple in front of everyone, but when his mask is off, knows exactly what he needs (food and women):

Brinchi Baba has the majesty of the lion, the squint of the fox, the tricks of the monkey, and the slitheriness of the serpent. This is no ordinary charlatan: he knows human psychology and can evaluate group phenomena to a T. On the train, upon meeting Gurupada, he demonstrates how to make the sun rise (only Joshua was able to do something of the kind in the Bible, and under God’s orders!), and miraculously annihilates all his bad feelings with his strong grip:

He also has this mind-boggling trick of turning his fingers in opposite directions, something cognologists know is difficult for the brain to perform because it is contrary to its symmetrical nature. Brinchi Baba does this in order to mystify his spectators: they try and few succeed, so the message must be: the Baba is skilled in weird and difficult lore, he deserves our respect. Finally, he acts the time-traveller, and pretends he’s seen and talked to the greatest worthies of all time, Plato, Jesus-Christ, Einstein, which is coherent with Hindu reincarnation but with remembrance! Such extravagance works all the more as it’s “incredible” – the more the better.

And of course this goes along with manipulation, because how can you survive as a quack unless you make people buy your truth? The money (or time, or effort) they spend makes them believe what they revere has a high value (haven’t you noticed it’s much more difficult to get a statement of disapproval about a bad show, if the people questioned paid a great deal to watch it?), and so we see the impostor perform his Initiation rites, and many attendants sit in awe in front of him to watch. All this is very well known. It plays on the pre-scientific mentality which continues to exist when people are fed up with logic and reason, which they have been convinced (sometimes rightly) do not always work in life. It is mostly efficient in under-educated societies in which the normal dose of critical thinking hasn’t been taught at school, and elites can thrive on these gullible masses.

Classic also in this type of story is the exposure moment, and here I thought Ray was a little less inventive than I would have hoped. The trick which the rationalist team uses in order to denounce Brinchi Baba’s sham doesn’t really strike as a victory of light upon darkness. Throughout the movie, there had been an insistence on smoke and smokescreens, which was fair enough, but the revelation by fire could have been more spectacular, I thought. Ray had also at his disposal the shatranj motif (we see chess players in close-up at the beginning), which I thought might have been used to prove that reason and logic are as spiritual as emotional piousness. But this wasn’t forwarded. Another weak point is the love-affair, between Buchki the dour would-be follower of Brinchi Baba, and her young lawyer, but thematically, nothing much is made of it.

Certainly the movie’s strong point is the masterful use of comedy. One example: during an religious ceremony, the Baba is facing his audience and each person who comes to be blessed by him is given a gesture of his two arms, up and down, a totally ridiculous gesture which is clearly intended at satirising his practises, but nobody notices, blinded as they are by their crazy belief. Last but not least, Baba’s spectator-intended speeches about his supernatural knowledge of past events, past geniuses and time itself: for all followers, what he says is like a golden font of mysterious truth, whereas it’s so clearly gibberish that we can commune with him over their heads, and laugh with him at what he’s saying and doing!

One word now about the pair Kapurush-Mahapurush. The coward and the holy man (literally the bad man and the good man) are opposed in principle, and could signify two contrasting ways of behaving in society: one retreating and regretting, the other self-assertive and unscrupulous. The question is: what’s Ray trying to tell us here? Why did he put these two movies side by side and what light does each one shed on the other? In Kapurush, we have the hero, Amitabha, who is so respectful of social order that he cannot act and is mired in hesitations and remorse. Brinchi Baba, on the other hand personifies the exact opposite, a social manipulator so skilled that he can make everybody love him and believe in him just by snapping his fingers. If there is such a thing as a moral standard, Amitabha is higher on that scale than Brinchi Baba. It’s true that his procrastination has perhaps caused his girlfriend’s unhappiness, but certainly the Baba’s flaunting of all trust and his disrespect of holy things can earn him nothing but scorn.

Clearly Ray would want us to think that way. Yet his ironical movie titles, and even more, the fact that the two movies are bundled together, shift the scales slightly. I wonder if he isn’t saying that, as it is, society is like a fortified citadel of the past which one must conquer and transform because only such an attitude can make reform and progress happen. If indeed society must be changed by force (because it is too difficult to change in any other manner), then Brinchi Baba is indeed the holy man, and Amitabha the coward. He’s a coward in the sense that he’s conforming to an order that cannot be upheld, whereas Brinchi’s holiness lies in his lack of principles when dealing with an even less scrupulous society.

The film can be watched here, and if you want to read a very pleasant review, here’s Sharmi’s.

This 1954 film by M. Sadiq has qualities I wasn’t expecting. With movies that no one is reviewing or speaking about, you are faced with the unnerving problem of wondering whether you aren’t giving value to a work of art out of an idiosyncratic feeling that nobody else has felt what you think you feel, and therefore shouldn’t be put forward as relevant. Of course, there’s always the remote possibility that the work has been forgotten by the critics and disregarded, and that the happy reviewer has unearthed a treasure! Still, the charms of Shabab (youthfulness, beauty) are many and I’m not only saying this as a blinded admirer of Nutan. The story contains a poetic scenario, combined with realistic psychology, great Naushad songs which are very interestingly integrated into the narrative, a lot of subplot humour and cinematographic tricks which, in spite of the studio-level of the film, can’t be discarded as cheap props only. You’ll see!

The story starts like a Perrault Fairy-tale: an infant prince is deprived of his rightful parents and raised by a band of dacoits, and a princess (Ragini) is born to a childless king who rejoices at the event until he’s told of an ominous event which will befall her on her eighteenth birthday. Both are nevertheless engaged in infancy, to tie the fates of the two princely families. We focus at more length on the little boy (Ratan) who’s taught the art of an ascetic and blind music master and who therefore is the depository of his divine knowledge. He’s also got a bad sign placed on him in the shape of the dacoit’s sixth finger having touched him. But soon the story shows us the grown princess, full of grace and beauty but with one defect: she cannot sleep! Back from a temple one day where she’s asked God to grant it to her, she tells her father she’s heard some music and is sure it will cure her. So musicians are fetched and each one tries his chance to put the princess to sleep… Of course they can’t, and it’s an opportunity to ridicule musicians who do not put all they heart into they art, but are mere performers.

Ratan hears about the challenge, and goes to the palace: he’s given his chance and one evening, at dusk (he doesn’t see the princess) plays his music and she falls asleep instantly! The next morning, everyone marvels and of course Ragini wants to see the blessed musician. But her father’s Minister tells her he’s gone away, being a traveller. She demands that he be brought back, she wants to learn his art. But Princess, do you know this musician is a leper? asks the insidious Minister. Horrid to see, and stinking from the corruption?  Shocked but not undaunted, she still insists to have him back. Kingly power is exerted, and Ratan (Bharat Bhushan) stands now in front of the Minister: he must know that the Princess not only is bad-tempered (only yesterday she gouged one of her singers eyes!) but horribly blind and ugly too! But Ratan bravely and wisely answers that music doesn’t need sight, only hearing. He’s told (as was the princess) that the lessons will take place, but only on either side of a curtain.

All this of course serves only one aim: to increase the intensity between the two charged electrodes that are the Royal Singer (his new title) and the Ravishing Rajkumari! One wonders about the nature of the Minister’s feelings: could his scheming be a hidden way to preserve the Princess for himself? But in fact no, he’s only inspired by courtesan motives: for him, royalty should have nothing to do with commoners. He’s a faithful defender of the King and what the King stands for. And as such, he’s an instrument of suspense: how will the two prospective lovebirds finally meet? What will happen to the Minister’s lies when they do? What about their infant alliance? And the fateful prophecies concerning them?

In order to know, and follow the movie’s many other suggestive ups and downs, you’ll have to watch yourself, but what’s great about Shabab is the combination of poetic lyricism and fairytale symbolism. The myth (Krishna’s story is apparent, as well as Devdas’s) is cleverly blended with the allegorical, and the social-political dimension combines with the humoristic (which centers around Ratan’s father and the community of his folk). I was reminded of the Shree 420 motif of rise and fall of the gifted peasant, from people to palace and back to the people (but without the redemption process from vice to virtue). Celebrating the divine power of music, the film easily integrates its soulful songs in the storyline, but also makes an interesting statement about its mysterious origin.

Indeed a musician needs an instrument to express his music; he needs to learn it bodily, so there is a good deal of material pursuits involved before the spiritual realities can appear. But when these are conquered, music is like the wind which blows the sail of a ship and takes its passengers to far-off lands, where new stars shine. It has a magic power which depends on, but also transcends, its execution by able hands and voice. And this transcending dimension is shown in that once its nature is recognized, one doesn’t need material props any more, one doesn’t have any necessity for instrumentalities. The human heart only is recognized to be God’s receptacle for joy and harmony. This is why the theme of asceticism and sacrifice runs so strongly in Shabab; that is why there is such an insistence on poverty and beggary: beggars and simple folk represent a state of society which is closer to the purification process which the Hindu (and Buddhist) traditions have recognized as needed to reach sanctity. When they sing, the Godhead can be heard. And when Ratan loses first his status, and then the use of his hands, he is in fact one step closer to divinity.

[Careful spoilers ahead] I have mentioned the cinematographic quality of the film and its inventiveness in terms of visual art: well perhaps the movie’s last song offers the best example. There are many other minor instances in the film, like the vision of the imaginary leper, or the erotic simile of the two lovers’ lovemaking, when the Royal Singer asks his transfixed student to tighten the string of her veena more and more, a little more, a little more, until it breaks in an ecstasy of tension and he can approach her physically:

In the last song, Ragini has married, and her princely husband asks her to sing a song for her. The song she chooses has been written by a destitute Ratan, reduced to utter poverty and condemned to come and beg his food at her palace. She doesn’t know, but he’s outside at her door, and can hear the song, and like the prince, is now listening to it. She sings his words, not knowing he’s listening to them, and she thinks about him, lost forever whereas an alien and wide-eyed husband is facing her:

I will die at your doorstep

You may know or you may not –

I’ll wander around your house all the time

My love for you will never reduce

I will die for you and you won’t know

After your death I will come to your land

My life will end at your doorstep

I will die at your doorstep

The beauty of the text is that it works on three levels:

- words referring to an imaginary reality: Ragini’s husband listening to her, and wondering perhaps who the words are from (and for), but probably only able to understand them metaphorically, as the trite expression of unknown passion;

- words referring to reality: Ragini thinking about Ratan, hoping her husband understands what she sings isn’t too explicitly an avowal of what’s in her heart; for her the pronouns in the song are real, they refer to Ratan and herself, and she can relish the melancholy pleasure of putting herself both in the position of ‘I’ or ‘you’; but she’s tragically ignorant that the song is doing to Ratan what they say, that the words in her voice have a power that transcends the sheer level of evocation;

- words which are reality: Ratan listening to Ragini and being killed by the very words he’s penned; for him his words can be understood as himself speaking to her and telling her he’s dying – death being here the essence of absolute love, but he can also hear them as her lover’s message that she’ll join him soon, that their love can never die – even if he dies.

The spectator also has his own frame of interpretation: for him there’s the Devdas myth that superimposes itself on top of the romantic fairy tale, the tragic drama together with the lyrical romance.

Nutan was 18 at the time of the film, exactly the age of her character. She isn’t completely in command of all her powers as she will be later; but she’s already the cynosure of the story. Bharat Bhushan, as handsome as he certainly is, pales in comparison and cannot seem to create more than a single star-struck expression on his face. Even his faint smiles look constrained. But Nutan already shows her spirited vivacity, her feel for passion as well as her profound sense of drama; she’s a delight to watch and I think (but perhaps this is because the story doesn’t allow it) all her powers are there, except that superb clownish mischievousness of hers, so typical of her films with Dev Anand. One day I’ll post an article about it!

You'll find all the film's photos here: Shabab

You probably all know - but I don't care: Memsaab's latest instalment is a hard day's scanning work of 75 pages of text and awesome portraits from a 1952 book by Baburao and Sushila Rani Patel’s called “Stars of the Indian Screen.”And it's FABULOUS. For all those who are into B'wood oldies, it's a fascinating take on 36 actors and actresses (many more of the second sort!!), in majority before they became really great - well, some of them of course had already done their important work, but others were only on the threshold, Nutan for one:

Wow, "rigidly thin!!" - well, I suppose she was simply *growing*, wasn't she? At 16, you can't expect to have acquired all the *flesh* that later years  would bring, can you? If you go and read that Memsaab page, the first quote she gives is precisely about Nutan having "substantial talent for acting but we would like her to add at least ten pounds more to her personality and come to the screen again a bright, well-upholstered beauty." I'm at a loss if this is a woman writing. The book is supposed to have been written by Sushila Rani! Greta does say that Mister Patel's "trademark snark" is all over the bios - I'd gather she's right here . One thing which I find strange is the mention of movies I'd never heard of: Shikwa, Nirmohi, Malkin. They don't appear on IMDb, but can't have been invented (I don't know if I want to see them, though, I think I'll stick to the well-upholstered Nutan of the later years).

On the whole, what's very pleasant is the random succession of screen worthies, mostly young for the girls, with the exception of an opening on Durga Khote, which must be Baburao's concession to his wife's tastes:

One wonders why some well-known people are there, why others are absent. For example, there's Ashok Kumar, but not his two brothers; there's Nimmi and Nargis, but why not Nadira? And all the older actresses are sent packing. Of course, only 36 people means some degree of selection, but why this one? It's a mystery and a charm of the collection. Here's the Raj Kapoor double page:

It's the description of the 28 year old showman, with Aag, Barsaat and Awaara behind him, but not yet Shree 420, not yet Jagte Raho or Anari. We learn that the man who decided to cast him as the hero back in 1947 needed "courage" to do so - which doesn't sound like a very positive thing to say even in 1952!

Here are two other posters which I found attractive:

Theye're the two heroes of Naya Daur, of which you'll soon hear about! By the bye, the biography tells us that DP loved being with his relatives, and teasing his little sisters. Nice, no? Well, perhaps not, because the addendum sounds like -"what right has he got to say that?" Here it is: "... most of whom are, of course, overweight." Of course! (but I'm being unjust, there's an overall insistance in the book on fans asking their heroines to be er, what's the word? Ah, "streamlined"). On the other hand, this one has the right profile:

The Patels must have liked her very much - I don't blame them naturally - just listen to this: " Madhu has a pair of refreshingly innocent eyes, a clear olive complexion and an infectious smile set with perfect white teeth (thank goodness they're white, and teeth - what would you have expected? dark fangs? ). Her acting covers a wide range of emotions from the flirtish to the pathetic and she can brings tears to her eyes without the aid of glycerine and dole them by drops according to the need of the director". Well, give me such obliging actresses any day!

Anyway, I want to raise my glass and cheer Greta: thanks and hurray for her work

PS: I wrote this post with the font "Book antiqua" :-)

The Brave New World of Naya Daur (New Era, BR Chopra 1957) opens with a striking quote by Mahatma Gandhi:

So from the start we know that the film is going to be about the biological (bios = life) relationship between men and the Earth, and that this bond takes the shape of a symbolical Great Tree that cannot be shaken off its roots by any man-made machinery, powerful as it might be. Of course the analogy is first social and political (the references to Labour and machinery smack of good old Socialism), but we’ll see that its implications reach deeper and confront the contextual message of 1957 India with a universal problem concerning the way humanity deals with its Mother Earth.

The story revolves around the great character of Shankar (Dilip Kumar - I’d never him seen better inspired) who plays the role of a tongavala, a horse-cart driver whose job is threatened by the village “capitalist”, the saw-mill owner’s son, Kundan (played by Jeevan), who wants to set up a bus service to the nearby temple where the tongas carry the flocks of pilgrims. This is only one of his initiatives – earlier on he introduced an electric saw in the mill, thereby making many working men redundant, and disrupting the paternalist relationship that existed between the community of workers and the saw-mill owner, his father, who leaves to go to a pilgrimage and only returns at the end of the story.

Of course, Shankar takes the lead of the workers’ revolt – who have now turned into proleterians, because the injustice done to them has raised their political consciousness and their identity as an oppressed class. Before the uprooting of their traditional livelihoods, they lived in the Edenic state of collaboration with their revered master, and knew not the evil of the workers’ struggles. Shankar becomes their articulate leader, the one who seizes arms against injustice and faces the oppressive Capitalistic Boss:

All this Marxist lore works well because it is connected not to random masses of whom we know nothing, but concrete individuals whose destinies we are introduced to, and to more deeply allegorical themes as well. First, the theme of the two brothers, which brings the movie, already reminiscent of Mother India, closer to Deewar, where the mother-theme is so important. Shankar’s “brother”, his bosom friend, Krishna (played by Ajit), belongs to the other village community of woodcutters. We wonder why they are such good friends, in fact – such amity among men being a little disturbing in such an unsophisticated environment. But the reason is that this friendship serves a greater purpose: that of demonstrating the thesis according to which industrialisation and capitalistic pursuits rend apart human ties, and that even the “natural” brotherhood of men cannot compete against the individualistic greed for profit.

Because we are watching a Bollywood movie with its ready made package of emotionality and romance, and not primarily a political reformist statement, one of the solutions to the social upheaval will be a romantic one. Interestingly, the opening BR Chopra logo represents a Stakhanovite couple of sorts, ready to march against tyranny:

Vijayanthimala plays Rajini, the village belle that both Shankar and Krishna fall in love with, but, steadfast friends as they are, they decide that this will not jeopardize their friendship and set up a test to know who will marry her. Unfortunately, Shankar’s sister Manju, who secretly loves Krishna, intervenes and tilts the odds in Shankar’s favour, thus igniting the feud which the movie’s main story needed. Of course, this is a romantic trick which serves a lower purpose than the main political intent, but its moral stance (deception is wrong even in the name of love) combines with the main theme of fighting against injustice and for human dignity.

Now Krishna, thirsty for revenge, sides with Kundan the once-abhorred greedy Boss. The latter has accepted Shankar’s bravado bet that he can bring his tonga up the hill to the Shiva Temple faster than the new bus! He says that in three months’ time, he will be ready to show the upstart that the People are the real Power. Of course at first nobody in the village believes he or they can do it, even in three months. He tells them they should build a faster route up the hill, but the work necessary for this feat is such that it would need everybody from the village to get down to it night and day. Shankar tastes the solitude of the brave hero, but soon another bout of injustice from the master turns the heads of his fellow villagers, who feel they now have nothing to lose, and they all start building the new road!

Meanwhile Krishna’s anger is like a seething volcano, and he tries all his scurvy tricks to down the fiery spirit of the village and twice almost succeeds (I’m not telling everything for the sake of suspense!)! The humoristic dimension is also very present, first in the way Dilip Kumar acts and embraces his heroic deeds, and then in the person of a hilarious visitor, journalist Johnny Walker who comes to cover the village feud, and almost inadvertently gives it an importance that it wouldn’t have had otherwise. The villagers can now represent all of India's oppressed!But now to the more serious stuff. If you go at the bollywoodfan’s page (there’s an interesting political discussion in the comments, even if more centred on American democracy than Indian socialism), or the legendary Upperstall's Naya Daur page, you’ll find developments about the contributions of the movie to the theme of development and progress. For example Upperstall believes that “the film is unable to take a clear stand between the Gandhian dislike of machinery and the Nehruvian plan for modernization.”  People quote this passage:

in order to uphold the view that BR Chopra sacrificed the higher ideals of politics to the baser ones of entertainment. But it isn’t because a message is associated to leisure that it becomes less important. It isn’t because the human worker community hasn’t condemned all the machines that they have abandoned their ideals. Besides, Gandhi’s message seems rather balanced: it’s true that machines are “dead” compared to living people, and, as he writes: “machinery to be well-used has to help and ease human effort”. Of course the film has this famous race at the end, where the “machine” (the bus) is pictured as the dark baddie:

 And this could tend to demonstrate that the film-maker is indeed more interested in the spectacular and escapist dimension than in the clear message about what progress means for India. But in fact, Naya Daur’s message is neither a denunciation of modernity, nor a plea for consensus. I think what BR Chopra (and Akhtar Mirza his screenplay writer) was conscious of the particular reality of India in the 1950s: a country where Independence under Nehru meant development, power and influence, but at the same time where the human and rural dimension was still very much a key factor: the film tries to suggest a model of development that might help the decision-taking elites to choose a path that would take advantage of all the forces in presence, while at the same time preserving the spiritual legacy of Mahatma Gandhi on self-rule: “Although the word Swaraj means self-rule, Gandhi gave it the content of an integral revolution that encompasses all spheres of life. "At the individual level Swaraj is vitally connected with the capacity for dispassionate self-assessment, ceaseless self-purification and growing self-reliance". (...) In other words, it is sovereignty of the people based on pure moral authority. Economically, Swaraj means full economic freedom for the toiling millions. And in its fullest sense, Swaraj is much more than freedom from all restraints, it is self-rule, self-restraint and could be equated with moksha or salvation.” (wiki link)

When Kundan, the mill manager, tries to drag the workers away from their road-building, in the hope that the road would not be finished at the end of the three months, he stages a show with dancers and singers, and naturally everyone flocks to watch it, relinquishing the hard work. And we are shown what happens to the spectators when this diversion occurs:

Manipulated by greed, their humanity degrades and becomes distorted; clearly this isn’t a commentary on the ills coming from mass entertainment, but rather a warning of what happens to man when he abandons his resolve and his dignity (such virtues the villagers had upheld, when deciding to turn their old economic routine into a conscious fight for its defence). Many factors are able to cause such degradation, whether it is machines or systems or ideologies. Machinery in itself is good, but its abuse, its unilateral promotion provokes a dehumanization which the film wants to expose.

I would like to finish by insisting on the opening image of the "majestic tree". Gandhi uses it to describe Humanity which is deeply rooted in the Earth, but the symbolism of the great tree at the origin of Mankind carries with it associations of life and death which are also present in the Bible: when the serpent cheats Adam and Eve into eating from the tree of knowledge, doesn't it want them to transgress an order which we can compare to what is happening in Naya Daur? Doesn't Kundan represent a sort of Agent of Evil bent on disrupting man's original relationship with a spiritualised Nature? Shankar could then easily become a kind a Christ-like figure who would fight for man's final rehabilitation. He could also represent Abel the Earth-minder, this time victorious of his murderous brother Cain, here represented by Krishna). So that the "New Era" heralded by this prophet of Justice and Peace rings like a universal call that comes from the heart of all working men on Earth.

Hi, sorry to have been away so long, too many things in the going. This one took me some time assembling and researching, but was great fun! When I was a boy, my brother François and I used to collect stamps, mostly French ones of course, and I still retain names of people and places that appeared on the little slips of sticky paper, immortalised by their colourful and evocative drawings. We had great moments buying them, sorting them out, calculating their prices and treasuring them. They're now somewhere at my other brother's home, I think, he kept the collection as he left home later than we did.

Anyway here's the lot of the Indian cinema stamps. Only 60 people! Can you find any more? The Indian postage service only commemorates the dead, so there are as yet no stamp for Dilip Kumar or Vijayanthimala - let's hope it stays that way for long! - the stamps where living actors are represented are all foreign ones. Some seem forged though (those Guiné-Bissau ones look strange). I have opened this post with Nutan, and so first, the Indian stamps.

Commemorative

Dadasaheb Phalke starts the list, being the director of Raja Harichandra, (1913), said to be the first Indian movie!

Directors

Jyotiprasad Agarwalla, Avichi Meiyappan, Krishnaswami Subrahmanyam

Guru Dutt

Satyajit Ray

Ritwik Ghatak

Bimal Roy 

Raj Kapoor

L.V. Prasad, Mehboob Khan, V. Shantaram, B.N. Reddi, S.S. Vasan

Producer (Harakh Chand Nahata)

Actors (deceased)

Devika Rani, Nutan, Kanan Devi, Savithri, Meena Kumari, Leila Naidu:

Nargis, Hema Malini, Madhubala:

Padmini, Lalitha and Ragini Travancore

 Prithviraj Kapoor, Gemini Ganesan, Shivaji Ganeshan, Rajkumar:

N.T. Rama Rao, M.G. Ramachandran, K. L. Saigal:

Jaishankar (only FDC?)

  A booklet on Uttam Kumar:

The following actors (not deceased)  are not represented on Indian postage:

Singers and musicians

A beautiful group of Kishore Kumar, Mukesh, Mohammed Rafi, and Hemant Kumar:

Pankaj Kumar Mallick, S.D. Burman, M.S. Subbulakshmi:

Dinanath Mankeshkar, Ghantasala:

And one last one, from the US, said to represent "Bollywood dancing"!

And just for the fun of it, here are the films I've identified on these stamps (help me complete the list!)

Raja harichandra

Nayak

Sujata

Anari

Swades

DDLJ

Devdas

Pather panchali

Kagaaz ke phool

Mera naam joker

Awaara

Bandini

Shilpi

Uttarayan

Mother India

Roth

Woman

The cloud-capped star

Pakeezah

Yash Chopra passed today; because of the importance of the guy, I decided to post this eulogy of him written some time ago, but which I still feel is appropriate.

Yash Chopra… Say this name and immediately vast landscapes appear, green slopes where lovers mirror their gaze in the other’s eyes, enchanting music lifts up a crowd of spring birds, dark men march towards their destiny, violence smoulders in the heart, suffering mothers obey their dharma, and love reigns supreme in spite of all odds. Mr Chopra’s reputation as an incurable romantic is so ingrained that it’s difficult to start with something very different! You might as well adore him or hate him, in fact. YC is Bollywood at its best, or at its worst. And love, melodrama… with so banal a theme, such a typically Bollywoodian feature, why does the man stand out? Where does the legend (and the money) come from? 

What’s interesting in his profile is the relatively limited number of films, and the stupendous number of blockbusters. This Indian director, born in 1932, has done only 21 movies? How come such a sparse output – yet over such a long timespan - has been so successful? I know of a few other such directors, Stanley Kubrick, for example. But Indian film directors? In the prolific Bollywood culture, there can’t be that many. Yash Chopra has the rare gift of making a landmark film out of every opus he directs, or nearly. One might say he’s managed to find the mix of story and spectacle his audience was ready for. One might add he’s got that skill to be as true and evocative with social-political films as well as with love movies. He’s also associated with the greatest actors of the moment, mainly Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan for the men; and Sridevi, Rekha, Waheeda Rehman, Madhuri Dixit, among others, for the ladies. I would also add that he’s associated with the greatest musicians, Sanjeev Kholi, Hariprasad Chaurasia and ShivKumar Sharma, notably. 

All this would be true. But I think it’s basically a knack for passionate stories. Stories that work. Yash Chopra knows how to exploit and tell stories in such a way that he meets the public that’s here to appreciate them. Good stories that are going to be successful need to deal with people’s main interests in life: the passions and desires which everybody feels or wants to feel. Rebellion and courage, virtue and sacrifice, love and duty. And the romantic dimension is perhaps not so much in the privileged choice of love – even though one can’t deny the place of that type of story – but in the intensity of the passions shown to transform the protagonists’ lives. Passion: does that word summarise Yash Chopra? Idlebain.com (here) says that “tradition” is a very important determination with Yash Chopra. Passion can of course be traditional, and dealt with in a traditional way. The author of that review contends that Lamhe (1991) was his only iconoclastic film. Having not seen all YC’s movies, I couldn’t say he’s wrong, but somehow tradition carries a certain conservatism which doesn’t exactly fit with passion. There is a violence and a revolutionary spirit in passion which doesn’t care about tradition. Yash Chopra has successfully innovated in ways that might have helped define tradition (that’s his classicism), but certainly he’s recreated this tradition to the point of challenging it.  

He’s not a total inventor. No artist ever is, in fact. In order to be judged innovative (hip and trendy are qualifications you often read concerning YC), you have to understand the traditions, and depart from them: do something sufficiently powerful that will redefine them and set a style which others will in turn take as a basis. So if for example, Deewar takes up the “angry young man” theme from Prakash Mehra’s Zanjeer (1973), Yash Chopra has created a trendsetter which critics don’t attribute to his forerunner. I haven’t seen any other Bollywood mine-films, but certainly Kaala Patthar has the depth and guts of any competitor.

Sometimes his stories are artificial to the point of straining the belief of his spectators: Darr deals with such an obsessive lover that one wonders if they really exist in real life. And In Lamhe, the basis of the plot is very thin: you have to accept that a daughter can look exactly like her mother to make the story credible: a very rare situation, I’d say. Coincidences occur rather frequently in YC’s cinema, and I’d say, they’re often romantic coincidences, which are only one type of coincidence. A coincidence is in itself rare (otherwise it wouldn’t attract attention to itself that much), so a romantic one… But I think the director couldn’t car less. What he’s doing is using a plot, perhaps artificially created to work under the circumstances, and draw on the potential created by that plot. He doesn’t hesitate to add meaning thanks to coincidences which elevate the story to the level of myth, or legend. Veer’s prisoner number (786) in Veer-Zaara (it’s also Vijay’s dockworker plate number In Deewar) is an example everyone has noticed. It’s Allah’s holy number, and the film is about the need to unite Muslims and Hindus.

In stories of passion, says the director, anything can happen. It’s like tragedy, or mythology: we are no longer really in the everyday reality (movie-goers don’t mind suspending their disbelief we know that): passion justifies a level of experience which has its own uniqueness. Symbols flare up in such stories, whereas in realty, you’d probably have to draw other people’s attention to them, and to you, the decipherer. On this blog I’ve developed the symbol of water in Kaala Patthar: making a film enables you to weave together bits and pieces of experience and occurrences in such a way that the meaning it displays will depend on that assortment. Yash Chopra knows how to do that task with particular skill. His choice of characters, drawing from world myths and legends give his best films an interest and a lasting effect. So if he forgets that dimension, he quickly becomes manipulated by the fickleness of passing taste. For me, that’s what happened with Dil to pagal hai.

There is another structural element which YC implements in his best movies. Let’s let him explain:

"Relationships interest me because man is one creature who is capable of sane as well as insane behaviour. It's this nature of human beings that inspires and gives room for innumerable plots. Like in Daag (1973), Raakhee, who played the other woman, created all the drama, as did Rekha in Silsila (1981). In Aaina (1993) it was the jealous sister while in Darr (1993) it was the obsessive lover. So unlike other movies where a villain is added to create the problems, in my films villainy is substituted by a third angle." (reference)Ah, here’s something Bollywood has to learn from the master: “a third angle”. I have in effect rarely seen mainstream Bollywood movies adopt that technique. Of course many Indian films have, but they were often socially oriented, fringe-type movies. Yash Chopra has succeeded in bringing this third angle into commercial hits. What’s a third angle? It’s a pole of interest which is neither good or evil, black or white, and is sufficiently developed to tilt the standard Manichaeism towards or more all-encompassing rendition of human experience. In Deewar, for instance, the third angle is Vijay’s swerving (and therefore very human) fight to reach self-justification. In Darr, it’s the unclassifiable obsession of the crazy lover. In Kaala Patthar, it could be Mangal’s course from utter villainy to sacrifice. All these diversions from easily identifiable Good & Evil create a third angle which adds the depth and the richness to the best of YC’s movies. And this notwithstanding a hero structure which is more three-polar and dual. Veer-Zaara gives us perhaps the best example of this structure. Not only do we really have three essential characters (Veer, Zaara, and Saamiya), but these characters are themselves included in a wider generational structure where elders shape the role and life of their “descendants”. The third angle, brilliantly personified by Rani Mukherjee’s woman lawyer character introduces a last item of reflection which Yash Chopra’s films have been recognised for.

Indeed, despite the formidable stature which YC possesses today, he has not always seemed recommendable and acceptable to all publics. We’ve already alluded to that commentator who declared Lamhe iconoclastic, because of the supposedly incestual nature of the main love concern. But that commentator has forgotten that Deewar was deemed as scandalous when it came out. The famous scenes including Amitabh and Parveen Babi in bed, for example. But Vijay’s character itself must have been difficult to deal with: he’s a vindicator of rights who turns bad, a victim as well as a perverted hero. And seen from a certain westernised angle, Yash Chopra’s stance in Veer-Zaara to reconcile India and Pakistan is politically-correct; but I wonder if all Indians agree. Finally, his decision to impersonate in Pooja (from Lamhe) a free woman who does not care about the possible incestuous undertones of her love interest was brave indeed given the financial costs of a YC film. So Tradition is not that welcome in his films, as we can see. Yash Chopra is more a maker of traditions than a follower. And yet he remains mainstream, he is recognised as one of the reigning kings of the masala type. No little feat.

  And here's the ever-favourite song from Veer-Zaara, dedicated "to you" Yash Chopra:

Reading about Mr. & Mrs 55, Guru Dutt’s 1955 sparkling romantic comedy on the net, in order to prepare this review, has been very pleasant; this devil of a director has produced some insightful commentaries from many of my blogging friends, along with some equally fascinating exasperated remarks, and last but not least, truly touching declarations of rapturous affection towards his work… I don’t know what he would have thought about the latter! But I can certainly understand what Harvey says about the movie: “It is so hard to decide if I like this film or not”, he writes. An important declaration, because it means there is something disturbing in the film which one cannot get one’s arm around. And this something is characterized by other viewers as its “essentially reactionary message vis-à-vis gender”, according to Philip Lutgendorf, or by Stuart Martin (on Bollywoodfan's blog) saying “that Dutt offered only misandry and misogyny as options, and ended up stating that the latter was the better of the two”… There’s even somebody who believes “this film is not at all "sophisticated". On the contrary, like most of the hindi films of the period, it tries to reaffirm the faith of the viewers in the rotten Indian traditions and values by following an awfully simplistic and preachy plot.” (Gunjan, a commentator at Upperstall's website). Well!

On the other hand, almost everybody lauds the actors, the “chemistry” between Preetam (Dutt) and Anita (Madhubala), the witty dialogues (by Abrar Alvi), the inventive photography and the “fabulous” songs by O.P. Nayyar. I shouldn’t forget the appreciation garnered by the supporting cast, with Johnny Walker in the lead and Yasmin, his dimpled and perky paramour. The plot is generally considered quite clever, as are the combined antics of Preetam and his pal Johnny!

So the question is: how could such a pleasurable and intelligent film contain such a flaw, in terms of social message? Was Guru Dutt a retrograde artist who actually preferred women to remain at home and deprive them of any political role? His Anita may be the “bubbly” girlie whose pout and haughtiness we all love, but Dutt treats her no better than a “her in-doors”! Not only that, but her aunt (Lalitha Pawar, superb) becomes the caricature of all peevishly arrogant feminists supposedly at the vanguard of the fight for women’s rights (indeed, as Harvey reminds us, the film was done the year of the Hindu Marriage Act). And finally, we have Preetam’s bhabhi (rightly declared “painful” by Dustedoff) dreamingly asking:

Worst of all, this is the person who makes Anita’s pride crumble, and from then on she starts looking through her lashes at Preetam as a future hubbie! What?! She has actually been moved by those “disgusting sentiments” (says Stuart) which demonstrate nothing but the male-dominated desire to have a wife at his disposal, at home, slaving away between chores and babies? How shockingly un-romantic and (by today’s standards at least) so politically incorrect! We spectators need independently-minded women who will resist and refuse their lover, don’t we, before they victoriously revert to tenderer devices, and start the reign of Love. Nappies can wait!

Truth is, Guru Dutt isn’t a very spectator-loving fella. In spite of people heralding Mr & Mrs 55 as a “light” comedy, without the “heavier” stuff which was to mark his later works, or as an out and out entertainer where the actor/director doesn’t wallow in his splenetic persona that nobody likes, my opinion is that the film doesn’t lend itself to such feelgood exploitation. Yes, Dutt/Preetam does seem “genuinely in love this time”; one can say he romantically wants Anita only for herself and will not use the position of vantage which the arranged marriage has given him – this is what explains his otherwise inexplicable photo ploy… But seriously now, I wonder how anyone can believe that Guru Dutt is so very different in this film?

One person at least doesn’t, Sharmi. I love what she writes: “Guru Dutt produced these films (Mr & Mrs 55, Jaal, Baaz and Aar Paar) to accumulate enough money to make films that he believed in. But, that didn't mean he sacrificed his inherent personality for portraying lighter characters. In fact, in this film too he is a struggler, but with an ability to laugh at his sorry state. He sees his struggle with the eye of a cartoonist. His clothes are in disarray but he makes a joke of it. He is the same cynic, but garbs his penury in a funny light. He is unemployed, but has no qualms in borrowing money from Johny. In fact, quite unabashedly says, "Arey yaar de dena kuch, baad mein hisaab kar lengey." But, he is not a parasite. There is dignity in his desperation.”

Indeed, for all his surface make-believe light-heartedness, we are still confronted with the old Duttian cynicism and indifference. Preetam is a spectator of the love that takes hold of him, one should even say of the fascination he cannot help feeling for the beautiful girl that chance has placed in front of him. “I couldn’t refuse you” he says, when she asks why he married her, in spite of the dishonourable deal she reproaches him of having accepted. He couldn’t refuse, it was too strong; desire is a ruthless master which this dilettante, this eternally self-sufficient artist has had for once to recognize. But under this new experience, nothing is new. Still very much inspired, Sharmi continues: “Dutt is the same middle-class man in Mr & Mrs 55 as he is in  Pyaasa. But, it's the expression that differs here. Pertaining to the light mood of the film, he made sure that the script didn't get bogged down by too much despondency and introspection. His angst here is channelized differently, he smirks at the drudgeries of life and its cruel truths. He keeps visiting the editor of the daily for a job, but smirks when there is no hope.” She goes on to describe their love, and fancies it’s true enough. But just watch Preetam throughout the movie: he’s got that opportunistic grin all the time, as if he was inwardly saying: what the heck, anyway, I’ll draw some fun out of it. I can’t think he’s seriously in love.

Passion, if you will, but no love. For Guru Dutt love was not elation, not salvation, therein lay his curse. Could he even believe in love? Perhaps what he loved he had to destroy. Okay, in Mr and Mrs 55, there is no destruction, but who can honestly say that Preetam is overjoyed or happy at the end? I think he’s merely amused that his trick has worked, and if I moralize his attitude, I could say he was selfish and manipulating. But I don’t want to do this. In fact I’m struck by his character’s other truth, the one which can be seen during the song “meri duniya loot rahi thi”, where Dutt films himself as he wanted to be seen: inwardly torn yet trying to draw some sense from what it meant to be, as opposed as not to be. “Not a tear in my eyes, but a fire in my heart” says the Greek-choir like street singer: this describes, not the lover who is pining for the Anita he could fear he has lost after he’s given her aunt that fateful photo (that’s only the surface version), but the desperate yet lucid poet (the same as in Pyaasa) paying for the tragic curse of life itself.

In fact Preetam is never faking anything: that’s why one cannot moralize his attitude, however flippant and self-centred it might seem outwardly. As Sharmi says, he has an inherent dignity, a rectitude which to me strikes as the dying man’s soul, wondering where its flame comes from. Even if Dutt knew there was no hope, no SOS, something in his soul looks straight out, and his desire still burns brightly. That’s where his truth comes from, his artistic yearning for the absolute, that final freedom. Hence Preetam’s provocations, hence his fundamental irony, his corrosive superiority over all social flimsy half-truths:

Still, the film doesn’t pour out all this acid; it’s there, but unlike what Dutt does in Kagaaz ke phool, and to a lesser degree in Sahib bibi aur ghulam, in Mr & Mrs 55 you still have room for a certain amount of tenderness, some fun and some sympathy. But already Dutt is asking for the tears that he cannot cry:

And he is only too familiar with the games of desire which eyes perform on eyes:

We now come to the movie’s alleged antifeminist scandal. First I think Anita/Madhubala’s charms would be exactly the same for Preetam/Dutt, irrespective of whether she could represent feminist progress or traditionalist Indian values. The man who can say:

doesn’t care about politics and the advancement of women, even if this sounds disgraceful. For him, women are part and parcel of the eerie mystery of life and its main driving force, desire. Preetam’s dumbstruck silence at the beginning of the film is the artist’s way of suggesting that he is studying the feminine phenomenon; does it sound very strange to say that women can become a metaphysical problem? Why does existing mean that I am subjected to desire of persons like her? How can I protect myself against such a power? What amount of leeway can I exert over such a power? What is the secret of these signs: a smile, a look, a gesture directed towards you?

So that even if, like other viewers, I don’t like Guru Dutt’s stance as far as women are concerned, I think that what he’s doing belongs to other pursuits, and that in part he’s a deliberate provoker. The “divorce law” was being passed when he made his film? But he didn’t want divorce, or emancipation of women, or anything like that. What did all these (perhaps important) evolutions mean when one is meditating eternal womanhood? Probably he thought that the figure of a submissive yet much more symbolically powerful home-reigning female corresponded more to what Desire was revealing to him.

The great figure of the mother, with her role of shaper of destinies, her connections to life and death: wasn’t this far more essential to understand than women’s call for a better everyday life, which anyway could easily be ridiculed back in 1955? It’s easy to say that Guru Dutt is prejudiced, because he was, of course. But Anita’s politically incorrect love of feminine “slavery”, her sacrifice of values which could at the time be categorized alien to Indian culture, certainly had Dutt’s preference as opposed to what he felt was contemptible unnatural demands of westernized man-haters, even if of course Sitadevi’s character is grossly exaggerated.

Finally, and perhaps partially contrary to what has been said above, who knows if Guru Dutt wouldn’t have fancied himself to be much more on the side of Life values than many of his critics would have said? If life means an insistence on the fundamental adventure commanded by the forces of desire and creation, innocence and beauty, and if the poet is the one who can, thanks to his art, and even to the expense of his own energies, reformulate the primeval components of this Source of all things, then perhaps this is so.

The film can be watched (with subtitles) here: Mr and Mrs 55

Rishte Naate (family relationships) is a 1965 Gopalakrishnan movie, with Raj Kumar, Nutan, Nazir Hussain, Jamuna and Ameeta as main actors. It does seem like I’m exhausting my reserves of Nutan movies, because while this film has more than a few qualities, it certainly cannot match Nutan’s greats, and she imperceptibly seems to underplay her character. The story is one of its good points: half-way between quirky and exaggerated, it is sufficiently original to attract attention. It revolves around Thakur Narendrapal Singh (Hussain), a rich landowner who, while having a son and a daughter, dispossesses his son from his normal inheritance and thrusts it on one of his workers, Sundar (Raj Kumar, a little lank and wimpy), whom he also asks to marry his daughter Kalpana (Jamuna).

Sundar accepts the deal, even if he realizes he’s a sort of pawn on his master and father in law’s chessboard. We get to see Raja, the rightful son, an upstart from the city who arrives home with his fiancée Roopa (Ameeta), whose penniless father has thrust upon him to pay his debtors. Anyway, they marry, and Roopa has a baby girl, who is immediately looked after by her bhabhi. But after one or two painfully contrived scenes, during which Narendrapal compares the two young men (one hard-working, the other a profiteer) and declares his own son’s undoing, they leave and wait for the right moment to deploy their plan.

Meanwhile Sundar and Kalpana also marry, and keep the guardianship of baby Meenakshi, who considers them as her parents! Kalpana’s friend, Savitri (Nutan, above), daughter of her father’s childhood buddy (a jolly Collector played by David), celebrates her wedding with her, and all seems fine. The baby grows. One day, perhaps out of motherly shame, Roopa comes back home to take her daughter to her own house, but the feisty little girl runs away and goes back to her granddad, and her aunt and uncle. So life continues, and marital bliss is described at length, even if the two don’t seem to be able to have children of their own, and strangely avert the subject of their dear Meenakshi being taken away from them again. The little girl becomes a sort of Troy horse within the coveted fatherly estate. But disaster hits the happy household, Kalpana is hit by a bull and dies. Sundar is devastated (or at least he looks it), and feels keenly once again the precariousness of his situation at his master’s home.

But without waiting for any delay, the sarkar, who is ever the family inspirer, and almost insensitive to the fact that he’s lost his daughter, thinks it is best to supply his surrogate son with another wife. He immediately thinks of Savitri, the Collector’s daughter. Dear Sundar, nevertheless, cannot accept to be remarried, and so soon! But he relents after his master pulls the worst of all tricks, pretending to leave his house because Sundar won’t marry and give him the child his old age would love. Safe at her place, Savitri rejoices, because she’d secretly loved Sundar. The wedding is thus quickly organised. We understand now that Sundar is completely at Narendrapal’s mercy. He will do whatever his master thinks right. But he cannot forget his dear Kalpana, and pines away.

This is when Savitri takes over. Asked by the master of the house to make herself loved by Meenakshi (yes, she’s still there, unreclaimed by her rightful parents) as a mother, this way she would open Sundar’s heart and become his wife completely, she takes upon the task of befriending the frank little devil, who’s understood she can do what she wants. There’s a funny scene where she’s used by Narendrapal to bring closer together her two estranged foster-parents: she brings Sundar in the kitchen, indicates his sitting place next to Savitri, pushes him there, turns both their heads one towards the other and orders her uncle to smile, smile, smile!!

The episode finishes sadly with Sundar carrying the girl away, and Savitri shedding tears as she realizes the pressure on them. Still, she bravely carries on, in the face of Sundar’s open deploration of his lost wife, and criticism of Savitri as a poor replacement…

There are no essential debates in Rishte Naate; but there’s the father’s insistence to be present in the younger ones’ lives. Of course, he replaces a departed mother, and this (often annoying) sensitiveness has to be attributed to his mission as purveyor of the generations and social order. So when he wants Sundar to remarry, in order for him to have a grand-daughter, we understand he’s fulfilling his role. Still, I thought there was more to his role than just that of the well-meaning, and even plotting, elder. Mother and father all bundled up in one, he resists evil, fights against deceit, checks moods and dissent. Even though he’s without personal family interest (his daughter dies and his son is disowned), he suffers as much for Sundar’s fate and needs as if he were his real father. There’s a sort of enigma there: the film doesn’t fully explain why he is so intent. Then there’s Nutan’s role as second wife. This is by no means an odd character in Indian cinema, but the fact it’s Nutan, and that the role is in such focus here makes it rather unusual. First she’s ordered to be like Kalpana, then she defends her husband against his step-father, when Sundar cannot sleep at home with his wife, and appearances have to be kept up. It takes the ghost-like intervention of Kalpana herself to start set things right:

Nutan finds in this role a sort of justification of her presence in the film. It isn’t as if she has to sacrifice herself as in other more resonating productions, but there’s a humiliating process, a burning of her desires, that she’s apt to personify like no one. Unfortunately for her, Raj Kumar isn’t a very fiery bachelor-husband! He explains to her the weight of his past, his feelings, but somehow it doesn’t reach red-hot intensity:

And so this lukewarmness is itself another dimension of the film: Savitri will indeed sacrifice herself in the end (see for yourself) but in a rather unromantic way. So the strength of the film lies in this unheroic level of feelings, lived at family height, with everyday family concerns and cares. Far from perfection, certainly, but we often equate perfection in human affairs with a certain romantic intensity that doesn’t necessarily belong to it. Savitri’s attachment to her Sundar doesn’t reach heights of devotion, but it’s honest and selfless, and sufficiently warm-hearted to be earmarked as beautiful. Somehow Nutan’s secondhandedness, her disinterestedness, evokes Indian women’s courageous acceptance of a tradition of subservience which they know they won’t change individually. But they also know it depends on them, even within this frustrating environment, and in spite their own personal aspirations, to bring peace at home.

(Could this be this what happened to the great RK???)

For Raj Kapoor the director, Bobby appeared in 1973 between   Mera naam joker (1972) and Satyam shivam sundaram (1978) and so I was rather interested to have a look at it in order to bridge that gap. Well, even if I’m told the movie heralded RK’s conversion to masala, and that he needed Bobby to make up for the box-office disaster of MNJ, there is still a gap, and the two very personal, even shockingly original landmarks of 72 and 78 tower high above it. What’s striking is how so many of Rajkapooresque resources were present, which could have given depth and meaning to the movie, but went unused. It’s as if RK hadn’t been able to suppress them totally from his script and yet was forced by the knowledge that this type of cinema was now gone, to refrain from using them, and had to satisfy himself with standard recipes that a general public would appreciate and pay for.

For example, there’s this Shree 420-like scene when school leaving Raja (later called Raju, as in the movies from 1950s) dramatically denies any intention of lying in order to move ahead in life, contrary to what his looser-morals friend suggests:

The risk of lying is repeated later a few times:

Now for a younger Raj Kapoor, such a line would have been seized as a warning, or an ironic comment of some downfall or doom to come, because youthful ideals can never match the moral complexities of real life. But in Bobby, nothing is made of it. Raja will never lie, or even face the aforesaid complexities. His “honesty” doesn’t make him more elevated or hero-like, it just makes him more Bollywood. So that the insistence on truthfulness in Bobby serves almost no purpose apart from weakly putting forward the necessity for love to be guileless, something masala spectators take for granted.

Another example of Raj Kapoor’s past glory occurs during the song Aye Phansa, which takes place at the moment when Raja’s parents, having decided to terminate any fanciful risk of a mismatch between their son and his girlfriend Bobby, organise a party to make him meet his prospective wife, a dimwit girl who belongs to his social milieu, and who is (like him) the sole heir to a millionaire friend of his millionaire daddy:

During this song, Neena sings. She’s been Raja’s admirer from the start, and reminds one of Maya in Shree 420:

In the Bobby song, Neena winks again

as if to say: "hey you spectators, you know you aren’t really seeing what’s on the screen, you know there’s more to Raj Kapoor than this glamourous Bollywoodisation of human feelings?" But I’m afraid this interpretation isn’t actually meant; the threat of evil lurking behind Neena’s erotically charged cynicism never materializes, and never reaches the Angry Young Man standing in front of him in the glory of his self-assured conceit. Raj Kapoor even adds a reference to the depths of chaos and madness, such as was so poignantly present and menacing in Awaara:

First the masks, so disturbingly void of any human resemblance (but the frightful effect tempered by almost touristic colours):

and then, more nightmarish, their contamination on real people:

Neena herself sings about the destruction which, at that moment, might have invaded Raja’s world (and the spectator’s comfortable movie experience):

and the fateful word which she playfully repeats, like a mantra: “trapped!” made me think: at last, I’ve found my old Raj Kapoor again! At least, there’ll be some depth, some risk, some vulnerability in this shallow Raja!

But alas, none of this happens. Raja escapes the party on his motorcycle and, unruffled by the distance, arrives at his beloved Bobby’s mansion in Goa, only to start another heroic stint (I was going to say – stunt) before he victoriously wins her back at the end. As Satyam suggests, there’s a certain amount of DDLJ here!

Isn’t there a moment in DDLJ when the eloping pair find themselves in need for breakfast?!

(No, not this one)

There is another moment when the intensification of mad noise and lights seem ready to threaten the flat sanity of the masala bipolarity. It’s when Raja takes his Bobby to Neena’s party, and when she gets molested by some thug-like guys there. Just before the moment I’m thinking of, the flirting bully had taken her upstairs to watch Raja being embraced by his ever amorous Neena and crooning down his neck these words:

(Notice how Bobby's neck is protected by her bobbing hair)

Hearing this and rightly shocked, Bobby runs down and then it happens, the unsettling of our senses and moral landmarks is made visible through a party that veers to the wild for a few moments:

(noticed the ghoul behind???!)

In Raj Kapoor’s poetic world, the balance of common sense and sound judgement is often imperilled by passion and folly, and this is represented on screen by creatures who come out of either nightmares or legend, such as were told us at night when we were children. The risk of destruction and upheaval has a social, and even a political dimension. The forces of the underworld are always there lurking, and ready to overturn the rational and sensible order. An order which the average escapist spectator doesn’t want to see disturbed, perhaps because life is already unstable as it is, but also perhaps because he is afraid of a life he doesn’t want to know, where logical meaning doesn’t function any more. Such a risk is explored in Shree 420, Awaara and Jagte raho (even if the last film wasn’t shot by RK himself). But here in Bobby, these trappings are merely tricks to make the spectator enjoy himself and relish the show. He knows nothing can happen to the heroes, and most of all, he knows the film-maker isn’t out to unsettle him, or question his morals: he needs his money and renewed trust too much. One half wishes Nargis would come back and shout out at him:

But what could even she do against the forces of destiny?

For Raj Kapoor in 1973, destiny has a name: Dimple Kapadia.

(guess what's hanging out)

I’m told simple Dimple reminded RK of his nafis Nargis: fine then, because well otherwise, she was sooo young! Apart from these arguments:

(Oh, it's me, silly)

what could she put forward? This?

(martial, wouldn't you say?)

Or this?

("twinkle, twinkle, little star") (1)

No, there definitely had to be some autobiographical element, and in fact Rishi provides it, in the bonus “Rishi Kapoor reminisces” (on the DVD, perhaps it’s somewhere on the net),

(Ah, those were the days of youth)

where he says that moment when cute Dimple is brushing her hair with a hand full of dough while speaking to a bemused Raja, was exactly what had happened to RK meeting Nargis for the first time. Okay, so the equation Dimple = Nargis would be the sublayer of meaning to Bobby!! Hum. Otherwise, I found young Rishi Kapoor fairly okay, that is, apart from some gaga seventyisms, among which the proud looks wearing these:

(All the better to see you with my dear)

Then you have some crazy picturisations, which click perfectly in with RK’s “masala conversion”:

(tasty humour)

And the absolute steamy moment :

(what's the film's title, again?)

Not forgetting Bobby’s Dad’s open flies:

(blowing their horns)

And I could finish on this nice and naïve pic, when the dono are “trapped” inside the cottage where so much is awaiting them…:

(too nosey!)

So that indeed, one could say is that with Bobby, RK managed to make a visually lavish show, with lots to look at, but alas, as he might say:

Not any more, that is...

(1) (Rishi tells in his "reminiscing" that Dimple, at the moment of the film, was pregnant with Twinkle Khanna...)

One cloud-capped day, somewhere along the bank of a Bengali river where waterfowl chirp their little bedeep, bedeep, a young woman clad in white walks out of the canopy of some century-old oaks that spread their gigantic branches all the way to the river in a benevolent gesture of protection and majesty. She comes closer and we hear the whistle of a train whose full load of passengers arrive from afar. Nearby, close to the water, her brother is practising his singing. She stops a while to listen to him, in spite of the roaring train, and, smiling, passes out of sight. We are in the poetic world of Ritwik Ghatak, and this is The cloud-capped star (Meghey Dhaka Tara, 1960). In separated East Pakistan, soon to become Bengladesh, life is difficult. The little family of six we focus on has barely enough to live decently and still they try to hold their head out of the water.

They live on the father’s meagre salary as a local literature teacher (he’s Bijon Bhattacharya). As we have seen, his eldest son, Shankar (Anil Chatterjee), is learning to become a professional singer; he still has two years to go before starting on his own. Then there’s Neeta (Supriya Choudhury), the heroine, who is also studying and giving lessons at the same time, an extra source of income which is highly valued and (on payday) the source of much excitement and even tension among the two younger ones, Geeta and Montu, in college both of them, but perhaps less involved in their studies as we shall see.

Geeta thinks more of her friends’ saris than her own classes, and Montu is also keener on football than regular attendance. He will soon be kicked out and start working at a factory, such is the need for cash. And of course the dreams of the educated father is to see his children even better than himself. His wife (Gita Dey, who died not so long ago) is much more down to earth and criticizes him for his choices: the higher education of four grown children means big mouths to feed, and no income from able workers! She’s constantly bickering and criticizing her children for being who they are. Her husband tries to make up for the situation, telling them when too many harsh words have been lashed at them – and in fact, at Neeta most of all, she’s her father’s favourite -, that she’s like that out of deprivation.

These dire straits are their lives’ biggest constraint. This constant lack of money reduces family relationship to a battle of needs and envious taunts, and the ever-present exhaustion from the effort to keep up appearances takes its toll on normal human relationships. Shankar knows he’s a weight to his mother and sister. But he also knows that he’s got talent, and that two years isn’t that long to wait before he can start earning. Neeta encourages him, but even she thinks he might, like her, get himself a little job to pay for his expenses and quiet his parents’ nagging concern (I think it’s wrong, like some people do, to call him a shirker, or others, lazy – shows they’ve never been poor, and anyway Shankar does succeed in the end, he does manage to become a Bombay musical figure). Shankar knows Neeta’s right. But he’s successfully been at a radio audition, he knows what his future could be if he doesn’t practice regularly. So he tries to focus on his training. He and his sister share a special relationship, they call each other khuka and khuki, little boy and little girl. And when one isn’t feeling well, the other comes up to cheer him up.

Neeta is in love with Sanat (Niranjan Ray), a fine-looking former student of her father’s, who’s now involved in the preparation of a doctorate in Physics. She’s been spotted by her brother secretly reading a letter from Sanat where the latter praises her for being

Everything seems to go fine, and the pair have even mentioned marriage. There’s an exquisite moment near the river where Shankar is wont to practice, when after evoking the future with her jobless lover, she rises to go to her tuition, and he catches her hand, says her name. We expect some intimate words, but then the train appears and whistles in the background: his words – we are left to wonder which ones - are lost in the silence of that noise. Later, there will be another meeting at the same place with the screech of the train again covering his words. Ritwick Ghatak knows the spectators like hearing love declarations and emotional exchanges. But he knows also these words are spoken in another language which only borrows our words: what is said cannot be heard save from the lovers themselves. Others hear their words, but not what they say. But only poets know this distinction; so many writers and film-directors think that because they have lovers at their disposal they can make them speak this secret language and that they, like decoys, will attract greedy audiences as a result. They only succeed (most of the time) in desecrating love and its silence.

Neeta is the movie’s marvel. She’s most absurdly derided in most of the reviews I’ve read, which are probably repeating what one person has decreed, and everybody else is following suit. People say for example that she “also has an attractive sister Gita” (imdb reviews) thus implying that Neeta herself must be less attractive herself. But while it’s clear that Sanat is attracted to Geeta, it’s also clear that his taste is in question, and it’s being blind not to notice that Ghatak has made her into a rather repulsive dolled-up mindless fool. Finally, even if I know that taste is something personal, it’s difficult not to notice Neeta’s own beauty.

In fact, what’s clear in this (minor) question is that people are looking for a reason why Sanat has swapped girls (for example this guy labels him and so reduces him to “fickle”). But they probably haven’t seen that his problem is the old male-complex of being entertained by a wife (check Ray’s Mahanagar). This is clearly what bothers him immensely in his situation, because things are OK while both of them are studying; it’s only when Neeta (totally independently from him: her father has had an accident, and cannot feed the family any more) is obliged to look for a job that he starts resenting his relationship with her, and tells her clearly that he won’t accept it. His manly pride, like so many Indians at the time, could not accept the inversion of roles that this meant.

Then some people picture Neeta as a self-denied, exploited victim (here); but, while it’s clear she does have the generosity to let the other members of her family take what she earns, she does this willingly, out of responsibility and love. Indeed she’s Ghatak vehicle to represent the sorrowful economic and social wreckage that communities can face after such a traumatic event as the Partition of a nation, yet she’s also a strong and resilient bearer of her own misfortunes. And it is certainly not Ghatak’s wish to turn her into a self-sacrificed dupe of her own family. Her downfall is eminently political, and represents Ghatak’s attack against forces that break human communities:

Neeta becomes the symbol of all suffering women. There’s the pain she must undergo when her mother dirties her gratuitously (well, as alluded to before, we sense a form of envy, or jealousy in her constant picking at her):

There’s the moment when she just tells a friend she has stopped singing (we can read her disappointment in the broad smile with which she tries, and succeeds, to hide her sadness. And later in the film, one night, when both Shankar and herself sing together a Tagore song, she lifts her amazing head to prevent the flowing tears from dropping, and cannot help collapsing from the contrast between the beauty of the song and her own sorry state);

there’s her disgust of the men’s rude remarks (the grain merchant in the street asking her if she hadn’t come for something else than just pay the bill); of course she takes a blow when she notices Sanat isn’t as righteous as her love had made him (a stinging remark from her brother), and she’s torn when they drift apart. But the worst is to come when she goes to meet him in his new flat, and hears a woman’s clinking bracelet (it's Geeta her own sister) behind the curtain. The pain she feels upon leaving his presence is then mediated thanks to some repeated ultrasound jarring in our ears:

And finally there’s the final scenes when she has to hide her illness, and live like an outcast in her own home and be sent away to die in a sanatorium in the mountains. The damage done to her life and mind is so deep that even when Shankar, repentant, comes back to her and tries to mend what he has broken, she cannot go back. Her illness represents this damage, in a way.

And when we hear her final pathetic “I wanted to live” we know Ritwik Ghatak has hit the right key. The deep desire to live, expressed in dramatic tones in this situation, is what makes the basis of humanity. The forces of death and loss are all too strong, the pains and the illnesses all too present – what is life? Ghatak’s mouthpiece, the father, leads us to the answer. He’s a teacher, and a quoter of poetry: Keats, Yeats, Wordsworth. It would be interesting to map out the references to the lines he says and examine the poems in their relationship with the scenes where they appear and the film’s meaning as a whole. But their combined effect is to give “life” a dimension which is far beyond the healthy and content satisfaction of one’s period on Earth. “The Poetry of earth is never dead” (1), says the father, upon seeing some fishermen on the morning lagoon, and later: “Sing on: somewhere at some new moon, we'll learn that sleeping is not death” (2). Both excerpts celebrate the victory over death in terms of renewal and rising. The last quote, from Wordsworth’s “Yarrow unvisited” (3) evokes the poetry of the swan: “Float double, swan and shadow!” and if this mirrored, double beauty means anything here, it’s a call to a life magnified by its own secret splendour, its hidden spiritual extension which the world of satisfied desires will often disregard or minimize as “artistic”. Shankar himself glorifies the two kingdoms of childhood and mountains, which are perhaps, down deep, the same. For both seem to touch the heavens where men come from, both somewhat tell us about our origin and our destination: “Childhood seems so far way… No one climbs hills anymore” Shankar says one day, looking at that photo where the two of them are holding hands. And it’s poignant because Neeta the khuki will finally go back, and reach those hills:

Speaking of poetry, there are some other enthralling songs in the movie, on top of the one already mentioned sung by brother and sister. A notable one is sung by a travelling band of Baul musicians one evening outside, and fills the village with its melancholy; its lyrics are of the most suggestive poetry:

Here you’ll find some excellent facts about the movie, and I’ve copied two valuable paragraphs on the music chosen by Ghatak for his film. See end of post. The other song appears several time, but most notably during a storm, when Neeta knows she’ll have to leave her family and head for her last abode. Her father, incapable of changing things (remember he stands for Ghatak himself), and whose mental balance is perhaps going, like his wife tells her she has to go, that she’s contagious. He, who had always been there as a barrier against the unfeeling forces exerting themselves around her, who, when her illness was named, stood to accuse a nameless fate, this time cannot prevent her from leaving and dying away from them. Here is the song (4):

"Come to me my daughter Uma,

Let me garland you with flowers

You are the soul of my sad self, mother deliverer

Let me bid you farewell now, my daughter,

You leave my home desolate, going to your husband’s house

How can I endure your departure, my daughter?”

The song is sung again at the close of the movie, when Sankar, back in the village after having visited Neeta at the sanatorium, notices a young woman passing in the street. Her foot strikes some stones and her sandal becomes undone. It’s exactly what the film had started with: then, it was Neeta’s sandal, a little sign of her disinterested soul, of her “love to distraction” of all her family, as she says. This new Neeta looks playfully at Sankar, and we understand something might well start between the two of them. But how (one might ask) could Ghatak do that to Neeta? How can he replace her so fast – because that’s what the song does to us: one woman’s love is dying, another lives and her love blooms. It’s like in Subarnarekha: life cannot be stopped by death, by one individual’s death. Or said otherwise, one loving soul represents life at its full, and when it leaves this Earth, other equally loving souls will continue to appear. So beyond the author’s pessimistic locally political stance, there emerges a prophetic universal optimism which merges with that of art and creation.

A most extensive review here: http://www.rouge.com.au/3/film.html, in which the author looks at the film through the structure of the Tree. The great trees which appear at the beginning of the movie recur as chapter heads, as if everything that happens in the film was somehow protected or overshadowed by their sheer presence. A lot of attention is also given to the precise technique of Ghatak’s cuts. Very technical at times, but quite impressive.

                                                       Ritwik Ghatak's haunting gaze

(2) Yeats, At the Galway races

(3) Memorials of a tour in Scotland, XII.

(4) On the net, I found this downloadable thesis, which explains who “Uma” in the song must refer to, ie Durga, the mother-goddess of the Indian nation. The song therefore must be read in its political dimension, and this political importance correlates to what Riwik Ghatak is doing artistically. “Although Ghatak himself described his allusion to be to the archetype of the ‘Great Mother,’ Meghe Dhaka Tara’s central allusion necessarily resonates with a local and historical formation of nationalist semiotics of the nation-mother” writes the researcher, Paulomi Chakraborty, p. 200.  Check also from p. 215 where Neeta is described as an allegory of Durga.

Extract from Frontline on net:

“The choice of the IPTA veteran Jyotirindranath Maitra as composer was an inspired one. Maitra knew Western-style orchestration very well and had an extensive knowledge of Bengali, Indian and world folk music. He had also learned khayal singing in Hindustani music for a decade; in addition he was an underrated but fine Bengali poet. Ghatak had earlier worked very well with Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, whose raga “Bilaskhani todi” on the sarod created the right epiphanies in Ajantrik, and then with the gifted Salil Choudhury on Bari Theke Paliye. But Meghe Dhaka Tara needed music of a special kind, one that included the worlds of Hindustani Classical, Rabindra Sangeet, a particular kind of Bengali folk, and Western choral music that drew inspiration from Negro spirituals.

Maitra's music became an extension of the director's vision: It further articulated the poignant visuals and created an elegiac mood that stayed with viewers long after they had left the theatre. The five pieces of music that have survived the test of time are the chorus in the background, patterned after Paul Robeson vocals, when Nita goes to work and then later for her check-up; the Rabindra Sangeet “Je raate more duar gooli bhanglo jhaure”; A.T. Kannan's rendering of the ragas “Hansadhwani” and “Laagi lagan”; and Jamuna Barua's heartrending rendering of “Uma”, an incarnation of the goddess Durga. Unforgettable is the Baul song “Majhi tor naam jani naa”. There has been a grand revival of Meghe Dhaka Tara abroad, and the British Film Institute has come out with an excellent DVD, but it is surprising that no attempt has been made to release its music, which is haunting to say the least. »

                                                   (a special starry-eyed moment!)

I think I can safely say that Satyajit Ray all his life tried to fight for individual rights and a critical outlook on traditions. If you have in mind the film Ganashatru (An enemy of the people), where a Western-looking scientist struggles against the forces of bigotry and charlatanism, you see what I mean. Yet in Devi, which was shot in 1960, Ray doesn’t deal his cards as squarely, and the film is shrouded in a more ambiguous light, which perhaps makes it more interesting. It’s the simple story of a young Brahmin couple in 1860 Bengal, who live a peaceful life in the family haveli of all-powerful but benevolent Kalikinkar Roy (Chhabi Biswas, seen in Jalsaghar or The music room). Umaprasad the smart husband (Soumitra Chatterjee) has to leave to pursue his studies, and leaves behind his 17 year old wife Daya (Sharmila Tagore, who was 14 at the time). In the house live her sister and brother in law, who have a little boy, Khoka, that the young aunt dotes on. While waiting for her husband to come back, she busies herself around the house, looks after the parrot, plays with her nephew and occasionally kneads her father-in-law’s ankles while he smokes away and prattles about things she doesn’t listen to.

All this changes when one night Kalikinkar has a dream, a frightful dream in which he sees his daughter in law as Kali the fierce Mother Goddess he’s revered all his life. For him it’s sure, Daya is Kali’s incarnation, and he immediately summons priests and pandits to adore her. She has no choice but to submit to the formidable event that reaches far beyond her own little self. Soon she is seated on the porch, made up, clad in rich garments and offered to everyone’s sight and prayer. Her sister Harasundari (Karuna Bannerjee, who played Apu’s mother in Aparajito) doesn’t believe in the incarnation but this doesn’t dissuade the all powerful and bigoted lord of the House. She writes to her bother in law to let him know what has happened, and Uma comes back to face the patriarch. Of course he tries to make him change his mind, tell him he’s been deluded by a fantasy of his imagination. The old man staggers a little but then reasserts himself and launches into a vibrant recitation of religious hymn:

No one is worthier of respect than a father,
If you would honour the gods, honour your father,
The paternal spirit is more radiant than the Sun,
The paternal spirit is more radiant than the ocean,
The paternal spirit encompasses heaven and earth…

(lyrics with acknowledgment to this excellent review)

And unfortunately for poor Uma, a “miracle” happens. Bad luck, coincidence or spiritual event: a little boy placed in front of the Devi recovers, and everyone sees in this event a confirmation of the goddess’s power. Now Uma knows that he won’t change his father. His only hope is to persuade Daya herself.

So one night he manages to slide in her room, and opens up his plan in front of her: they must elope, and start another life away from this prison! Daya says nothing, but she goes with him the following morning to the river’s edge where a boat will take them to the city. Alas, hardly has she reached the sandy bank than she balks: “What if I’m really the Goddess?” She mentions the little boy who was healed in front of her, and after a few tentative words of persuasion, Uma realizes he’s powerless. She’s too afraid, too young, too fragile. He brings her back. Her devi life continues, crowds throng to see her; her days are filled with the immobile stations under the porch of the great house and the religious ceremonies she has to submit to, which rob her of a normal life. At night she has tearful memories of happy marital days: all this is over now. She has become a public figure, her duty is to the thousands who see her as the All-powerful Mother Kali and come to bow at her feet for compassion, penance or cure. She has become a stranger in her own house; even her family look upon her with awe.

Then one day Khoka, her little nephew, has a fever. Her mother calls for the doctor, who doesn’t understand: why call him when within the household there is the Goddess herself? But Harasundari doesn’t want to bring him to her sister. For her it’s all a sham. The doctor must do something. After pleading, he enters the room and starts taking the little wrist, to feel its pulse. Unfortunately, his father, Taraprasad, enters at that moment. He’s a drunkard, who sheepishly follows what his father says because for him there’s no other solution. Baba has “everything”, the house, the land, the money… Even his headstrong wife doesn’t want him near him. As soon as he sees him, the doctor flees. Kalikinkar hears about his grandson’s illness. There is no choice now but to present him to Daya. Harasundari confronts her Devi sister, and asks her the crucial question:

Daya cannot answer, but she asks for Khoka to be left with her for the night, as much out of hope that “something” might happen, as because she’s been estranged from the little boy so long. We can see she’s as trapped as the rest of the household. Sadly though, when the night’s over - it was of course predictable – the boy’s dead. Uma rushes to his father, who cannot understand why such a loss afflicts him, he of all faithful people. His son nevertheless is quite clear about the situation:

He then hurries to save Daya, as he says. But as her enters her room, she’s wild, speaks incoherently, and visibly shocked by the death, its meaning perhaps or the pain or both. He tries to reason her, to speak to her, but she cannot answer him:

She’s turned into Kali the demoness, Kali the devourer, after having been Kali the healer (Kali, apart from meaning “the black one”, also means Time, who devours everything). And, as in stories from XIXth century gothic novels, she escapes through the window in a mist of light. Has she gone mad? Will she come back and collapse? Is this life or death? Ray doesn’t give us the answer, but clearly any promise of harmony is shattered, and Uma’s loss is complete.

As I said at the beginning, the interest of Devi is that we cannot determine 100% if the movie is or isn’t a condemnation of the Hindu faith, or at least its Avatar theology (Greg Klymkiw reverberates this reputation here). What’s clear is that the main focus is on the tragedy which Uma’s family undergoes as a result of the revelation of the incarnation. But the film doesn’t take a clear stance concerning the religious value of such a cruel happening. The discussion between father and son, when Umaprasad comes back and confronts his religious father, is important. When he realizes the whole commotion is the result of a dream, he cannot believe it. 

Uma hints at Kalikinkar’s “folly”, his madness even, and the old man takes in the blow. “Am I really mad?” he wonders. But soon it’s his son’s turn to face questioning: “Don’t you believe in incarnation?” Uma cannot say no, after all such an event belongs to their faith; it’s only that he can’t want it to happen to his beloved wife. And then from the courtyard comes the rumour of the “miracle”: he’s obliged to relent. Mad with grief, he tries one last thing, the escape described above. But perhaps he accepts, like his wife, that she might indeed be more than what she appears. And in the end, when he blames his father’s superstition, who knows whether he isn’t just voicing his grief?

Here’s what Ray is supposed to have said about institutional religion:

“I stopped going to Brahmo Samaj around the age of fourteen or fifteen. I don't believe in organized religion anyway. Religion can only be on a personal level.”(1982 interview with Cineaste)(Same review at dailyfilmdose.com)

So I have to admit that for Satyajit Ray, who also briefly stages Uma’s liberal-minded friend (Anil Chatterjee, fresh from The cloud-capped star), a young man who claims he’s disowned and therefore free to lead his life outside the traditional social frame, for Ray then, the critical modernist position is certainly stronger than the traditionalist’s. But how free would he have been to criticize religion all the way? The discussion of faith vs. reason, so apparent in Ganashatru, isn’t systematically developed, in spite of the mention of the key-words “evidence” and “superstition”. There is only one moment when Uma’s literature teacher (in his office we can see Shakespeare’s portrait) clearly encourages him to stands for his “husband’s rights”, and declares that his decision will be his “test” of truth:

Yet the film-maker will not allow him the victory over the spiritual kingdom, oppressive as it might seem. Of course what seemed possible in the independent seclusion of a University office isn’t as simple in the heated atmosphere of countryside traditionalism. And even this opposition doesn’t mean that “truth” or “freedom” are necessarily on the side of urban progressive thinking. In the end, Devi leaves us with a subtle balance of forces: rational intellectualism versus religious mysticism, and the latter certainly cannot be so easily discarded as inhuman. The facile assertion of the superiority of a higher level of human sensitivity, exemplified by a secularized outlook on religion, for example, would forget the ritualistic wealth of an ancient religion where all the facets of human experience are present, violence and compassion, tolerance and trance, revenge and vindication, as much as empathy and patience.

On top of the reviews already mentioned, there's this one by Beth. Don't miss it!

Umrao Jaan (Muzzafar Ali, 1981) belongs to the genre of tragedies which describe the destiny of a doomed character in a beautifully told narrative such as will bring out the pity and sorrow necessary for spectators to be cleansed of their own sins. And yet the story escapes the genre in two ways: the heroine doesn’t die, and there is an insistence on the fact we aren’t in the grips of destinies, but only wrong and contingent circumstances. We’ll see if and how far these two elements modify our appreciation. If you don’t know the story, check it here, told by Philip Lutgendorf. He also highlights many of the movie’s details and its relationship with the original novel, Umrao Jan Ada by Mirza Ruswa (1905). I wish to focus on the story’s meaning, the characters’ relationships and the film’s artistry. It's understood that in the original Ruswa story, the heroine is rather plain, but the film makes another statement altogether!

But first Rekha, precisely. You have to admit she’s not just the title character! There’s an interview here where she shows how free from conventions she’d become, with and this shows in the movie. There’s an essential plasticity in her face that makes her features a classic in all its appearances, for example her Belle-époque boyishness:

Then her Greek perfect symmetrical traits:

Her striking darkness which make her almost scary:

The femme fatale looks:

Then this clever teary squint:

And finally (but there would be many more) her demure lowered eyelids:

It’s been said before, but she definitely reminds one of Aishwarya Rai (or perhaps it’s the other way round), who impersonated Umrao Jaan in the 2006 version. There’s a sheer flawlessness on her face, which leaves one breathless:

So there you have it: the film isn't just about any tawaif... Beauty, how strong it is! It magically arouses interest in the person without her asking for it, at first without even her knowing it. And because it’s so powerful, an automatic moral value is given to the lovely person, which turns their moves and choices into all-important ones! Their looks are caresses, even if they don’t focus on anything particular; they’re seals of approval of whatever they like, and they’re declared innocent without check. I don’t know if you’re like me, but I want to support a beautiful woman even if she’s obviously following a hackneyed prejudice, and I would be tempted to reach out to comfort her when she’s only teary-eyed from sneezing. I’m like Gohar in the film, (Naseer, slightly underemployed), who flits around his prize prisoner like a butterfly around a multi-faceted crystal chandelier:

But they all do, men and women alike. Not only does Bismillah, her fellow-courtesan at the Begum’s house (and her daughter) envy her, and watch her dance mesmerized, but the same happens for the Begum herself:

And when Umrao Jaan towards the end finds herself at her old friend Ramdey’s haveli, the one who married Umrao’s old flame, she also watches her in a sort of trance:

Everyone stares and wonders at her, the whole film is made in that way. We spectators are in pulled the movie too, we simply plunge in the pool of those mystifying eyes. And what’s moving is that she, all the while is questioning herself, she’s looking for the meaning of her own enigma:

And perhaps in order to probe this mystery, she learns the language of secrets, the poetry divine:

The scene where her poetry master teaches her about mindlessness, the realm of beauty which is reached beyond love, he says:

Isn’t that scene full of the sorrow of foreboding, and at the same time so aesthetically true? Umrao Jaan’s destiny is solitude, and the ravishing beige and brown background setting, with the bright pink and dark green of her dress contrasting the old teacher’s white and black, all this is like the reward of beauty, which cannot, tragically, secure love’s wealth. Everybody knows that there’s something profoundly true in the alienation of love and beauty, and Umrao Jaan is the illustration of this common wisdom. Why is this so? Why does love shun a beauty too great? Why does beauty evade love so often, and instead, go hand in hand with fateful passion? Perhaps because there’s something too scathingly divine in beauty and mortals fear it? One wants to adore beauty, not consume it. Thus beauty is like virginity, an unattainable star. And at the other end, it’s easily desecrated because too disturbing. But there’s more, even if this sounds scandalous: as beauty belongs to humanity as a whole, as its radiance must spread, god-like, on all men, it shares with prostitution a disturbing yet coherent relationship. A gorgeous-looking person is quickly branded as either too pure or tainted. Beauty is thus rarely a blessing, and often a bane for the person who benefits or suffers from its magic charm. Hence so many tragic-comical stories where parents prefer marrying their beautiful daughter to an old blind man, whom she quickly deceives with many young suitors!

Now naturally all this is both unconsciously and half-consciously felt by the lovely being herself. Seduction is a beautiful person’s age-old game of power. But what happens to her (sometimes to him) exceeds by far any responsibility of hers. On these faces, nature stages a show which the person behind the mask cannot always control! But of course they’re conscious of at least part of it:

And it needs a lot of character to resist playing with that shiny mirror which, Narcissus-like, reverberates such power. Check A suitable boy for a novel which addresses this dilemma and solves it successfully. In Vikram Seth’s story, the young and beautiful Lata ends up by refusing to marry the dashing Kabir because she has sensed that their two beauties are just too mirror-like. Okay, she also obeys her mother’s preferences, but the story makes it clear she’s also drowning some of beauty’s potentially destructive potency into the lukewarm plainness of a suitor who doesn’t see it so keenly.

I’m not sure that what Umrao Jaan says about her essentially untouched freedom, which for me is the reason why she would need to insist on the fact that her life was ruined by circumstances only, not destiny or fate, whether this is so coherent with the general purport of the story. For me one thing supports it, and another doesn’t. The first is what I said about beauty. Even if her beauty wasn’t the reason why she was abducted from her family (her father’s staunch honesty indirectly was), it is what transforms her into the archetypal object of desire which corresponds to her nature. It’s probable that if she had carried on her life in Faizabad, this attractiveness wouldn’t have been underlined and exacerbated to the extent it was in the brothel, still I continue to think that beauty’s power, even in the rough, creates havoc and can destroy a person’s chances to happiness. The other fact from the movie’s structure which I think is in favour of circumstances and freedom, as opposed to fate and determination is the fact that Umrao Jaan doesn’t die: we are therefore in a position to hope that she might find some sort of fulfilment thanks to her music and poetry, and establish herself as an independent artist. So: what should one say about her? Was she doomed? No. But I believe the chances for her to meet with trouble and deception were greater than for other women.

                                                                             Edwin Weeks, the Nautch-girl

Speaking about music, needless to say the film’s score is astounding. Well, with Asha Bhosle at the wheel…There’s the gorgeous Dil cheez kya hai (and here sung by the lady herself!), but my favourite is Yeh ka jagah hai dosto? when Umrao Jaan is back at her childhood home, and she sings about the loss of what it now means:

Here, as in Pakeezah, the “larger than life mythicization” (Upperstall) process functions too; there’s a magic wand which continuously wafts its starry powders over the pictures and dazzles the viewer with rich colour combinations and perfect character framings:

There are also lovely little vignettes, together with a few street views, which can be appreciated both historically and touristically, and which serve to transport us at the times of mid-XIXth century Lucknow (check this!) in a somewhat similar fashion to shatranj ke khilari!

(BTW, Farooq Shaikh plays in both movies, and Shabana Azmi, whose mother plays the whorehouse madam in 1981, took her role in the 2006 version and is the princess in Ray’s Shatranj). Some subtle references to painters appear here and there in the film, giving it a depth and a richness which makes it a wonderful visual experience, as if painters might have drawn their inspiration from the picture itself:

Reminiscent perhaps of paintings by Delacroix or Edwin Weeks, and

Which certainly recalls Vermeer. So all in all, a superb evocation of Urdu refinement and culture, but of alienation and slavery as well. Umrao Jaan is given access to the world of art and the luxury of comfort but loses her innocence, her love and her family…In the end only the beautiful poetry of sorrow is left:

"What do you make so fair and bright?'

"I make the cloak of Sorrow:
O lovely to see in all men's sight
Shall be the cloak of Sorrow,
In all men's sight.'

"What do you build with sails for flight?'

"I build a boat for Sorrow:
O swift on the seas all day and night
Saileth the rover Sorrow,
All day and night.'

What do you weave with wool so white?'

"I weave the shoes of Sorrow:
Soundless shall be the footfall light
In all men's ears of Sorrow,
Sudden and light.'

(WB Yeats)

Hello all,

It's been some time I wanted to share with you some of the clownish photos of Nutan that I've collecting, and well, why not the occasion of her death anniversary coming up this Feb 23rd? Nutan passed away 22 years ago on that date. I know the tradition for anniversaries is more auspicious on the birth anniversary, but precisely, a collection of zany photos, where our favourite actress is pulling out her tongue and squinting, doesn't this participate to the celebration of life, even beyond the shuffling off of our mortal coil ?? You judge!

That's all for now folks!! 

Thanks to Ashok I have been fortunate to discover the treasure trove of these Old Indian photos, where much more than what will be discussed here is to be found: it’s a real Ali Baba’s Cave. But going through some of its riches, I stopped at these pics because they seemed to say so much about a certain Bollywood style of relationships back in the 1950s. My first reaction was perhaps slightly on the sleazy side (like what this person says at Bollywood Life, when she describes the “murky side of casting couch”…), but I have taken a good look and I find the pics much less offensive than instructive. You judge!

These pics (here’s the lot) are said to have been taken in 1951 by photographer James Burke for Life Magazine, and show director Abdur_Rashid_Kardar of Kardar Productions, director of Shahjehan (1946), Dillagi (1949) for which we see a poster on the photos, Dulari (1949), Dil Diya Dard Liya (1966), as he’s auditioning two young women. One of them is of Indian extraction, and the other perhaps of European origin. Here’s what AR Kardar’s daughter has to say (link) about her father’s work: “Kardar Studios was one of the best equipped studios in those days and the first to have air-conditioned make up rooms. He was an artist-director, and made all his films with almost German precision. He was very precise and knew exactly what he wanted out of the artistes and how to get it out of them. Movies in those days were completed in 2 or 3 months, as there was no question of stars reporting late for work, etc.” Indeed there seems to be a lot of rigour and business-like efficiency in the auditioning, which of course could well have been slightly staged-up for the purpose of the photography session. Still, there’s probably enough we can say even on the basis of a collection of consciously observed professionals. For example, one can safely say that with 25 or so photos, enough were taken without the subjects checking themselves all the time, for example below when Kardar’s assistant (or could he be the film’s producer?) is looking at the lower part of the girl’s swimsuit, he’s probably temporarily forgotten he was being photographed, because we can see Kardar speaking to the girl, but all his assistant has to do is have a good look at the girl, his eyes being unused for relational interaction!

In fact on the website, the photos seem to have been jumbled and I think there must have been originally some sort of an order of appearance, perhaps one girl entered the office, and suffered the gaze of the two men, and then the other, and finally both girls together:

Then we have the photos of the various poses taken while either one or the other of the girls, or both, were in front of men.  And I think it’s possible to reconstruct a 14-picture sequence focussing on the darker girl:

Even if this is only hypothesis, it’s a plausible sequence, and I would like to focus on some of the details while this undressing was going on. In photo n°1, the girl has just opened the door, she’s smiling broadly to charm the two curious gentlemen who are facing the newcomer. Perhaps she’s also trying to put on her best looks for the photographer! Kardar is matter-of-factly holding his cigarette, while the other guy’s got his arms folded, so much as to say: “come in, we won’t harm you!” The best proof of this is picture 2, where Kardar comes closer to his co-worker, and, still facing the girl, but from behind the desk which is protecting her somewhat, he lays his hand on his pal’s back, as if to reassure the girl that even if he has a dark suit, he’s still very tame…

The next photo should be n°3, because Kardar is now behind the girl, who can sense his presence behind her, and is standing rather awkwardly straight, as if she knows she’s observed and critically looked at. In the 4th, the director has moved on the other side, and the girl is caught between the awe-inspiring desk where the other dark-suited man is evaluating her benevolently, and Kardar himself. She looks away, perhaps trying to remain poised, intently focussing on what the boss is saying. On a very similar picture (5), the men are practically in the same positions and have the same expressions on their faces. Only the girl has changed her expression: she’s now smiling, but rather artificially, as if she was expected to do so because of some remark from Kardar which she might have interpreted as flattering, but in a general way. Anyway she keeps her gaze away, as if to say: “yes, that’s right”, but not wanting to equate her private person to Kardar’s remarks.

We are now at n° 6, and the boss is really taking the lead, perhaps wanting to break the ice with the model, who’s listening politely, her arms behind her back (maybe her sister’s outside in the lobby, and she’s thinking about what she told her in terms of posture before being called in!) Both know the next step will be for her to undress, and he doesn’t want her to feel ill at ease. Anyway, this is the moment she’s been waiting for, she’s facing the big man, and wow, his glasses are impressive! What an elegant white suit, too! And his neatly combed back hair, very classy, for sure. Note how he’s found his natural comfort-zone position: he’s reclining slightly against the desk, whereas she has to stand, her sandal a little out for reassurance, and perhaps a little unsettled by his having put himself at her level. One word at this juncture on the posters: they clearly belong to the magic sphere where the men move, i.e., around the altar-like desk, whereas the girls pass a little away from it, because they haven’t yet the stature of goddesses. They probably never will, anyway, as this is clearly is only a walk-on audition, but the posters are there nevertheless to make the difference between the two worlds of aspiring mortals, and professional creators.

Okay, so here goes, Number 7, the girl has acquiesced to Kardarji’s demand (BTW which expression would he use? “Well, now you know we ask the models to present themselves in swimsuit attire”?) and she’s busy undoing her sari’s folds. The assistant is pretending not to be interested and deflects the attention away from him by busying himself with something on the desk. The girl’s legs are the centre of photo n°8, but still the director is very poised, he’s only bent his head forward slightly, perhaps to accompany the girl’s symmetrical downward bend as she checks that the sari’s no longer in the way. I must say that it’s difficult to detect any unprofessional attitude on his part. Of course, the two smartly dressed men are in front of a undressing woman, but it seems to me the concentration, if palpable, is clearly dominated by a cool matter-of-factness. So much for the “murky side of couch-casting”. In N°9, the same impression prevails: the girl is standing upright, her hands behind her neck to undo her shirt button; some remark from the boss has made his assistant smile. She looks perfectly at ease, clearly used to this type of exercise. It’s fun to see that her legs and feet are in exactly the same position as when she was wearing the sari!

N°10 shows the moment when the girls takes off her top, and Kardar (still very professionally relaxed), is observing the undressing critically, probably with an eye for the type of physique he needs for his film. The girl is looking down, and the assistant, away. Everything here testifies to the perfect professional dimension of the moment. At the back, the assistant is folding arms, straightening himself to find the best angle, and most of all adopting the business-looking pose which says: we’re doing important work here, there isn’t any ambiguity whatsoever. One does feel a slight embarrassment on his face, but it might also be nothing more than the photo having taken an unfinished expression. N°11 is very nice: all the preparations are now over, and the desired result has been reached: the girl is standing as they wanted her to be, in front of them, the slightly embarrassing intermediary stages have been successfully gone through, and everybody is relaxing. The classic composition of the photo must have satisfied the photograph, who perhaps has just told them to stay like that a while, which has made them laugh: at any rate the assistant is very pleased to be able to sit, like his boss and enjoy the particularity of the hard work they’re doing! About what exactly is happening in n°12: it’s anyone’s guess. Maybe Kardar is indicating where some accessory will be placed in the piece in which the girl is to dance? She’s very obediently, very confidently accepting the closeness of his hand, a sign that he’s gained her trust from the beginning. In this photo and the following two, as the girl is dressing again, what is interesting to see is that the assistant has completely ceased smiling: obviously for him the fun is over. The same for us!

So all in all a very touching little collection, wouldn’t you say?

Famous, witty, challenging… and brilliant in the way some works of genius are, but Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie pleases and displeases at the same time. It certainly strikes the reader as a fascinating work of art, technically and stylistically; one follows the life and pranks of its main protagonist, Saleem Sinai, while wanting to know where all of it will take us, and there are some crunchy bits which reward the faithful reader. But I’m afraid there is also a lot of quirky narrative during which one wonders: “What’s this leading to?” Perhaps you know that the reason for the story is the parallel between the hero’s career in life and the birth and evolution of India. The two start existing at midnight, August 15, 1947 and Rushdie intends to tell the story of his country through the prism of Saleem’s life and deeds. But I found the construction sorely lacking in actual storytelling, and if I carried on it was because I know certain rare authors can create something original outside of classic formats. I’d say Rushdie partly succeeds, but partly only. Perhaps because his chequered story follows the ups and downs of history too closely, and because fiction needs a logic which plays on another level (dictated by desire or morality?) which history cannot quite replace. The rationale of history only exists in ready-made narratives such the Marxist or the Communist visions, but precisely these are visions, not reality. Following reality and its haphazard events makes Saleem’s life become a mixture of reality and fiction which doesn’t quite correspond to either.

There are nevertheless some very interesting ideas, the first being that of the Midnight’s children (all the children who like Saleem, were born at the same time as India), who are all gifted with special powers, and the stories which derive from this fictional idea, if underexploited, witness to Rushdie’s powerful creativity. Then there’s the mingling of the two levels of story-telling, because the narrator turns out to be an older Saleem who’s telling his life to Padma, his future wife, and of course because of this artifice readers have connected the book to the famous Arabian Nights (there are 1001 Midnight’s Children). Still, as far as I’m concerned, I see the trick mainly as a welcome resource that provides the story with the contrapuntal relief between (and sometimes in the middle of) the episodes, and I have to admit this technique is very well mastered. Another good part is the opening narrative in Kashmir which centres on Saleem’s grandfather, whose influence will be felt throughout the book. There’s a powerful humour and a sense for realistic detail in this section which certainly makes it memorable (viz the hole in the sheet that becomes a symbol later for all types of discovery and observation).

I suppose if you are an Indian and know your history more intimately than I do, the allegory packs more fun and interest than there was for me. I could discover a number of references, such as the Jalianwalla gardens massacre and Indira Gandhi’s state of Emergency, but I ended up wondering all along if the cryptic nature of the references weren’t too hidden for me to understand, and on what level I ought to be reading, pure fiction or historical allegory. If Saleem’s life mirrored India’s, how much of what happened to him was a description of Indian history? And what about his relatives? What was I supposed to read in them? Same interrogation for the events happening to Saleem in his interaction with others. If you go here, you will be able to read Sparknote’s interpretations of the correlations between fiction and history, a lot of which escaped me. For example, I read (here) that Saleem stands for Brahma, God of creation whereas his “dark” brother Shiva represents destruction: well, OK for Shiva, but it doesn’t appear to me so clearly that Saleem was that creative…

In fact, if Saleem represents anything, it is a passive and suffering India. Saleem’s nose and cut finger might well signal this. The two organs, symbols of thwarted olfactory development and powerlessness (Saleem’s nose is continuously blocked by snot, and he gets his little finger cut off – Padma complains of his sexual impotence) would indicate that India herself, then, has been wronged and maimed in her development. But I’m not sure this is a very new or original historical comment! There are other attempts at sensory allegorical association, but to me they smack a little too much of forced symbol-searching. So all in all, what should be admired, I suppose (I’m saying this because of respect for the sheer feat of writing such a dense novel) is Rushdie’s skill for maintaining interest throughout. I was only rarely tempted to book the book down. One really wonders what on Earth is going to happen next, how this phoenix of a man is going to survive, in spite of all his shortcomings and the numberless events that befall him. Then there’s this mixture of fact and magic, or reality and fiction, which makes you want to try to solve the mystery… Don’t hesitate, if you’ve read it, to tell me what you thought!

PS: I haven’t seen the movie, I’ve only heard that it is sort of okay, and the criticism on IMDB are on the whole in that lukewarm direction, but perhaps because people had read the book and were, as usual in such cases, disappointed by the film.

Hello, well, it seems that only Nutan ki janmadin can rouse me from my silence these days! Sorry to say, but there's just too much OTHER stuff to do, sigh!

Anyway, I had been collecting these for the day, so even if you know most of them (true lovers of Nutan that you are all, I know ), here are all the posters of Nutan films that I had been able to lay my hands on! And if you have knowledge of any more, please let me know!

I have not included other posters, such as those that have appeared on Filmfare covers, or other supports such as VHS or DVD covers (but perhaps I've been misled, and you can tell me).

The films are in alphabetical order; if you want the chronological order, check here:

So there you are, enjoy yourself, and celebrate the Lady on her Birthday!

I’d been wanting to watch Baarish (1957, Shankar Mukherjee) for a long time, but as there were no subtitles, I knew I was in for a more strenuous viewing than usual. Still, this film was a little like the missing link in my Nutan experience! It’s a pleasant movie, inspired, I think, of Kazan’s On the Waterfront, which explains why we have all those kabootars in it (Sunheriyaadein was wondering… BTW, thanks to that blog’s author for the story!), but also accounts for the film noir atmosphere. The only important aspect Baarish doesn’t adopt is the character of the Catholic priest, Father Barry. But otherwise, there’s Ramu the young thug (our lovable Dev Anand), his purifier Chanda (equally lovable Nutan), Ramu’s brother, and the Underground Boss, who in Kazan’s film was played by the fearsome Lee J. Cobb, and who’s Jagdish Sethi here. Please do as I did, go for the full story at Sunheriyaadein’s blog. Oh, don’t worry (s)he stops at the right moment to leave the suspense intact in your mind…

Baarish of course is a showcase for the two lovable ones: it’s here to entertain their fans and guarantee their interest will be sustained for two hours. It did that for me very effectively! When Ramu, sent by his brother, arrives in Chanda’s village, for example, everything’s exquisite from the start: she’s perched in a tree, spits, pouts and tinkers with monkeys (see A nutty Nutan, where a number of caps come from this scene). He frowns, glares, and pretends a lot. Apparently she believes he’s some kind of tax officer, and she’s going to do her utmost to divert him away from the house, all this to the tune of Yeh muh aur daal masoor ki. She tries by scowling at him, which doesn’t work, then she writes a false message near the entrance door (“all gone to Kashi – back next year”), but Ramu can’t read (he supposes their names are written), and finally she locks the door on him, but he peeps through from above, and spies on her! All this is delightful, and gloriously funny thanks to Nutan’s comic talents and Dev Anand’s Gregory Peck-like charms. Communications-wise, they actually bleat at one another!!

The rest of the film is very predictable, because it plays on the various moods necessary for the fan base to appreciate their heroes from the various classic perspectives: after the opening distrust, we have the love scenes, then comes danger, and there’s a great moment when Nutan is seen through the besotted eyes of the village suitors: whereas they look at her, busy drawing water from the well and waiting for her pail to fill, she suddenly becomes a dovey-eyed belle who’s entranced by their singing and trite words, comes closer to them, lends her cheek to their lips, and then, bubble-like, springs back into her previous form as the incensed maiden who’s straight out from Seema! The scene is also an opportunity to laugh at human faces, brought together as in some Rembrandt or Leonardo paintings. The film, BTW, is full of them:

I think Nutan was still busy asserting her actress’s skills, and her physique enables her to perform masterfully: she had a face she could twist into grimaces, and which could also melt into any smile! It’s a pity that the Youtube version seems cut at certain points, for example we don’t get to see the precise moment when the pair make up… A real pity, because if this moment exists, it would have been very interesting to observe! Nutan’s youthfulness as usual makes one shrink in utter wonder. I don’t know whether that “kind of well-endowed” nature, “with her puppy fat” (as Sharmi playfully suggests) has anything to do with it? I’d say yes, because her ravishing face had a fullness and a pliableness then which turned into a more straight and longish type of features later in life. Have a look:

What’s absolutely wonderful is her impersonations of loving motherly feelings in this film. I don’t remember if this struck me as powerfully in other movies. I strongly believe that Nutan’s femininity expressed itself very deeply in her motherliness. Here she hears about children for the first time:

And here she tries to make Ramu understand she’s going to be a mother:

She does it almost without being able to tell him in so many words – she believes in her joy that the man she loves and who has enabled her to become who she wished so very deeply to be, will understand her, understand the change which isn’t one, because she’s always wanted to be a mother, but which is a fantastic change nevertheless, because it’s finally real:

And then the scene where she ties herself to him by smearing on her forehead some of the blood from a wound he got in one of his scuffles (he reprimands her for doing so – I wonder if he means it could be a bad omen, which her love had disregarded?):

And finally that lovely moment of bliss when she realizes she’s finally secured her lover:

Nutan was at the height of her charms - when wasn’t she? - that lanky body which her relatives complained about, or so the legend goes, being then beautifully fleshed out. Later she thinned, and her face became more grave, more interiorized. During the late 50s her fuller shape corresponded to the generous feelings which appeared on her features, and it starts in Baarish. The downside is that her skills were still a little unhoned, if one compares with her Bimal Roy roles, for example. In Baarish she excels at expressing outrage and irony, and a little less grief and loss, as in Bandini or Sujata:

As for Dev, I agree with Sharmi, he wasn’t yet “the charismatic debonair who made all of us weak in the knees”!! His almost British phlegm had not yet become his trademark. He was still a little too brittle, a little too hurried. But then later (very British-like!) he buttoned all the shirts he wore! So yes, I don’t mind saying it was rather cool to see him shirtless and to swagger about in front of a demure Nutan who didn’t seem to notice 

See the rest of the film's photos here

There isn’t much of a story in Satyajit Ray's Pratidwandi (the Adversary, 1970): because of social and economic disruption in Bengal, young Siddharta (Dhritiman Chatterjee) and his family (mother, uncle, sister and younger brother) find it hard to cope amid the rising tide of unrest and unemployment. The film starts with his father’s cremation, which causes him to interrupt his medical studies. His nice-looking sister’s got a secretary’s job with a boss who probably values her more for other, less professional reasons, and his brother belongs to the Communist Naxalite movement.

This is what Ray wrote about the film: "You can see my attitude in The Adversary where you have two brothers. The younger brother is a Naxalite. There is no doubt that the elder brother admires the younger brother for his bravery and convictions. The film is not ambiguous about that. As a filmmaker, however, I was more interested in the elder brother because he is the vacillating character. As a psychological entity, as a human being with doubts, he is a more interesting character to me. The younger brother has already identified himself with a cause. That makes him part of a total attitude and makes him unimportant. The Naxalite movement takes over. He, as a person, becomes insignificant."

Indeed what’s striking in the way the film unfolds is Siddharta’s lack of a definite aim, his annoying half-purposelessness which goes unaccounted for. He’s significant because he doesn’t have a social or a political significance. He doesn’t fall into the pre-ordained slots; he should want to find that job, he should need to fit, he should play the roles which would free him for the enjoyment of the rich inner world which we feel inhabits him, but he slips away from conventional tracks, and even then, not that much. He does follow certain rules, but not until the expected end. Is it impatience, or maladjustment? Where, or what is the flaw? Is he under some sort of shock (his father’s death?) Is he an edgy result of obscure forces which are shaking his youth? Is the power of big city (the “Mahanagar”) too strong for his individual pursuits? Or is it simply the male hormones playing havoc in his veins? 

Ray’s first sequence is suggestive: the carrying away of the father’s body, his bereaved wife and then the eldest son’s station in front of the pyre are filmed in X-ray negative, as if Ray was saying: “the pictures you are about to see (in positive) are “revealed” by an invisible light which you won’t see, but which I have briefly made visible for you, so that it remains somewhere at the back of your mind.” What’s particular about Siddharta is that he’s idle:

This excellent application scene underlines his quintessential nature as a candidate. Siddharta is never employed, never chosen: he’s forever a candidate to roles or jobs he is denied. Idleness defines him: not as a lazy, inefficient loafer, but as a potential candidate with too much applicability than what is offered him. Asked what his aim in life is, he pauses and answers:

This matter-of-fact answer debunks the conventional frame which application questions forces on people: it is an existential answer, which puts forward the reality of the person in the everyday situation where it finds itself, and not in the model projection of the ideal, nonexistent applicant. Paradoxically, Siddharta can be defined as a permanent candidate, but he isn’t abstract: he’s a person who would fit in with other persons, and not with a set role in a bureaucratic system where jobs are as many cogwheels.

One might say that Siddharta is an original, a highly intelligent and creative individual. His answers to his examiners would rather reflect this. Like the Vietnamese people whose resistance to American military clout, says he, was much more unpredictable than the landing on the Moon, and so, much more significant, this young man’s answers are also unpredictable and do not fit with the board’s set of acceptably correct answers. “Your personality has the stamp of intelligence”, Siddharta’s friend tells him one night while walking in the street. But he retorts: “Who wants intelligence?” “I’ll be a copier in the bureaucratic machine”, he adds, a little later, speaking to his brother.

A society in crisis isn’t really equipped for what is really new, even if the crisis is what has prompted the fresh response. The challenge of novelty relies on being able to see that the new element isn’t threatening the old order, but on the contrary creative of an improvement of the existing order: that the new can even reorder the norms and prepare the frame for the importation of more, and better norms. But it takes a rare openness of mind to see such novelty as positive; it can easily pass as freakish. Siddharta’s remark that the Vietnamese resistance to the US was “just plain human courage” and not, say, Communist indoctrination or fanaticism means that he’s freed himself from the standard categorizing thought-process, something which is already a form of intelligence because it enables one to order reality into some kind of readable pattern. But naturally too much of it and it can rigidify or simplify a fluent and complex state of affairs.

One could say Siddharta personifies Ray’s understanding of Hamlet, maybe, because he’s in between action and inaction, he’s a “thinker who doesn’t act” (according to one of his pals). Like Hamlet he has political musings: in his brother’s room in front of the mirror (Ray shows us a Che Guevara transformation of his face) he half-wonders what an activist’s destiny would change him into; later he believes he could take part in a revolution.

Then he’s emotionally unsettled by the (all strikingly seductive) women in his environment, his sister first, whom he believes it’s his duty to defend (but Ray suggests perhaps more), then a prostitute he meets thanks to one friend of his, and whom he resists, and finally a neighbour who asks him one night to come and change a fuse in her house, and who befriends him. At one stage, he attends to an accident on the street, people get out of the car, leaving a solitary schoolgirl in the back seat: the camera goes  away from her to Siddharta, then back to her, and again to him: we half fear he’s going to do something wrong – she’s alone, the crowd is busy, the music is insistent: but he turns away, leaving us half-relieved and wondering.

Siddharta says that “when his head gets hot” he might do anything: is he a toy of his impulses, of his hormones? What does this heat mean? During a major scene, he’s waiting in an overheated room with lots of other candidates for a particular job, and the choosing takes very long; everybody is restless and one applicant falls to the floor, from tension or exhaustion. Siddharta then brushes past the standing clerk, pushes the door open and enters the interview room, to ask for seats, arguing that the applicants outside are treated like animals. He’s rebuffed, and we fear for his application! But then it happens again, later in the day, he again storms into the official interviewers’ office, fights with them, throws a chair in the window, and even upturns the table, like Jesus with the money-changers’ table in the Temple of Jerusalem! The whole scene acquires a symbolical value: it’s almost nightmarish in its intensity, and could be seen as the anti-hero’s parable of fighting against a society which will never integrate him and which he cannot possibly adapt to. One wonders if he’s ever going to find a job, but the scene also shows his particular type of hot-headedness: when his world-view cannot accept the reality he’s faced with, for good or bad reasons, he cannot adjust, he prefers to break the rules and conventions and brings about a tragic chaos in which clearly he will lose, because he’s then completely alone. Like a child.

Ray insists on his childhood; there are several short flashbacks of Siddharta with Topu (his sister), near a river where she attracts his attention to a certain bird-song, and in another scene, with his brother, we realize their difference faced with the cruel act of skinning chickens. His brother doesn’t mind the idea of the French guillotine, an object which cuts life neatly in two. Siddharta is the exact opposite: his life flows from one state to the next, from one period to the next; it allows change to reshape it (“you’ve changed” he says to Topu; “you’ve changed too”, she counters): the childhood glimpses I understand as attempts to sort out the psychological genesis of his character, but also a sign that someone’s life is never so clear cut: you cannot be “a salesman” or “a medical representative” only. A human being is several things at the same time, several persons at the same time. Sometimes the person herself doesn’t know exactly who she or he is. The way one has grown can help to solve the quandary, the way one has accepted, one has refused, the way one has loved. The subtle and rather pleasant sections between Siddharta and Keya, his girlfriend, testify to life’s infinite dimension, and Ray’s delicate and yet masterful art: details, looks, allusions, fragments: all these show how much he refused to simplify and on the contrary, how much he could see in life.

The X-ray scenes we have already alluded to bear witness to the artists’s crafty handling of the multiple meanings and layers within his visions of human life as a whole. There are also evocations, dreams and memories, as we have seen. But one X-ray scene is particularly suggestive. When Siddharta is taken to the brothel, and introduced to this very nice-looking woman, she asks him for a cigarette, and then for a light.

He proceeds to strike a match; she bends towards him, and the sparking of the light results in the sudden X-raying of the picture:

We can see her glowing river of hair, now an incandescent white, but even to my Western eyes, this white shines so strongly of death that we almost see the threat materialize in the shot. We are also immediately reminded of the other X-ray scene at the beginning of the film, and the merging of the two scenes suggests an unnamed third: couldn’t his father have died because of such a temptress; or isn’t his death the consequence of some sin which is visited on his son who, as a result, veers and reels ever since? The prostitute blows her smoke on him and we feel her venomous snakelike hiss:

One last focus in this complex and challenging work (which is reminiscent of the French Nouvelle Vague cinema): who’s “The Adversary”? The movie’s title offers another angle from which to watch it. I have been wondering whether this title might not be in relationship with the main protagonist’s name, Siddharta, which as one knows is also the Buddha’s name? One could argue that Siddharta is a cinematographic embodiment of the Buddha: his “Middle Way between sensual indulgence (Topu?) and the severe asceticism » (link) of his Naxalite brother; his insistence on doing (or trying to do) what is right, rather than what other people do; but I daresay I don’t know enough of Buddhism to go much further… Does the last scene of the film, where Siddharta hears once again the bird of his childhood chirp away so joyfully, equate with the famed Awakening? Perhaps there is an “adversary” in Buddhism which all practitioners would recognize? Excess? Perhaps the most meaningful adversary though, in Ray’s film, could be Siddharta himself? He would then be fighting against his old self and trying to become purified from the shackles of roles and rules before he can defeat him and find peace? As this is the first film in the series of the “Calcutta trilogy” (which comprises also Seemabaddha and Jana Aranya), perhaps the answer is to be found in these other movies.