The contributions of Rabindranath Tagore have enthused many filmic titles in manifold languages over the years. Some have positively took the taste of the arguments confined by him years ago, while others have based their scripts on Tagore’s exclusive plots, but adapted it into their own modern versions.
Starting from Ramanand Sagar to Gulzar, many famous filmmakers have altered the Bengali polymath’s definitive stories and novels. The spectators, in our times too, find Tagore’s world attractive and relevant, feeling devoted to the emotions, subjects, drama and worries suffered by the characters he shaped. Astonishingly, even though we have had Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay masterpieces like Devdas and Parineeta modified multiple times in Bollywood with best of the aptitudes, other than Kabuliwala, there is barely any other Tagore story that has enthused a commercially successful or extraordinary piece of film in Hindi in recent times.
On the poet laureate’s birth centenary today, we yield a look back at some of the Hindi language forms of his works on screen.
Stories by Rabindranath Tagore is an extensively valued show on Epic channel. These tales have been modified to the small screen by manager Anurag Basu. He selected different stories like Kabuliwala, Detective, Samapti, Chokher Bali, Charulata, Chhuti etc and keen two or three events to each novel, while small stories are related in a single incident. Founded in the initial twentieth century of complete Bengal, the stories are set in a politically instable Calcutta. Tagore, greeted as the most eloquent feminist of his times, defined self-assured women as the characters of his stories who achieved to be strong and disobedient in nature while being insulated in a traditional Indian society.
Today marks the 159th birth centenary of the great Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore’s fictional works have stimulated a number of famous filmmakers including Satyajit Ray. Though the various versions of Kabuliwala are general among non-Bengali viewers, there are several other films that you must not miss. So, we have made a list of six movie versions of Rabindranath Tagore’s work for everybody who is looking to explore.
- Choker Bali
This was an excessive revision by Anurag Basu of some very convincing women characters by Rabindranath Tagore. What was even more convincing is that though these stories are printed about a century or more ago, they still realize modernity in mores. The sections have women (and men) in a diversity of multifaceted roles with their own needs, desires and wishes, chasing them against not only difficult conditions, but in spite of the dubious ethics of those actions. These women are not decent, or pure or wicked for most part. They are just trying to live their lives and making errors and the best of firm situations along the way. With this contextual, it is seen Chokher Bali is a countless introduction, and maybe one of the best floors in the series. It deals with melodies of the rights of widows, the sexual wish of a widow who cannot follow additional lover nor re-wed, and while it is a story where there is unfaithfulness, it would be indecorous to focus only on that.
Binodini, the cultured, piano-playing, English-speaking character is being set up to be wedded to Mahendra, a doctor in exercise. Mahendra, nevertheless, does not want to get married and Binodini trimmings up being passed over to Behari — Mahendra’s cousin — who wastes to be downstream to Mahendra’s hand-me-downs and lastly to a poor chap who has the bad luck of disappearing within six months of the marriage. Temporarily, Mahendra falls in love with and finally finishes up marrying the lovely but simple Ashalata who he had first tried to hand off to Behari as well. Thus having caused chaos in the lives of everyone who has the desire of coming into contact with him, Mahendra boards on a life of fervent, wedded bliss. Binodini and Behari, in the interim, meet and fall in love — but their emotions remain unstated and give way as a fury at having to lead a life of lack as a widow takes over Binodini. She plots her way into Mahendra’s family’s home and furnaces a bond with Ashalata, even labelling their bond “Chokher Bali” — accurately a ounce of sand, but in the context of the story, a constant irritant.
In the occurrence of the very internal goddess Binodini, Mahendra grows very unfulfilled with his wife, abruptly very aware of Asha’s faults. His spirits to Binodini grow sturdier and they have an illegal affair which arcs everyone, not smallest of which is Binodini herself, into a tumult of vengeance and deprivation. Seemingly (or perhaps apocryphally) Tagore felt sorry not scripting a happier ending for Binodini, maybe limited by the customs of his period and thinking it was a step too far for a story already making boundaries. In his 37 year long film career, Satyajit Ray modified the works of Rabindranath Tagore a total of four times. In order of timetable, these films were – Samapti (The Conclusion), Charulata (The Lonely Wife) Postmaster, Monihara (The Lost Jewels), and Ghare Baire (The Home and the World). While the first three of these films received high critical approval, Ghare Baire received a lot of criticism from detractors and the common man alike. Some have even gone on to say that it was one of the three feeblest films of Ray’s career, let down by poor script, awful casting choices, an appalling lack of cheap and split set pieces that just did not hold together. Ghare Baire is a version of Rabindranath Tagore’s 1916 novel of the same name. The film rotates around its three vital characters. There is Bimala, the wife of an early 20th century noble in Bengal. There is her loving husband Nikhilesh Chowdhury – a cultured, soft-spoken and respected noble of refined tastes. And finally, there is Nikhilesh’s friend Sandip Mukherjee — a magnetic radical waging war against British law in India finished the Swadeshi movement. Bimala and Nikhilesh spend a happy and wealthy life together. Having conservative his teaching in the Occident, Nikhilesh does not trust in keeping his wife limited to the cores of the household. He employs a British music teacher for her, contraries with her on a massive range of subjects and usually inspires her to come out of the house and step into the world outside. Bimala is happy getting the instruction of Mrs Higgins, singing highland ballads, playing the piano and leaving the management of domestic errands in the hands of her not-so-fortunate and widowed sister-in-law. But things change when Nikhilesh’s friend Sandip creates to live with them for a few days. Sandip leads the rebellion against the British territory, and his burning languages, attractive charm and steadfast belief towards the reason stirs up several feelings in Bimala’s heart — those that she had not ever practiced before, ever since she had been wedded into the Chowdhury household as an juvenile girl. Sandip takes advantage of this and boards upon an unsafe game of seduction, drawing Bimala closer to himself bit by bit, knowing fully well that the sought-after path to Nikhilesh’s funds runs through the heart of his adored wife. Bimala discoveries a sense of purpose in Sandip’s movement, and deprived of sympathetic the true nature of it or its far-reaching insinuations, she succumbs to it with full devoutness. What the unwary woman does not realize is that Sandip is not who he says he is, and that in the dress of a radical, he is just a scheming swindler, rolling in the same desires that he inspires others to give up. Nikhilesh himself is opposite to the British law in India, but he does not believe in the radical approach of the Swadeshi movement, because he knows that such a step will cause permanent monetary harm to the living of the poor. He favors the other, apparently more civilized method of debate and dissertation to get the British to leave. Despite this, and despite understanding that his wife is gradually being charmed by his friend’s charms, Nikhilesh lets Sandip to stay in his house. And by the time Bimala is explained of Sandip’s true colors, it is too late, in more ways than one.
The utmost forte of Ghare Baire is its story. The main faintness of the film is the implementation of that same story. While Tagore piles a lovely tale of affection, company, dishonesty and freedom (in the most wholesome sense of the term) against the background of the nationalist movement after Lord Curzon’s partition of Bengal, Ray gives the story too thin with unpersuasive depictions of its trio of typescripts. The film is held composed by nonentity other than over two hours of dialogue, the camera seems too lazy to do whatever other than remaining on the face of the characters bringing their lines, there is hardly any emoting, and wherever there is any, it tries to overreact, leading to calamitous results. More than anything else, Ghare Baire is maybe the first film in which Ray appeared to have lost his ‘grip’ on his spectators. It is not like he had not made subpar films in the past, by his own standards. But not ever before had he totally misread the beat of those who would view his film. Whatever valuable little that works in the film is only because of the story and the story alone. It is tender to understand recurrent Ray collaborator and veteran actor Soumitra Chatterjee stressed to hold the character of Sandip through the entire film — resultant in nonentity short of a disaster. He simply is not undoubted enough, and not for want of trying. Chatterjee has played faulty characters in Ray’s films before, but this time, his ideas simply do not work. Swatilekha Sengupta is obviously an oddity in the role of Bimala — a molding error of epic sizes. To put it slightly, her acting is timber, her face empty of any feeling whatever and both in bodily features (which is comprehensible) and in her presentation (which is not), she is a far cry from Tagore’s Bimala. Maybe the only redeemable elegance of the film, when it comes to the presentations, is Victor Banerjee in the role of the reticent and mild-mannered aristocrat Nikhilesh Chowdhury. In most of his acts, Banerjee achieves to get under the skin of his character, and plays it with the correct blend of cautious hopefulness and silent despair. You can’t help but feel for him in that one division where Bimala realizes her mistake, breaks down and apologizes to him, and he just holds his wife by saying, “It is not your fault — for the last 10 years, I am the only man whose face you have gotten.” Ghare Baire leftovers that rare Satyajit Ray film which is not just weak, but is also a sad loss of chance. What could have been a delightful version turns out to be an underwhelming coming together of the utmost mind in Indian works and the brightest gem of Indian cinema.
Bhaskar Chattopadhyay is an author and interpreter. His conversions include 14: Stories That Inspired Satyajit Ray, and his unique works include the unknown novels Patang, Penumbra and Here Falls The Shadow.
2. Chaar Adhyay
Char Adhyay, helmed by Kumar Shahani, is one more movie that stands the test of time. Released in 1997, the political drama probes into the life of Ela, who is portion of a group of rebels. Reliable with Tagore’s works, Char Adhyay also queries the role of a woman in a man’s world and at the same time, travels the impact of sightless nationalism. The movie made waves upon its announcement as the cast largely contained of non-actors. Acclimatizing a period piece as stimulating as Tagore’s “Char Adhyay” is tough. What is even more problematic is to evade contrasts with Kumar Sahani’s contentious 1997 Hindi version of the same novella. In that context, Bappaditya Bandopadhyay has been aspiringly bold to even effort a Bengali version of this novel. Additional to this is his aptitude to risk an unconventional molding both in terms of performers as well as choruses for this movie. Appreciatively, the risk has paid off and “Elar Char Adhyay” has formed into a movie that will not just be recalled for the powerful presentations but also the lyricism in Rana Dasgupta’s cinematography.
Though for the most part of the movie the director has carefully adhered to the unique text, there are some very stimulating accompaniments. One such is the use of the lengthiest kissing scene from Indian cinema – the one containing Devika Rani and husband Himanshu Roy from the movie, “Karma”. Of course, Tagore did not remark any of it in his original. So why show Ela viewing with wide-eyed wonder this scene? Simplistically put, one can tag it as a clown of sorts. But it is also conceivable to see this as the director’s clarification of the character of Ela — an English-educated liberated woman of 1930s who ventured to go in contradiction of her family and follow her heart. For a woman who can go against the current, this scene can be viewed as an thought-provoking way of establishing Ela’s traits as a character with her own principles to trail and dilemmas to battle.
If this is one example of the creative right taken by the director, there is more in the starting when the filmmaker uses a folk song in the scene where the unconventional Ela gives a warm welcome to a fakir much to the disappointment of her traditional mother. While the unique text does a passing reference to this event, the film is much more intricate.
Music is a robust point in the film and Gaurab Chattopadhyay merits all the credit for having used singers from bands to come up with such moving versions of Rabindra Sangeet. The choice of songs are appropriate; their picturisation haunting in their lyrical excellence. It is good to see the cumulative admiration of Sayak Bandyopadhyay’s rendition of “Majhe majhe tabo dekha pai chirodin keno pai na”. Do not miss out Paroma Bandyopadhyay’s “Sukhe amar rakbe keno”. Tanya Mukhopadhyay is a stimulating choice for singing “Vaishnava jana to” though the usage of a DE saturated-toned recreated image of Gandhi in the graphics while the end credits roll is a little astonishing.
One motivating mistake in the film is the character of Akhil. While Sahani’s version enthusiastic a substantial screen time to Ela bonding with Akhil and how Akhil did not take a liking to Atin, Bappaditya has totally erased the character and along with it some stimulating portions. Ela too has been obtainable in a somewhat different style, particularly from the way Tagore defines her in the end when she shows rare faintness and recurrently falls at Atin’s feet asking him to accept her. Paoli, in difference, shows an Ela who not ever uses words such as “dohai tomae” (something used often by Tagore). Love, even if it deteriorates her resolution to go the radical way, does not make her weak. By doing so, Paoli trimmings up playing an Ela who is whatever but coy in the name of love. Those who supposed Paoli’s “Hate Story” outing was all about being brave will be agreeably astonished by her sheer adulthood in reinterpreting confidence in the setting of an era long left behind.
Both Indraneil and Vikram are an enjoyable astonishment in the roles of Indranath and Atin correspondingly. They look their part and Indraneil gets a threatening role that is a noticeable leaving from the kind that he has been responsibility in the new past. Saying the long Tagore dialogues is quite a test for both these performers and they have strained their best taking their limits into reflection. A little more care in the intonation Vikram uses while talking the English words dispersed in his Bengali dialogues would have made his character more true. Rudranil, in the role of Botu, is decent. Though the role was not too threatening for an actor like him, it is true that the charm obligatory an actor of his ability to bring out the difficulties. Nitya Ganguly (previously seen in “Kahaani”) gets a good chance to play a considerable character.
Mention must to be made to Suman Guha, Sandip Sarkar and Sumana Dasgupta for their dress designs. But the marching of the film is sluggish and the portions in the film’s start where the director creates how Ela challenges her traditional mother could have been well touched. Since the original text gives quite intricate imageries of the centers (going into lengths of how many towels were there in Atin’s room!), it must have been a vast help for art administrator Gautam Basu to mount the film. Lastly, the graphics, particularly the one of a rain-drenched Ela in the rocking chair or where she lies on the floor to come to be overwhelmed by the intense flames, re-form an era and a mood that will rendezvous movie-goers for whom this film will continue a tale of love in the time of political discontent.
3.Chaturanga
Chaturanga is an expressive drama that rotates around the problem – what happens when love clangs with your politics and principles? The character (played outstandingly by Subrat Datta) finds himself influential between two contradictory ideas – rationalism and religion, and two women – a widow and a mistress. Chastity, existentialism, ethics, faith, misogyny and female sexuality are all dealt with in. Chaturanga is a innovative novel by Rabindranath Tagore that, like its three main characters, increases more queries than it answers. Sachish (Subrat Dutta), his near friend Sribilash (Joy Sengupta), his big uncle Jagmohan (Dhritiman Chatterjee) and the beautiful widow Damini (Rituparna Sengupta), form the four ‘colors’ of Chaturanga. It is the story of a love that is wedged between contradictory worlds of ideas. Director Suman Mukhopad- hyay chose Tagore’s contentious novel for the source of his second film.
At a time when literature is chosen almost as a counterpoint to its celluloid clarification, where one has to look for an influential microscope to find Sarat Chandra’s Devdas in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s celluloid clarification, Suman has continued religiously, almost ferociously correct to Tagore’s original novel. This alone is sufficient to set at rest any spirits of anger among Tagore academics who reflect Tagore too revered to be toyed with by young filmmakers.
Sachish, the character, is in continuous search for an anchor, lost out the fact for ideas that find no clarification in a world of reason. Sribilash on the other hand, a highly educated scholar, does not trust in anything beyond the world of aim and tries to act as Sachish’s conscience eye and sounding board. Jagmohan expires in his belief that he is not really a non-believer, but a supporter in that greater God named ‘humanity’ that safeguards ‘the utmost good for the utmost number.’ Damini attitudes out as the only charm who is definite about what she does and does not want. She is not frightened to ask worrying questions even Leela- nanda Swami cannot response. She queries her dead spouse’s correct to will away the house, her jewelries and even this woman to Leelananda Swami’s (Kabir Suman) spiritual cult, without her consent. She queries Swami’s right to receive her care without requesting whether she decides to be taken care of. She is not frightened to fast her physical wish for Sachish who responds this, but is scared to either challenge or admit it. Each fonts is a sad metaphor of the time they lived in, unknowing and unaware fatalities of a social assembly they had no role in determining into what it had become.
The Title
The significance of the Book’s title – Chaturanga – is much reflected; and varied senses have been read in to the term. Tagore , nevertheless, called his change of it in to English as ‘Broken Ties’ maybe suggesting that the theme of the Book was fundamentally looking for right from limits of forms , add-ons and their lingering ties.
Chaturanga in the old-Indian setting mentions to the four arms of the old-style Indian army, the infantry, mounted troops, charioteers and elephant-mounted troops; by postponement it can mean anything alienated into four parts. Chaturanga is also the designation of the multifaceted mind-game (chess) where a player efforts to out-think, movement and trap the adversary. As the scholar William Radice remarks: ‘Chaturanga suggests both the intellectualism and penetrating passion….Like a chess game played by grandmasters, Chaturanga is not originally easy to follow, but with cautious reading and reviewing its deliberateness, the thought that has gone into every move, emerges clearly’.
The name has also been taken to suggest the ‘four limbs’, ‘four parts’ or ‘quartet’ that make up the Book, as also the interaction between the four fonts that the chapters are called after. There is also a remark which points out that however the story is placed on two friends and their participation with two young women there is no well-ordered pairing of the couples. The novel really rotates around two ‘threesomes’.
Another explanation is based in the theme content of the book. It is said; lucid opinions, feelings, Adoration, self-introspection and unselfish friendship and faithfulness are all estimable qualities that enrich human life. But, each of those when it takes the form of – severe Non-belief, spiritual fury, overwhelming passion, total reclusion or even the self-erasing maximum attachment- is just a part or anga of life; they need not or should not dispose of all of life. Tagore entitled the Book as Chaturanga -four aspects of life – maybe for that reason. But, Four is just a number to cover up a memorable title; such separate aspects of life are confidently many more. If a solitary trait exaggerates itself and becomes so leading that it subdues and stifles every other aspect of life, then human life becomes one-dimensional; and misplaces its sense of equilibrium and adaptability.
Ashok Mitra gives an inspiring explanation. He proposes that Tagore had always had a captivation for arranging his songs, stories and tales in ‘four-part’ mechanisms in terms of their ‘explanation, development, difference and recapitulation’. Ashok Mitra clarifies that Tagore ‘was intensely devoted to this form, its variable beats and speeds; and used it recurrently not only in his early tales but also in the most powerful story of his early fifties, Chaturanga. He repaid to it with rehabilitated power in his seventies in Dui Bon , Malancha, and Char Adhyaya’.
The Plot
Chaturanga is established in Colonial Bengal during the dusk of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th century. It was the time when western teaching and western thoughts was taking grasp over the young minds. Many were trying to receive west without refusing the east or without reproachful everything that was Indian. In the process the old taxes, politics, ideas, does, notions and organizations came in to inspection and question. The early chapter of Chaturanga portrays, in a more developed form, the battle between the improver generous arrogances and orthodoxy; and between modernism and the old world of traditions of the Bengali society.
Chaturanga is mostly the story of Sachish an English-educated cheery and a very good-looking young man; his responses to the varied effects used on him; his trouble to break free of all effects and attachments, and to move to absolute freedom. His story is related by his friend, ardent fan and follower Sribilash, another English-educated young person. The intelligent and the expressive quandaries of Sachish are obtainable in contradiction of the cross currents of spiritual and reformative movements that astounded the Hindu society in Bengal throughout the second half of the 19th century. The story explains the battles between western disbelieving humanism and convention; between rationalism and religious cults; between religion and harsh realisms of life.
The story starts with the associate of the narrator Sribilash with Sachish; and moves on to images of Sachish’s uncle Jagamohan and Sachish’s father Harimohan. Jagmohan, is a well-skilled staunch nonbeliever, humanist and Useful. He is a characteristic rationalist, the likes of whom invigorated Calcutta in the second and third quarters of the nineteenth century. Jagamohan castoffs every social and spiritual norm and repetition that lowers human self-respect. He is eager to expense his family draws and legacy to be able to follow his principles of service to the disadvantaged and the outcaste.
Sachish was transported up by Jagmohan as his virtual-son. Sachish drinks the ideas and naiveties of his Uncle and shadows him in every manner. Sachish’s friend Sribilash was a ‘believer’; and, originally was hurt to know that Sachish was a nonbeliever. And previously, in respect to his love for Sachish he accepts his friend’s confidence. Following that, Sribilash too originates under the stimulus of Jagmohan and turns doubting.
Sachish horrifies the family by contribution to wed a young widow seduced and made pregnant by his careless brother. The young mother was powerless to face the disgrace and also the parting from her betrayer – lover commits suicide. This heart breaking event is soon followed by a main disaster. Sachish’s uncle Jagamohan – his acquaintance, theorist, guide and guardian- succumbs to plague while portion its poor victims.
Overwhelmed by the twin tragedies – a stranded woman’s suicide and the adored uncle’s unexpected death – Sachish is totally confused and becomes rudderless. The crushed under his bases is completely brushed away. He pointlessly strolls and finally meanings in to a religious up-to-the-minute following religious practices. The cult signified all that his Uncle hated; and which, next his Uncle, he too had fated. Now, Sachish had crossed over to a confidence that was completely opposite to the opinions he acknowledged while he was under his Uncle’s instruction. Sachish turns in to a passionate and a fanatic devotee of spiritual Guru Swami Leelananda. Following him, his friend Sribilash too seams the cult and becomes the Swami’s follower.
Though at the Ashram the two friends are involved by a beautiful and vibrant young widow Damini who true to her name (lightening) is glittering. Damini had been given away by her disappearing husband, along with all her stuff, to his guru Swami Leelananda.She is experienced, outbound and brave. She has sure likes and aversions. She is not frightened to hurl worrying queries even at Swami Leelananda that he cannot reply. He, for some reason, seems to be frightened of her. Damini queries Swami’s right to receive her care without requesting whether she decided to be taken care of.
Damini falls fervently in love with Sachish, and is not scared to show her physical wish; moans: ‘Oh, you stone, you stone, have compassion on me, have compassion and kill me outright !’. Sachish too falls forcefully in love with the young widow – whom he pleas ‘the artist of the art of Life’- but is frightened either to face it completely or to admit his love. He is at a loss how to reply or to respond to her love. He wants her to save away, but he needs her to be near too.
Sachish is terrified in to a gulf of doubt, misperception and indecisiveness. He is much nervous and is powerless to reciprocate Damini’s love. He comes to see Damini and her sexuality as an interruption alluring him away from his path of reaching True Liberty. To conclude, he requests her clemency and to set him free from the promises of her love. ‘My want for Him whom I seek is huge, is so total, that I have no necessity for whatever else at all. Damini, have shame on me and leave me to Him’. Damini in the dignity of her heart resolutions the situation; issues him from her affection, and admits him as her Guru.
Sachish disenchanted with the Swami and his faith becomes a hermit, takes up to inspection and meditation in lonely places and troughs his own path.
4. Tasher desh
Two kinds of joints prevail in Q’s version of Tasher Desh (The land of Cards), based on Rabindranath Tagore’s musical escapade about a best-selling prince who lands up in a tyrant and humorless land of playing cards.
One is precisely what you think it is, and is spent in recklessness in the Bengali film-maker’s mash-up of music video and new film. The other has to do with the affected, stiff actions of the key fonts, who blunder about for one half of the imaginary opera before untying up in the instant portion. The basis material, which was printed in 1937, can be unspoken in the setting of the liberty struggle. Q’s musical, containing Sam Mills, Susheela Raman and the Asian Dub Foundation, among others, can be stared as an analysis of sexual suppression and restriction.
Incitement is the very least you can suppose from the publicity film-maker-turned musician and director, who made a enduring place in the records of disrepute with Gandu (2010), an new fictional feature about the escapades of an angst-ridden rapper in Kolkata. Filmed mostly in black and white, Gandu explodes into color in a graphic love-making act that has almost no counterparts in Indian cinema. Gandu was not ever meant to be unconfined, but the 115-minute Tasher Desh, which actors many members of Q’s repertory, including Joyraj Bhattacharjee, Anubrata Basu and Rii Sen alongside Imaad Shah and Tillotama Shome, will open on 23 August at PVR Cinemas multiplexes in Kolkata and Mumbai. The announcement is a part of the ongoing Director’s rare series meant at transporting self-governing cinema to spectators. A co-production whose partners include the National Film Development Corporation, Tasher Desh will plotting post-Ship of Theseus changes to the indie cause as well as unknown fans of Tagore. Amended extracts from an interview with Q, whose real designation is kaushik Mukherjee. Supply is very hard, particularly when you are selling hard. I do not decide with most of the values laid down by business structure logic. Since I have been an inherent part of business structure logic, I am uncompromising about it. We are ferociously indie and do not want to take any kind of provision, and if we do, it is kind support. We would have wanted a dramatic announcement in a few more cities, but we knew that we had only this much we could do and spend. The importance, of course, was the Bengal release.
Does incoming the profitable delivery circuit have its own tests?
This exertion is just to put the film in another sphere of the public domain. It is old-style, but the fact in India is that films are not films until they are dramatically obtainable. That will not vary very soon. Like with Gandu, all is aware. It was very deliberately made to break all those regulations. My partisan point about Gandu is that it can’t be obtainable on DVD in India. In any case, the film is before now out there (on the Internet).
So we have our individuality but are coming to you in a dissimilar way (with Tasher Desh). It is what (alternative Japanese film-maker) Takashi Miike does—deluge the market, make four films a year in different types, and confuse everybody.
People who might have lately distorted to the reason of indie cinema after watching ‘Ship of Theseus’ will be terrified off by ‘Tasher Desh’s non-linear, disjointed narrative, artificial acting and sharp color palette.
A hundred years ago, there were opera houses where people came to watch operas about unusual dissertations and mind-blowing performances. Overdo is like an unusual circus, but the joker will not be the clown you know. The unique text is a kiddie play, so you can’t get humbler than this, but it has the possible to blow your mind in different ways. I think if people arrive the theatre disordered, it is fine. And if they leave disordered, that is also okay. Then the job is done.
The music in the film everything as a complaint against restriction—language is not limited to words. Tagore penniless the form itself, it was a wrecked story. We had to actually work to shed the idealistic nyaka-ness (affectation). Inherent to Rabindra culture is this nyaka-ness that is part of the bullshit that neither we nor our groups and nationals can stand.
Some things did not work, such as court parts and an orientation to a pastor. One serious alteration was the mother’s character—in the unique, she is a genuine nyaka mom. I couldn’t abide her. The prince is miserable because he can’t leave his mother.
5. Charulata
The film is a version of a tale titled Nashtanirh (The Broken Nest) penned by Rabindranath Tagore. Set in the late 19th century, it expresses the story of a young, brainy, cultivated and beautiful woman named Charulata. She is the spouse of a rich, upper class Bengali gentleman named Bhupati. A product of the rebirth of Bengal, Bhupati is an out-and-out liberal, and continues an English language newspaper called ‘The Sentinel’ — meant at criticizing the unfair performs of the British government in India. Bhupati and Charu’s wedding is a barren one, and the man has very slight time for his wife. Though, he loves his wife dearly, heartening her intrinsic artistic talents to curl. Charu devotes her days reading and overseeing local errands.
Among this scene, reaches like a storm (quite literally) Bhupati’s cousin Amal — a cheerful, free-spirited young man, fresh out of college, with no get-up-and-go in life other than the chase of his literary ambitions. Bhupati commends his companion with the accountability of development Charu’s artistic talents. Amal and Charu, both of the same age, and more supports than relatives, begin to spend time together. But as the days go by, Charu starts to fall in love with Amal. Detecting this, and reluctant to deceive his brother’s trust, Amal detachments himself from Charu and leaves the city. Charu is surprised and depressed, and seeing her crying the void that Amal has left behind in her life, Bhupati realizes the truth. The man and his wife are now left behind to settle — to pick up the bits and reconstruct the broken nest.
It is almost unbearable to place a limb on one thing that makes Charulata one of Ray’s premium films. With so many rudiments coming together to raise the film to the height that it has attained today, one can only say that it is a wonder, along with the beautiful acumen of a unrealistic manager like Ray that shaped such a fine piece of cinema. Reflect the visual storytelling, for instance:
In the initial scene of the film, Ray founds two significant facts of the level with estimable subtlety, and extraordinary understatement. We understand Charu moving from one room of the house to the other, viewing passers-by on the road down below from the windows. And then, she ambles around in a room, twisting finished a maze of equipment with a book in hand, her limbs gently stroking the edge of a table, as she absent-mindedly drones a tune to herself. We promptly know two things about her. First, that she is a woman limited to the centers of her house, much like the myna in the cage understood later in the film. And second, that she is tired — reading the same books over and over again, itinerant around in her own home, not deliberate where to go. Not a single word of dialogue is told, there is no tale, and yet — with such stylishness, Ray sets up the disposition for the rest of the floor. The break of the film is occupied with such wonderful instances of graphic storytelling. Charu standing at the entrance of her bedroom and Bhupati transitory by without so much as noticing her, and she directly raising her opera glasses to her eyes in a representative bid to bring her spouse closer to herself. Charu influential mildly in a swing in the garden as Amal lies on a mat under a tree, drenched in the play of light and shade — an instant of liberation for both of them, attractively composed to turn into an instant of coming together. The magnetism here is not sexual in nature, though the sexual tautness does exist in the latter half of the film. But here, it is just the release of the spirit, under the open sky.
If the touching imageries are not sufficient, consider the brilliance of Ray’s background music, for example. Modest to the degree that it almost develops an integral part of the copy on screen, Ray uses a combination of Tagore’s songs and his own arrangements to gently float around the setting, giving the acts a magical, dream-like excellence. Joined with the beautiful and well-researched set project by his art director Bansi Chandragupta and an outstanding sound project, these acts transport one to the inner world of a late 19th century upper class domestic.
And then, of course, there are the presentations. That the three main characters of the film give their vocation best performances in the same film says volumes about this feature of the film. Sailen Mukherjee — an expert actor of the stage — receives the teaching of his director and plays each scene owed to him with excellence. His Bhupati is so spent by the ideas of tolerance that he cannot see the dilemma of his wife even when she is in his arms. When he finds out the factual spirits of his wife, he is devastated, and strolls pointlessly through the streets of the city, crying silently. The jovial Amal, played attractively by Soumitra Chatterjee, bargains your heart right from the scene in which he arrives the household unexpected and unforeseen in the middle of a archetypal Bengal Kalboishakhi (an abrupt and fierce pre-monsoon storm), declaiming the lines from Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s novel at the top of his voice. Notice the comfort with which he gaits into his comrade’s office, offers him a fast pranaam and informally points towards the desk, asking — ‘Who’s that tea for?’ — guzzling it depressed in a prompt the very next moment. His acts with his boatman (sister-in-law) are sophisticated and the bond is noticeable as they look at each other with love and admiration.