Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s Janala (Window): Almodovar-esque!

Girimohan Coneti   | Festivals & Contests | November 17, 2009 at 6:17 am         Print

Buddhadev Dasgupta has been making films (mostly in Bengali) for a little over four decades now. When I noticed that the Mahindra Indo American Arts Council had Buddhadev’s latest offering Janala (Window) in the line up, I instantly jogged my memory back to watching his Bagh Bahadur/ Tiger Man (1989) in the mid 90s. I also happened to see his Charachar (1993) and Swapner Din (2004). However, I have to confess his Bagh Bahadur left me astounded. He uses a technique of narration wherein the emphasis is not on thick plots, but on the simplicity of general human actions and their mild idiosyncrasies. Bagh Bahadur, for instance, was about a central character that does street dance theater by painting his body as a tiger. He hopes to win the affection of a girl with his dance only to be challenged by a real circus with a real leopard. I remember the lazy tracking shots in the climax scenes that exposed the rage and obsession of a man preparing to fight a leopard. When I watched Janala this past Sunday, I saw the same style of narration and the lazy tracking shots. The reason I find this interesting is because, I heard Shyam Benegal (delivering a speech at MIAAC), who has been making movies for over three decades talk about redefining popular cinema and changing his brand of cinema to keep up with this redefinition. Buddhadev definitely didn’t seem to think so given his unchanged style and approach to story telling.

Janala starts with a young couple’s discovery that they are pregnant. They decide to legitimize their relationship with a registered marriage. Bimal (Indraneil Sengupta) and Meera (Swastika Mukerjee) are just about starting their lives. Bimal works in a home for elders as a caregiver and Meera works in a call center. A few days before their marriage, Bimal decides to take a trip to Jhumurpur, where he went to high school. The school caretaker gives him a tour, even as Bimal reminisces his high school days, his lazy teachers and his mischievous classmates. He then notices a dilapidated window in the classroom where he spent his last few years of school. Buddhadev cleverly juxtaposes the metaphors of portals to dreams and destinations (of the window) with Bimal’s future. Bimal, as a student stared outside the window as if it was his portal to the outside world, of places that his geography teacher teaches him, of distant fantasies.

Bimal decides to gift a new window to replace the dilapidated, broken window. He promises the school caretaker that he would be back with the new window. Amidst his financial challenges, Bimal somehow manages to get a new window made that looks exactly like the one that is crumbling. When he delivers the window, he runs into the bureaucracies of the school board who decide not to accept the gift stating that a financial donation would have been more appropriate.

The story thereafter is the journey that Bimal takes with a few of his well wishers, including a truck driver who delivers the window, and a couple (both trapeze artists) who are also pregnant, who are running away from a circus to escape the contract shackles of the circus owner. The trapeze artists story is a clever parallel for Bimal to reflect upon his own impending marriage and the grave challenges people face to establish equilibrium in a world that is laden with selfishness and abject disrespect to noble values.

The pacing of the story is not rushed and Buddhadev does not fall for flashy fast cuts or intrusive music. It begs to ask the obvious question – does a veteran filmmaker really have to keep up with the new methods of story telling or is story telling so universal and ageless that one could use the techniques that they familiar with? Whatever the case, I enjoyed watching Janala. It was previously shown this year at the Toronto Film Festival (where it premiered) and the Telluride Film Festival.

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