Agni Pariksha

Agnipariksha

Uttam Kumar, Suchitra Sen, Shikharani Bag


Having seen the Hindi remake at an early age when it was quite new, and not thought of it as much but ridiculous - which was not an exceptional opinion about it, then, at that - it came as a surprise, when, halfway through first watching this one realised that this was the original, and it wasn't ridiculous at all. And subsequent viewings merely made the surprise grow along with the intrigue about why, the theme that had seemed rather simplistic in sixties at best, now seems far from it, but much deeper if anything.

For one, there are of course differences between the original and the remake.

This one is done with all the westernised society atmosphere of a comparatively bygone era of ladies and gentlemen, with decorum and more, in an upper strata of wealthy Bengali society that holidayed in Darjeeling regularly, and looked up to education as much as took wealth for granted, all with a platform of the westernised urban social setting that set them up aloft above the ground realities, of not only those less than wealthy but - perhaps more importantly - of those not quite so westernised.

In comparison the remake was set in the sixties post Junglee, yahoo changes that brought in a very overt pursuit of the very unwilling lady by an almost Tarzan cum ape, with the lady eventually giving in to the overtures in terms of romance - still virtuously, of course! And this change was then harder to reconcile with the story that develops.

Here, the quiet but steady devoted candidate for the hand of the beautiful educated modern young woman, and a self confessed fan of her singing, is a role that reveals itself as much more complex, deeper, only on subsequent viewings - when one knows he is more than he has said.

But the real knot remains firm and soul of the theme - and has been dealt with in at least half a dozen films of last two decades or so from US, although with different storylines. Question is, what if one is already committed in a relationship, and then someone new appears who one cannot help falling inexorably in love with?

Here, the said relationship is a childhood marriage that the girl's mother had revolted against, and declared null and void, bringing the family to town and making the girl forget about it in course of education and normal life. But it dies exist, and once the memory is back, it cannot be denied. Legally she coukd free herself, but she finds an inexplicable bond drawing her, and she is uncertain of her duty, the right choice to make.

And then she turns to the old grandmother who had conducted that marriage. The grandmother asks her, what if you do marry the young man you now met, and then you meet someone who attracts you, and you fall in love with him?

That the film is beautifully made, is a bonus, as is the superlative young pair. And the music.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jSuBte1lZWU

Arogya Niketan

Arogya Niketan

Shubhendu Bandopadhyay, Bikash Roy, Ruma Guha Thakurta


When one first saw this film, it came across to begin with as a typical duel between old and new, tradition and knowledge. Until there was a turn where wisdom appeared, and courtesy, and knowledge that was hard earned with experience and sacrifices of pleasures, all wrapped up in the old tradition! It was a beginning of revelation, then. A subsequent viewing, equally by chance, but more attentive this time, brought out much more.

There was the loneliness deep in the cold lives of each character, with only one who knew who everyone was and hoped to find the bonds that existed, to make a home. This loneliness was long accepted by the old couple with open eyed courage by one, grief of the mother by her, and by the young grandson with his pride holding him up despite the smarting of rejection that in fact was non existent - the old couple simply were unaware of the bonds!

And then, the climactic scene on the train station no longer seems so outrageously sentimental but is in fact all natural, and nor is it the climaxvafter all - that epithet belongs rightfully, when seen with a deeper perception, to the finale where the old man takes leave of his wife, telling her he isnt after all leaving her alone - he's brought her daughter in law, her grandson and his young new wife, to make a home with her. She never was alone, one realises, with all the depth of her husband's understanding of her.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0bhz0TNTio

Shilpi

Shilpi

Uttam Kumar, Suchitra Sen, Sikharani Bag


Heart rending film. The conflicts are all together here - poor vs rich, rural vs urban, high strata vs mere artist, love of two sensitive artists souls vs class conscious clans that won't allow stepping out, ... and the superlative pairing of Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen.

Seeing the two together 35:00 - 40:30, its difficult to realise this was a film being shot, the two were speaking rehearsed lines, were not really in love as completely as they seem to be so obviously! And yet, one is watching a film, not being a disembodied spirit looking at a life!

Sikharani Bag, the younger artist who plays the younger Suchitra, is familiar from Agnipariksha, and is lovelier here with a slightly more extended scope.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LcWoPdNi8GU

Jana Aranya

Jana Aranya

by Satyajit Ray


Having read the work of literature this film is based on, long before seeing it, the surprise was why the renowned director would bring down the level of much more real, subtle work and instead go with a bold, filmy alternative - especially so in the climactic scene, where in the film the director chooses to have a conversation where the protagonist repeatedly tells his friend's sister that she can have the money without going through with having to satisfy his clent, and she refuses the pity and charity.

In the original work, his guilt devastated being is shown at the scene post this, where he sees his sister in law has discovered the gift, a saree, that she was supposed to be surprised with if he was successful getting his client to sign, and he pleads with her to not wear the saree, "it's dirty" he says, and she is stumped looking at it and saying, "no, it's not, why would you say so?"

But then reading Nashtaneed by Ravindranath Tagore and seeing Charulata, the Ray film based on it, one has to say the changes in this film are comparatively far less devastating.to the soul of the original work.

Why being self-labelled a leftist intellectual must make some itch quite so to destroy the beauty inherent and replace it with an ugliness that wasn't there in the first place, is perhaps a far bigger subject of study.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWrXERdiIaE

Charulata

Charulata by Satyajit Ray, Based on Nashtaneed By Ravindranath Tagore,
With Madhabi Mukherjee, Saumitra Chatterjee


If one knew nothing about Ravindranath Tagore and his works, if one weren't enamoured by his writing and didn't care about changes made for the worse by a renowned director just to say he can, then one can sincerely say that this film is quite good.

But the original story is so innocent, so filled with beauty that the changes here not only destroy but do so quite deliberately and viciously, just to go from an unfortunate consequence of circumstances to a conscious decision by a young adult married woman to take steps in a direction she knows she should not, that one cannot possibly say both are equally good. One cannot love a live person and dissect that one's lifeless cadaver just to create a work of art to frame for show.

Why being self-labelled a leftist intellectual must make some itch quite so to destroy the beauty inherent and replace it with an ugliness that wasn't there in the first place, is perhaps a far bigger subject of study. And Ray has done it elsewhere too, but this one is the worst in this regard.

Ray was a celebrity that no one dare speak against without being labelled with most derogatory epithets beginning with a whole basket of whatever is thought of as opposite of intellectual, but in reality he never got the fair impartial criticism his work deserved, for the two reasons related to his first lauded and much awarded film Pather Panchali - West lauded and awarded that one for the same reason they did the more recent Slumdog Millionaire, which in both cases was because India is shown as poor, starving, etcetera.

West would like to wipe out the reality of history, which is that colonial invaders came to loot, not out of charity, and this merciless looting was the reason India was reduced to the starving land replete with what were euphemistically labelled famines, but were thefts by the colonial regime to the tune of allowing over a million deaths in India while the harvest they had was stolen to feed the British soldiers.

That was bad enough, but refusing to allow the aid ships from US sent to India to proceed further than Australia, was the far more deliberate decision, and if that wasn't bad enough, it was accompanied with a comment about it being of no consequence if "natives" starved in millions in India since India had no reason to be saved. This was later repeated, much more explicitly, by a republican president who instructed to the effect that if necessary, let India die, save pakis. Of course, that was the military bases for use against USSR that they needed kept camouflaged as a country.

So Ray was lauded, applauded and awarded for his Pather Panchali in West, and India promptly followed suit in doing so, defying him to the level where he probably was almost embalmed alive. Colonial slave mindset flourished after independence since it was supposedly indicative of how friendly India was post victory in having chased away the British without firing a shot. That none of this was quite true was conveniently kept under the rug, to the level most believed every part of the fabric of lies.

Charulata, meanwhile, was assassinated without any lament, from the original very young teenage and a naive wife of a much older decent man, to a conscious adult aware of her adulterous feelings and one who acts on them as far as she can under the circumstances.

In short, Ray murdered original Nashtaneed by Tagore.  Another copy of the film on yt, where hopefully this comment won't be gotten rid of, below:-

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SVuZLVrPq98


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QO5uSqmxQdA

Pathey Holo Deri

Pathey Holo Deri

Uttam Kumar, Suchitra Sen


First three quarters of an hour and a few minutes more, the film is sheer beauty and delight. Beautiful setting of Darjeeling that begins with the reverie the doctor goes into, when the nurse asks him how long he will be so caring of just this one patient, and indeed their being completely given to one another is so obvious even as she is a patient of his! Beautiful pair! And they were so well tuned, too, apart from each being superlative artist individually.

The first two songs, Palash Ar Krishna Chura Sajiya Tuli and Tumi Na Hoy Rahite Kaachhe are a slight surprise, since we as this pair's connoisseur audience are used to her natural beauty. But in this film, this song anyway, presumably early in her career, she has more than resemblance with the senior beauty, Kanan Devi,
and here she has been given rather heavy make up, to perhaps accentuate that similarity. This was and perhaps still is a natural tradition, in that new artists often are made to imitate or copy their current top of the rung colleagues, in looks and style, until they come into their own. The thumbnail though is herself, as is she more of in another song Ae Shudhu Gaaner Din.

Thereafter, though, there is the shock of a sudden drop to earth, what with the grandfather discovering the new couple just after he promised her hand to a friend's son, and impressing it on them that they are financially unsuitable to one another. She is of sterner stuff though, and fights back with everything she has as best as she knows how.

Here, in the reaction and behaviour of the grandfather, comes a curious fact to the fore, clear in view for the unblinkered.

Indian caste system has been so abusively maligned, so much false propaganda against it has been spread around without allowing any real unprejudiced view of facts, that few realise that caste is not a word invented for India, much less in or by India, and caste systems exist everywhere in the world. The only difference is, the system itself - everywhere else, it is based on not only birth and is impossible to transcend, but is based on power and wealth, land possession and titles, race and faith, colours of skin and physical features, gender, and last but not the least, profession. What's more, the earthly desirables such as wealth and property and power are usually in hands of the top castes with a pyramid structure, and they share the top positions in any professions including priesthood. And marriages across castes are abhorred, as was any possibility of allowing a low caste genius to be included in high caste society - examples, the Battenberg history of being considered inadmissible to royals due to a morganatic marriage, and the resistance and veto against Michael Faraday being admitted to Royal Society, respectively.

It's only India where the sole basis of the structure is category of work and professions, with power and wealth being relegated to separate castes, neither at the top, while the two top castes were not allowed to charge for services rendered but instead only accept offerings, normally. The words "Brahmin " and "poor" almost always were associated, but even the royalty was only on par with all the warrior caste. And when it came to arranging a match, if the couple managed it themselves that was final, but if arranged, wealth wasn't a consideration, instead the family and it's level of culture were.

This was so until the colonial occupations changed things for the worse, as evidenced in this film. Here the grandfather represents a westernised strata of Bengal that through centuries of Islamic occupation has been used to landholding and property being considered a criteria, and that comes to fore as he lets loose his disdain at first encounter against the brilliant doctor from a poor family who, going by Indian caste system, should have been seen as not only an appropriate candidate for the match but a desirable one.

Elsewhere in India, even at that time, where invaders' cultures were less entrenched in society, his family being that of a poor school teacher would be no criteria whatsoever for an objection, as it was here, and taken so for granted too. Therein the germ of the story, that could only happen in a society that not only experienced occupation by invading cultures but accepted them and changed in parts, albeit not completely, with them.

Funny, it is less than half an hour before the end when the no longer quite so poor, now well qualified and more, but still humiliated by the old rich man, doctor meets the love of his life, and even though there is much more to come, it isn't happy circumstance, still, one suddenly feels all shall be well - they had a very ancient tradition approved Gandharva Vivaaha, after all, with the Himaalayan ranges, Abode of Gods, as witness!

And she is far more beautiful without the makeup, as in the last few minutes, meant to be looking deathly sick - which one can believe only due to her performance.


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GPYFojb68Cg


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ng-8Og-RxGo

Ora Thakey Odhare

Ora Thakey Odhare

Uttam Kumar, Suchitra Sen

How very young the royal pair of bengali cinema looks in this, and yet how good they are, individually and even more so together! Seeing them together one can understand all too well what she meant when, someone having asked why she stopped working after his demise, said - one can't act opposite a blank wall, after all, can one!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cWtj-7YrLfk