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SUDDHASATYA GHOSH

(Kolkata, India)

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A few thoughts on Bengali cinema……

Passion for cinema has produced a few pages of Sudhir Mishra’s diary for readers and expectantly brilliances of Sudhir came out in open in that space.

Sudhir is a name in ‘so-called’ parallel cinema or in good cinema, if I am allowed to use Satyajit Ray’s coinage for it. As I went on reading it I faced a few questions and am trying to present those in my write.

Let me start with a cinema by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, ‘Ali-Fear Eats the Soul’. It starts with an apparently incorrect title in original German. Brigitte Mira and El Hedi ben Salem was cast respectively as an old German woman cleaner and a middle-aged Moroccan worker. Woman aged around sixty and the man at his late thirties had got into a relation, in spite of their separate religio- cultural backgrounds. Emmi (Mira), in her earlier life had married a polish immigrant worker against her Hitler worshipper father’s wishes and the children born out of that wedlock now trashes her relation with Ali (Hedi). That is the irony he weaved with mastery.

But here I am not going to elaborate the content any further. My take is the making and concept that had affected cinema business. Major casts were not stars. Indoor and stipulated outdoor locations had helped him a lot to keep in the budget low. It was his most powerful work. It was in direct contrast with Tarkovskian pattern. Tarkovsky working on that part of time in Russia had a different notion. He was a poet and philosopher of cinema. He was a Maestro who taught us cinema has more to exploit and it is alive and kicking. But at what cost and how the cinema business had worked for him?

When Tarkovsky was out of soviet system and Mosfilm was not patronizing him any more he had found that art in so-called free west is a commodity only. He knew the pain of not making a film for almost ten years due to petty bureaucratic political pressure and conspiracy, but there he had faced a complex puzzle and that I suppose had taken quite a few sleepless night out of him. He had an idea and to turn it into a film he required a good lot of money and that was missing. In ‘Nostalgia’, the last sequence had to be shot twice for a snag in camera as we all know and that money was arranged with quite a lot of trouble. Several times he complained about this money oriented problems in Europe as he faced it in the shape of shift time, less budget and so on. If we keep in mind the exact feeling Akira Kurosawa had after seeing the set of ‘Solaris’ we will understand Tarkovsky’s problem. Kuroshawa had commented that almost a space station had been made to suit Tarkovsky’s demand and ‘2001-A space Odyssey’ of Stanley Kubrick seemed a child in terms of set-properties too. But that was in Soviet Russia, where money was not the ruler (pronounced as a state policy as a socialist state). But for Fassbinder it was a capitalist West Germany from the very outset. He had worked out a solution in this ‘Ali-Fear Eats the soul’ with greater sense of content and other aspects of cinema.

Sudhir in his pages of that diary had said that,

-‘You have a jimmy jib doesn’t mean that’s a better technique.’

He was trying to provoke a thought like Godard that ‘technology is not technique’. Yes that’s true. But how technology becomes a cinema itself as it is already in Hollywood? And now in Tollywood too.

Here I must get back to my experience in late 90’s of the earlier century. As I was just strolling in the magic world of cinema with a few documentary experiences in my pocket, I had met a bunch of new and young makers who took to cinema as life itself. They were doing their bit in cinema world in a fashion that was quite interesting. They had some ideas and a laughable amount of money in their pocket to make films. They had friends who were cinematographers, editors, actors and all were regularly working in industry as professionals. These directors were also working in television and earning a little. They and some of their well wishers put together their money and started ventures. Barring a few regular bread earner technicians all others had worked voluntarily on their dream projects. Some of them took as long as five years to get completed. Yet they fought with their all shortcomings. Gautam Sen, Sankha Ghosh even Ashok Biswanathan (who won a debutant National Award with ‘Sunya Theke Suru’) were among them. You, probably know them not as their films had no effect in cinema halls. But from them and their efforts I got an understanding that cinema is a social business too.

In the field of art either king or a noble had patron artists as all economical power were with them. Later, states, even in India also, had supported them with an interest that was not noble all the time. Then it became a white elephant to them as it never churned out money and a sort of accusation was in the air which was against film makers. Film makers were making money and they were not bothered with the loss that the state was facing. It was hailed as absolutely true in Medias with obvious capitalist natures. Those Medias had kept silence on tax evasion by big houses or subsidized industrial policy as it may hurt their commercial interests. Even if we take those allegations as true to certain extent we must say that stoppage of promotion through NFDC was not a good solution. Because in general even a so-called commercial release can not guarantee success till today in any part of the world. In particular good cinema is a part of education itself if we know the use of it (in American universities cinema is being taught in South Asian studies to make pupil know this part better). But as this good cinema scribe were few in numbers and potentially less powerful to make a noise there were no re-thinking on this issue. And now as they say that there is no free lunch in this world there is no possibility of policy reversal of the state.

Now where did we look for a way out? We saw makers were at a loss. They had tried to pull out a few private producers and that with their earlier techniques of proper casting (about which Sudhir had commented too) it was destined to fail. Private producers tend to do business with the help of star value. So these makers followed an old path. Do you remember Fellini’s ‘La Dolce Vitta’ and its first sequence? Marcello Mastroanni was riding a helicopter that was following a huge statue of Jesus Christ. To me it was like an appearance scene of Amitabh Bachchan in late 1970-s. Mastroanni was a big star in Italy and finance arrangements were quite understandable in that context. Satyajit Ray had done ‘Nayak’ (I think star rather than hero can come closer in meaning of that Bengali word) and a few others with Bengali icon Uttamkumar. In graduation all others followed suit. Rittwik was a loner (though he had cast Supriya twice it had not done any financial good to him) and he had made a few films. His system of casting with committed theatre actors who were working in film also had a few takers. Ray’s earlier trend to discover actors for characters were also neglected. To make films with private producers (obviously keeping up front the bold gesture of no compromise by parallel directors) star system had silently crave in. Here for the first time ‘Stars’ who can act or behaved a lot had gotten a chance for an intellectual rebirth with coveted honors that they love to receive as a prestige boost-up. They also settled for less remuneration and we had another genre of so-called good films.

Why ‘so-called’ will be the question that I will counter now! In came other contributors like cinematographers, editors etc. on following star’s footmarks. Budgets were boosted and now it is a good crore with Rituparno Ghosh. Jimmy jibs, video monitors, two sets of technicians, better camera, non-linear edit and things like those has joined forces to make a film work better. Then why are we not getting even a ‘Charulata’, let alone a ‘Pather Panchali’?

I, in earlier phase had spoken of my understanding that cinema works socially too, is an important observation as far as I am concerned. Earlier a maker like Ray came up with an idea and discussed it with intellectuals of near caliber for a long time. A script or mise-en-scene gradually took shape to its fullest stretch. Then actors, technical contributors were added who had a grooming in same socio-political weather and understanding. At the last it was a search for money. Thus this process took long enough to develop to dilute preliminary enthusiasm of a maker and get solid for shoot. Actors who had been taught art in theatre (that was active intellectually and politically, not like drawing room dramas of our period) and developed film acting in learning process that probed deep to overcome the technical superficialities and understand it properly were in majority. Others who had never acted in their entire life sometimes also came in to join (Ray had discovered quite a lot) and they were surrounded by those learned artists. By the time the film making was over they had a clear syllabus ahead of them to know acting.

But with stars it is the other way round. They at first come into the film with a specific product to sell (such as histrionics, dance or fight) and then in time they grow. Learning basics and working is always difficult. In cinema it is nearly killing, because here your behavior can be turned into acting of outstanding nature with the touch of a good maker. So if you are not good enough in your head it may take a life time to understand that you are a non-actor. Without mincing my words here I will like to state that quite a few names or stars are far away from the art of acting.

Cinema, as Tarkovsky loved it, is really encouraging till it comes to the floor. When it is there it can kill one with so-many demands. Cinema comes as a thought to a maker at first. Then a hard process begins to give it a shape in a two-dimensional space. One maker is as good as the team he has. There is a common belief that cinema is director’s medium and it is really questionable! Maker’s thought transpires into visuals and sounds through interpretations with the help of machines and its masters. If it fails then the thought has no meaning.

A maker has no time to teach acting on the floor. Stars, often with their busy schedule, has no time like old actors to go through a span of quite discussions and unearthing of their characters in different kind of film environment of serious cinema. They serve partly in act. Same goes for other technicians too. Though cinematographers and editors are mostly come through a demanding process of institutes or apprentice periods still it remains unclear to them that there is a difference between ‘Technology’ and ‘Technique’. They only understand this if the philosophies and aesthetics of good films start to have a cast on their thoughts. So when they face the critical demand of good film most of the time they respond in a lesser note. Budget constrains are there and lack of imaginative practices has taken a toll already. They are ready with picture postcard cinematography or a low-key pattern of lights following so-called realistic movies of Hollywood. But they are not ready to work with a Makhmalbuf kind of thought process (experimental cinema in a journey). That hurts really.

A great maker is always on a journey to discover new language in a lesser sense and a total new continent for cinema in greater one. But co-travelers do need some acumen to follow him. So often it becomes an argumentative process and a battle of ego, as was in the case of Rittwik Ghatak and cinematographer Dinen Gupta. Dinen Gupta had told in an interview that often Rittwik had failed to understand technicalities and had made some absurd demands. Rittwik was not alive to counter that. So it is difficult to understand what had happened in actuality. But we can assume some things out of experiences of Baby Islaam, a renowned Bangladeshi cinematographer who several times acknowledged his learning from Rittwik. Why, then, is it so contradictory? It can be assumed from other references too. Dinen Gupta had made some so-called cinemas later on in Bengali and let me not elaborate on its merit. Baby Islaam had been a good cinematographer throughout his life. Remember those shots of a vast tract of lands beside Titas in ‘Titas Ekti Nadir Naam’? Slightly burned shots that allowed a void in our hearts as we know then that the river was drying and ‘Malopara’ was going to die. That was baby Islaam behind camera and Rittwik behind cinema. Dinen Gupta’s are so-called commercial technicians who knew too little of cinema to be a contributor. Even Ray had met with ego problems too and he had chosen to do it himself in music scoring. In other departments he had taken Saumendu Ray or Dulal Ray to comply with his thoughts. These men knew that they are not the maker and they had contributed a lot without getting into any ego-oriented problems. In later period other makers also faced such problems.

I am not trying to tell that all the directors are well equipped as I know that some are very reluctant or even ignorant in understanding the technical aspects. I have seen an eminent Bengali maker to walk in a television studio in a striped shirt and at that period video cameras were not able to handle so nearly weaved lines. He walked in and when informed had said in a very unhesitant manner that he does not know anything about video. He even does not care for it. On the other hand Godard had made some brilliant television productions. Here the difference in outlook is quite understandable. Rittwik was a maker who used cinema to deliberate on his thoughts and often had said that if he gets any more powerful medium than cinema he could accept that with all glee. Such a man was bound to be conscious about technology also. I should not elaborate any more on this.

My point of departure was the changing scenario in which Bengali cinema had walked in after 1980’s. As the ‘Star’ system grew in it a chaos was to be followed. Makers were bound to look after a content that suits this system. Direct reference to politics had become a strict negative. Cinema had lost its one strong alley. As cinema is no more a tool of social change makers had to retreat in an intellectual abode of artistry only. A picturesque shoot of church burning in ‘Uttara’ (Buddhadeb Dasgupta) had shown it with stress. A long shot of that takes you to such a distance, when you will feel no pain at all. You will probably feel that all in this world is in vain or ‘Maya’. Cinematographer Asim Bose, I admire him as a person though, had expressed a typical counter productive philosophy and obviously on the instance of Buddhadeb himself. That speaks volume in it. Cinema has become bloodless. ‘So-called’ good cinema had taken a place in Bengal. Then Gautam, Aparna, Rituparno and a new breed of young makers are also there to join this march.

We, who admire them as our comrades are now deserted by them. They are entitled to leave us as a few burdens, but we had our roles as viewers of good cinema. We might not have the advantage of number to out done an Amitabh Bachchan starred film, but we were there solidly. We went there to discover a whole anew world in there cinema and a few magic moments like the passing of train in the meadow in ‘Pather Panchali’ and we were left alone. Big stars, detailed and colourful sets, costumes, dubbed acting, technical extravaganza were all we got as a gift. We lost cinema. And our cinema had lost its meaning. It was bound to happen as good cinema by being personal (probable explanation of being non-political) had lost its root in society. Main stream movies have not made this mistake. They weave apparent politics of ‘Good versus Evil’ in their films to be in society (ask Ramgopal and he will tell you what ‘Sarkar’ is). They are doing businesses on the basis of social agitations.

Honesty that transpires from thought to film screen had taken a severe blow in this great betrayal. We still are seeing it dying. I had to revisit often those idiotic days that we spent to corroborate with a cinema without proper support. And I find out now that already then this doom was spelled. As those bunch of makers were fighting each-other to get a patronage of elders who used to call shots for national award selections. They had lost that battle there only. Honesty had left them un-noticed there.

Is it darkness then? I, in the present, am encountering some young bloods, which have no training as such, who even had not seen some greatest works of cinema, but who with the help of their handi-cams are trying to experiments with cinema. No. not with cinema, but with life and truth that comes straight and raw in their 3-8 minutes ventures. I think this is another beginning for our cinema, where the meaning and power of cinema will be revealed to them in time. They are our future cinema and for the present bunch of makers, let silence speak all.

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