It is one of life’s greatest ironies that Ritwik Ghatak, who is something of a cult figure in Bengal today, was so little understood and appreciated during his lifetime. Even though nowadays his movies have won a lot of critical acclaim, the fact is that at his time they were mostly running to empty houses in Bengal. Ghatak’s films project a singular
sensitivity. They are often brilliant, but almost always defective.
Born in Dhaka (now in Bangladesh), the partition of Bengal and the subsequent division of a culture was something that haunted Ghatak forever. Joining the left-wing Indian People’s Theater Association (IPTA), he worked for a few years as a playwright, actor and director. When IPTA split into factions, Ghatak turned to film.
In general, Ghatak’s films revolve around two central themes: the experience of being uprooted from the idyllic rural East Bengal and the cultural trauma of the 1947 partition. His first film, Nagarik (1952), wove the oppressive history of a young man, his futile search for a job and the erosion of his optimism and idealism as his family sinks into abject poverty and their love affair also turns sour. Ghatak then accepted a job with Filmistan Studio in Bombay, but his “different” ideas were not well received there. However, he wrote the screenplays for Musafir (1957) and Madhumati (1958) for Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Bimal Roy respectively, the latter becoming an all-time hit.
After this brief period followed by his return to his old Calcutta, he made Ajantrik (1958) about a taxi driver in a small town in Bihar and his vehicle, an old junky Chevrolet. A variety of passengers gives the film a larger frame of reference and provides situations of drama, humor and irony.
However, his “magnificent work” is none other than Meghe Dhaka Tara (1960), the first film in a trilogy, which examines the socio-economic implications of partition. The protagonist Nita (played by Supriya Chowdhury) is the breadwinner of a family of five refugees. Everyone exploits her and the tension is too much. she succumbs to
tuberculosis. In an unforgettable moment, a dying Nita screams “I want to live…” as the camera pans over the mountains, accentuating the indifference and eternity of nature as the echo reverberates over the shot.
Despite the complexities, Meghe Dhaka Tara reaches the audience with her directness, her simplicity and her unique stylistic use of melodrama. Melodrama as a legitimate dramatic form has continued to play a vital role in rural Indian theater and popular dramatic forms. Ghatak returns to these roots in his portrayal of a familiar struggle for survival, which has lost its dramatic force and poignancy through real-life repetition.
In Meghe Dhaka Tara, everyday events are transformed into high drama: Nita’s troubled romance is intensified by the harsh whiplash on the soundtrack; Shankar’s song of faith in a moment of despair reaches the height of emotional surrender as Nita’s voice joins his and Nita’s urge to live becomes a universal sound of affirmation that resonates in Nature, amid from the distant peaks of the Himalayas.
The three main female characters in this film embody the traditional aspects of female power. The heroine, Nita, has the quality of preserving and nurturing; her sister, Gita, is the sensual woman; her mother represents the cruel aspect. Nita’s inability to combine and contain all of these qualities is the imminent source of her tragedy.
Furthermore, here Ghatak tries to delve into our roots and traditions and discover a universal dimension within them. And for the first time, he says, he experimented with harmonic techniques. In the film, Ghatak manages to achieve great wholeness through an intricate yet harmonious blend of each part with the whole within.
film fabric. Meghe Dhaka Tara transcends into a great work of art that enriches and transforms visual images into metamorphic meanings…
The film’s music blends seamlessly with the visuals, with neither breaking away from the other, whether it’s a remarkable orchestration of a hilltop motif with a female moan or a ragged cough with a rising song.
Here, it would be relevant to mention that Ghatak weaves a parallel narrative that evokes the celebrated Bengali legends of Durga, who is believed to come down from her mountain retreat each fall to visit her and Menaka’s parents. This double focus, condensed in the figure of Neeta, becomes even more complex at the level of the
the cinematographic language itself through elaborate sound effects, sometimes non-diegetic, that work together with the image or as comments on it (eg, the refrain Ai go Uma kole loi, that is, Come into my arms, Uma, my girl, used in the last part of the film, sp., on Neeta’s rain-soaked face shortly before her departure to the sanatorium).
This approach allows the film to transcend its story by opening it up into the realm of myth and the conventions of cinematic realism (for example, evoked in the Calcutta sequences).
“Meghe Dhaka Tara” was followed by Komal Gandhar (1961), about two rival theater companies touring in Bengal, and Subarnarekha (1965). The latter is a strangely disturbing film that uses melodrama and coincidence as a way rather than
mechanical reality.
His next film, Titash Ekti Nadir Naam (1973), made for a young Bangladeshi producer, focuses on the life and eventual disintegration of a fishing community on the Titash. However, this epic saga was completed after many problems on the shooting stage, including his collapse due to tuberculosis, and was a commercial failure.
It is worth noting Jukti Takko Aar Gappo (1974), the most autobiographical and allegorical
of his films, was made just before his eternal demise. Here, he himself played the lead role of Nilkanta, an alcoholic intellectual. The film has been talked about in critics circle for Ghatak’s amazing use of the wide-angle lens to the most powerful effect.
Unfortunately for Ghatak, his films were largely unsuccessful. Many remained unreleased for years, he abandoned nearly as many projects as he completed. Ultimately, the intensity of his passion, which gave his films his power and emotion, took its toll, as did tuberculosis and alcoholism. However, he has left behind a limited, but
subtly rich and intricate body of work that no serious student of Indian cinema can dare to ignore.