Ritwik Ghatak, the lone voice
iView Author: Siddhartha Banerjee (Kolkata, India)
EMAIL: sidban1 [at] gmail [dot] com
Title: Ritwik Ghatak, the lone voice
Ghatak’s films were an artist’s rebellious, painful, naked howl that cuts through the entire fa'§ade of so called decorative and bourgeois art; screaming with a brave and indifferent ‘I deny’.
Creativity, more than the art-form, is concerned with ideas and thoughts; the medium or the art-form doing as much as to ’support’ the expression. The greatest of the artists (Kafka being a notable example) were almost always spontaneous, where the creative ideas/ inspirations have literally ‘exploded’ out, without any ‘dressing’. Great works of art (like Dostoevsky’s ‘The Idiot’), are in many cases incomplete, yet bursting with inspiration and intensity.
Like Dostoevsky, Ritwik Ghatak too lived his thoughts and ideas in his personal life; suffering not only theoretically, but also physically, from acute alcoholism, alienation, isolation, etc. As Shahani (one of his prized pupil) had once explained, Ritwik Ghatak was “disenchanted with those of his colleagues who wanted to maintain a false unity and were not, implicitly, pained enough by the splintering of every form of social and cultural values and movement.” A curious parallel can be drawn from the characters in his films: when they smoke (which is mostly ‘bidi’), they smoke with a tremendous intensity and hatred, in stark contrast to Ray’s characters (smoking cigarettes) who smoke elegantly, intellectually. This is not to say anything against Ray’s work in any way. Ray is and will always remain one of the greatest directors that world cinema has ever produced.
Ghatak, like Joyce (or Ginsberg) in literature, had created his own style (like usage of sound alongwith deep-focus to create different layers of background) in order to express himself. His style was tailored to express ideas, problems, and issues deeply rooted in the epoch in which he lived; and yet, transcending beyond boundaries and epochs. Capturing Bengal in the 50s to 70s, his films revolved around themes of partition, alienation, existential struggle, always seen from an individual’s view-point, never impersonal. The artist’s spontaneity, pain and empathy were always visible.
Ghatak consciously held out against succumbing to the upper-middle class Bengali audience (often called the ‘intelligentsia’), who were far removed from ground-level problems like famine and partition. As a result, Ghatak could never reach upto their cozy, fashionable drawing rooms (like the bust of Goethe described in Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf). His films spoke with a self-consuming intensity which never gave any comfort to the audience. Only those ready to face it with all its stark cruelty were welcome to his myriad world. This lack of ‘feel-good’ factor was a key reason for his limited appeal in India and the West (there were other reasons though, like planned sabotage by political establishments). He himself once said – “I do not believe in ‘entertainment’ as they say it or slogan mongering. Rather, I believe in thinking deeply of the universe, the world at large, the international situation, my country and finally my own people. I make films for them. I may be a failure. That is for the people to judge.”
As Ghatak is being rediscovered these days, as generations to come will wonder at his films, as his films will continue to speak across the boundaries which had systematically tried to finish him off, a dark question will again and again come to haunt us – ‘Are we too, not responsible?’
Tags: Dostovski, Hermann Hess, Joyce, Kafka, Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Shahni, The Idiot
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There are very few directors who can reach the heights of Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak is one of them.
One has to see ‘Ajantrik” ! one of Ghatak’s most beautiful films. The magnificent editing and the brilliant editing. Making an object (the ‘car”) talk for itself !
nowadays cinema is synonym of entertainment.. quotes and stories of people like Ghatak inspires and motivate genuine people to trade their chosen path.. great post.
by d way i m curious to know more about the planned political sabotages.
His movie has great intensity. One of the reasons I love his movies is that I think each scene of his movies have some meaning. Sometimes after re-watching the movie I am able to find that even in the simplest of scene Ghatak was trying to convey something. For example, in Subarnarekha, there is one scene in which a man is shown who is just starting his journalism career. He is very enthusiastic and tells his senior that he wants to set high standards in journalism… Thats it for this part and then he is never shown in the movie. In the end of the movie he is shown again. I barely recognised him. But at this point Ghatak showed a different person. He was totally lost uninterested in his work. Ghatak always tried to say something even if it was not the main plot of the movie. And what he wanted to say is what he had seen in his life. I am totally sure of it. Ghatak movies are like someone is showing me his personal experience. Therefore he remains for me the greatest directors India has produced.
when they smoke (which is mostly ‘bidi’), they smoke with a tremendous intensity and hatred, in stark contrast to Ray’s characters (smoking cigarettes) who smoke elegantly, intellectually….BRILLIANT! but i think its also cz of the offscreen image of both d directors….the way we hav seen them….Ghatak looked like a chracter from one of his films, u feel like u can approach him n talk to him but not with Ray. He looked every bit of any upper middle class bong intelluctual….also it looked like a big rural/urban divide!
I have tremendous respect for Ritwik Ghatak and Ajantrik is one of my favourite films. But his somewhat obstinate political rant flavored with a particular ideology sometimes pisses me off. In all the political films he made, there is a constant effort to impose the opinion on the audience, rather than being narrative and let the audience to form the opinion. May be it was his idiosyncratic style, but when you compare Ghatak’s work with the great political films made around the world, he does seem a little loud.
Very well written article !!
Infact, Ghatak was shattered by the partition of that “orphan state” (later to become Bangladesh), and his stories and images are permeated with the personal urgency he felt for the people whose lives and culture were irreparably ruptured.
Yet his films also have a vital, regenerative power, fed by the artist’s insatiable intelligence and his skillful integration of popular forms of culture – melodrama, songs, and dance – into politically radical themes. His major influence was Eisenstein, and he said, “I have wanted to use the cinema as a weapon”