The cinema of Ritwik Ghatak is the “Cinema of Nostalghia” not expressively in the same vein of how one defines the English word for the same, but more of, how Andrei Tarkvosky had titled his venture outside his homeland

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PART- 1 The Diary of the Country Priest

The cinema of Ritwik Ghatak is the “Cinema of Nostalghia” not expressively in the same vein of how one defines the English word for the same, but more of, how Andrei Tarkvosky had titled his venture outside his homeland, as he felt, that the Russian word had more connotation than the meaning formed in the English language. And, it’s Ghatak’s “Partition Trilogy” which expresses his deepest longing, and scars of the past; something that he carried with himself throughout his life from his days at the IPTA to his final years of an abandoned alcoholic. One of the deepest yearnings was to communicate to the masses, to be successful, thence an important reason for him to choose cinema as the medium of communication. In 1969, he wrote, “I came to cinema for this, not for filmmaking for its own sake. If a better medium comes up tomorrow, I shall kick out cinema.”

However, Ghatak’s dream remained unfulfilled, and with each passing year and the subsequent success of his colleagues and contemporaries to reach a wider market drew him further into a closed shell. To understand the formulation of his narrative and formal derivation of Ghatak’s Partition Trilogy there are three important and pivotal landmarks in his life that formed the basic cinematic grammar and visual strife in his films.

His visual and his films carried a certain tension and his narrative flowed in rhythmic pattern, because he allowed the conservation of his experience of the past in order to make a better sense and experience what is present. And it was finally the breakdown of this conservation through various modulation of cinematic techniques that created images and sound unlike ever seen or ever felt in cinema, hence creating an honest stimuli that affected and formed a deep longing with human emotion and, at the same, allowed a conscious overbearing.

It’s important to understand that the characters in the Ghatak’s Trilogy are similarly lost in their longing for the past that is clearly an attribute that is sculpted from the pains, sorrows and longing borne by Ghatak the filmmaker. Through these notes my idea is to recall the signs and symbols of expression and longing sown with the content (narrative) and form (mise-en-scene) of his films where all forms of expression and movement for the filmic character and the sculptor of the space and time (Ghatak) had a deep resonance to a nostalghia that could never seem to heal.

Ghatak’s first foray into understanding the dynamic of ‘ staging’ , ‘ writing’ and ‘ acting’ with a social and political conscious came with the IPTA (Indian People Theatres Association) that was formed in 1943. It infused new life to Theatre through the use of folk art and natural dialogues that was attuned to the realities of the time. It was was the staging of Bijan Bhattacharya Nababnna (The Harvest) that marked the shift into the reflecting the realism of the time, Bijan Bhattacharya wrote about the image that gave him the courage to write down the play:

I spotted in a Calcutta street a crawling baby fumbling over the corpses, searching for its mother’s breast. The mother was already dead. Even while we organized gruel kitchens to feed the starving people, I felt the need to do something meaningful. Only when I wrote my play Nabanna and staged it did I have the feeling that I have had at last become a mother to that hungry child even as I mothered my play to make it grow into a performance for the people. That image of the crawling child has haunted me ever since. Whenever in my creative quest I miss the crawling baby, I shift my positions endlessly until the child comes into view again.

The aesthetic of theatre formed an important core of his cinematic sensibility. The method and aspects of reflecting the life, the language, the social consciousness of people on screen with vivid realism and binding them with elements of folk, mythology and melodrama remained an important formal drive in his works. The mannerism of the characters in the Ghatak films always remained theatrical whether they appeared to be longing, desiring or reflecting. But the mise-en-scene did not regress because his editing technique especially that of the use of sound and music helped bring tension and truth through every emotion, gestures enacted on screen. This expression of a cut helped the mise-en-scene become expressionistic an evoke emotions that could not be achieved just by capturing an image.

“Each person should choose the ancients who suit him or her, so that in the adventure of the new, the living can catch hold of the dead”, the French- Tunisian poet Abdelwaha Medeb wrote; Ghatak did not have a cinematic predecessor, his usage of wide angle lens, the low, high angle shot and cuts, the dramatic lighting, the deep-focus and the usage of music and sound in his films were his original expression. Yet there lay an ancient with whom Ghatak and his cinema clearly identified- Rabindranath Tagore. The influence of Tagore on his work and the Bengali intelligentsia and common man is best expressed in his own words:

I cannot speak without him. That man has culled all my feelings long before my birth. He has understood what I mean and he has put in all the words. I read and find that all been said and I have nothing new to say. I think all artists, Bengal at least; find themselves in the same difficulty. It just cannot be helped. You can be angry with him, you can criticize him, you may dislike him, but ultimately, in the final analysis, you will find that he has the last word.

The final and the vital trajectory that binds all these aspects into one and forms the backbone of the trilogy is the ‘Partition of Bengal’. Ghatak who was born and brought up in East Bengal and associated with the cultural, tradition and heritage of the people could not come to terms with the partition. He could never understand the reason for segregating a place that had so much in common. The Partition of Bengal into Hindu dominated West Bengal, and Muslim dominated Bangladesh in 1947, marked the final scar and longing that could never be healed or fulfilled all his life.

Ghatak was well aware of the impossibilities of reconciliation, yet his ‘Sonar Bengal’ never left his veins and blood and ‘The Partition Trilogy’ is a fictitious account of these important love, longing and desires of his life told on the foundation of melodrama that went through several filters to create one of the most important set of films in the history of cinema. And it’s through these influences of his life that one can ‘identify’ and ‘place’ Ghatak’s imagery and iconography in time and era that he belonged, and the ‘Nostalghia’ that he so vividly and sadly kept ‘retelling’.

Since it’s this characteristic of the auteur Ghatak that shaped his mise-en-scene, the way the characters moved, the manner in which the camera movement related with them. And the relationship of the shot, the surrounding andthe space every object placed within the context of the trilogy offers not only the audience but also Ghatak to self-reflect and bring forth a vehicle that could sustain time through a representation in image told with subtlety.

Part-2: Tracing the origins of mise en scène in Ghatak’s Partition Trilogy.

Meghe Dhaka Tara (The Cloud Capped Star) marked an important shift in Ghatak’s introspection as a filmmaker, and his shift from his ‘New Theatre’ roots into forming his own cinematic syntax. Ghatak took Shaktipada Rajguru’s short story and retold it with such an original insight and mannerism that till today it stands as one of the greatest melodrama ever filmed on celluloid.

Nita the central character in the film played by Supriya Choudhary set the foundation stone for strong and polar women characters in the Trilogy. Nita who was an expatriate, a refugee of Bangladesh, had to work to keep the family together, it was her suffering, longing and her breakdown in the film, which everyone could not understand, that gave the film its vital narrative drive. Ghatak establishes some important formal and narrative techniques that would be a recurring motif through the course of the trilogy; the theme, mise en scène, and sound and montage technique.

Every element for Ghatak in the mise en scène from the stock to framing complimented the narrative in progress. Or sometime it was used solely for the purpose for remembering his past. Even in the context of the narrative it’s the precise use of coincidence and recurrence as leitmotif in his films that become like a time machine to travel back into his memory.

It’s in Meghe Dhaka Tara where he consciously allows the viewer in forming the imagery of the space through the course of the narrative. This actually helps in understanding the difference in relation of space and subject, as the narrative progresses on a different harmonic scale. Similarly, within the narrative Ghatak’s usage of coincidences that put the characters in a state of flux; breaking their mental barriers and giving them glimpses of people, places, and past through basic gestures and expression. For e.g.

“Shankar in Meghe Dhaka Tara on seeing a woman walking down the street having a similar dressing sense like his sister forms an imagery of her. It brings back the memories, the desires and the past of his beloved sister. Ghatak in Komal Gandhar (E-Flat) builds on the origin to again reclaim or move back in the past. Anasuya looking at Bhrigu’s fiery eyes remembers her mother. Similarly, when she walks out on the street during a procession, an unknown man tells her not to ‘tilt’ her head and look at him as it reminded him of his past.

Likewise, in Subarnarekha, when Ishwar is walking back with his nephew through the same space he once had come with his sister. His young nephew starts singing the song that his mother had taught him. This particular gesture reminds Ishwar of his sister, and he identifies with his young nephew and embraces him. Ghatak’s mise en scène forms the visual and mental bond of ‘identity’ and also establishes Ghatak’s deep longing for the ‘past’ and this become an important leitmotif through the course of the trilogy.”

The motif of ‘Ma’ plays a pivotal role in shaping the world of Ghatak films. And it’s through the central female characters in the Partition Trilogy that he expressed his longing for his ‘Ma’. Nita in Meghe Dahaka Tara is an important substitute to the ‘mother’ of the house. It’s her daily wages that feeds the family. Her father, played by Bijen Bhattacharya, has a deep love for his daughter, so has the brother. At each of the juncture in the film, Nita keeps her emotions behind to accommodate her family members; an important gesture, which most mothers in India are seen doing and accepting each day to sacrifice their own desire and allow their children to remain happy is an important part of families around the world – and Nita, in the film, does exactly that.

In Komal Gandhar (E- Flat) Anasuya becomes an important member between the two factions of the theatre group. Soon, Bhrigu who is the leading head of the troupe starts falling for her, and she again takes the central role of the ‘mother’ figure guiding the light for the whole troupe, and becoming the soul bearer and witness into the deep longing and desires of its leader Brighu.

It’s here again the woman figure achieves a central importance, more than the parameters of the narrative require. Although, his films were not feminist in nature but his representation of woman is embodied with his deep connection with ‘Ma’. Such a manifestation really becomes special, because the ‘Mother’ of Ghatak’s film holds and an important symbolical connection with the lost ‘Ma’ (Mother) of Partition, Bangladesh. The whole aspect of the ‘Mother’ takes an organic growth in his final and last film of the trilogy Subarnarekha.

Sita in Subarnarekha looks after her brother Ishwar just like her mother would have done, and Ghatak clearly expresses this desire through an important gesture in the film.

In Subarnarekha, when Sita is laying down the table for guest to come for lunch, Ishwar is looking at her. He is talking hesitatingly, and his gestures: facial and hand movement actually become like a young boy, who is sort of, confused. Ghatak, cuts to a close-up of Sita, she looks at him with slight stern eyes and says, “Why you talking senselessly”. Ishwar fumbles and throws his shawl. Sita picks it up, and cleans it; and scolds him for doing so, and says: “You become so childish…untidy habits”. He looks at her, holds her and brings her close, and tells her that her gesture reminds him of their mother. And goes on to add, “Every once in a while I get startled… I feel it’s my mother scolding me again” Sita on listening to this, caresses his forehead, and whispers in his ear, “Ami Tho Thumar Maa” (I’m your mother). This gesture and emotion in the finale of the Trilogy establishes his nostalghia for the ‘Mother’ that stands for both his lost homeland as well as the central dominant mother figure.

There is a significant association in the form of unrequited love in all three of his central women characters, who find it difficult to adjust or express their love truly in the modes of common interaction. And it’s precisely here Ghatak used music(Tagore)through which they expressed their desire and longing.

Nita in Meghe Dhaka Tara does not get her love in return, who marries her sister in spite of all her sacrifices. Nita in one of the poignant moment in the film requests her brother to sing with her and through the song her desire, sadness and longing are reflected. Similarly, Anasuya in Komal Gandhar sings to express her yearning and waits for her love, who has gone abroad to study. In Subarnarekha Sita does the same; singing and waiting for the return of her love. In all the three cases, the binding factor is the use of Rabindra Sangeet to unify and express the emotions, and in each case the music elevates the emotion to a whole different plane. Ghatak’s use of Rabindra Sangeet through the course of the trilogy expresses the desire of the lost past and the longing through Nita, Sita and Anasuya.

It is Only in Komal Gandhar, that Ghatak suggests a final bonding and reconciliation. On the contrary in Meghe Dhaka Taara and Subarnarekha, both the women lose out on their love. Nita to her own sister and Sita’s husband is killed in an accident. Hence the yearning and longing forms the cyclic pattern and continues. This is where the similarity between Nita of Meghe Dhaka Tara and Sita of Subarnarekha arises; especially the association with fact that the characters are sculpted and infused with life through layers of Indian mythology.

Although, the films of Ghatak were built on a solid foundation of narrative interwoven with shades of melodrama, yet he routinely used different aspects of the mise en scène and montage to offer depth and focus to recapture his past and allow the characters to do in return. Furthermore, they also served as a microscope to examine the social organism he was so closely attached to- the great Indian middle class.

Interestingly, Ghatak a sworn Marxist, never represented the ideology and perception of his beliefs onscreen unlike Mirnal Sen whose political lining formed a core patterns of his cinematic oeuvre. In Ghatak’s case it was the opposite. He knowingly and unknowingly spoke for the masses that he so desperately wanted to connect to.

Guru Dutt heightened and revolutionized the use of close-up in mainstream Indian Cinema and his close-up expressed grief and pain usually expressed through the eyes and face of the man himself. But in Ghatak’s film the close-up forms a necessary bond with the central female characters where their longing and nostalghia are deeply reflected through the gestures and rare glimpses of joy. However, what separated both of them is that, in Ghatak’s case ‘music’, through the expression of various sound effects, took the close-up to a whole new meaning and added an important dimension to the image, something that that could not be reflected. Hence, if mise en scène of a Ghatak film reflected the existence of a person, the motnage was used as an important ornament that allowed it to become a haunting expression.

When one closely looks at any of his films, one can witness the chaos with which his movies are cut; from high, to abrupt low or from wide lens to his sudden shift to telephoto lens and vice-versa, but within the schema of such chaos lay the harmony. Ghatak’s mise en scène is the representation of such harmony, which was made amidst the chaos of money, depression and desire reflected beyond the mimesis that Ghatak’s captured and represented. His mise en scène that was largely built on the foundation of various influences – scars and nostalghia – which he had been bearing with him for years. Also his choice for every movement of the camera, every gesture of the character and every relationship that the shot, the setting and the subject expressed reflected his deep longing and desire.

What sets Ghatak apart from his contemporary Satyajit Ray and other filmmakers is that his mise en scène always had a raw energy present. But, firstly because of the limited resources and equipment, and secondly, his nostalghia always came reflected with vehemence. Beside, his growth in experimenting with the formal technique of cinema and reflecting it on screen were based on his own personal life. So, while for a filmmaker, a mise en scène usually follows or compliments the trajectory and growth in narrative or the character, but Ghatak’s mise en scène actually reflected episodes and fragments of his life.

His usage of the wide angles lens in capturing and representing the exteriors that he so fondly captured is indebted to his memories of his growing years in Bangladesh. It’s precisely the reason why most of his characters in the trilogy are always lost in the spaces which they inhabit and are in incessant search for something or longing. The search and longing that were expressed through music were an important source, not just to add depth to his expression, but it also became a catalyst for exposing the inner truth when fused with his montages.

The origins of his close-up can be traced to how he captured with subtlety and with a certain calmness the expression and gestures of Nita in Meghe Dhaka Tara, wherein even a slight change of expression on her face infused life into the captured image,. However, the way Ghatak framed the shot- in a high or low angle, reflected the feeling and perception of the characters he so closely represented and especially Nita in the film.

This trace of actually tightening up the close-up on the character is not very evident in Komal Gandhar( E-Flat) where Ghatak’s close-up are more relaxed reflecting his mind and also the overall nature of the film. Perhaps, Ghatak after the moderate success of Meghe Dhaka Tara was wishing for a success with this movie, which had every ingredient that would make it successful. But the severe financial blow of the film took its toll on him, and it further added a sense of locking back into his own cocoon.

In Subarnarekha, Ghatak’s use of the close-up is tight and melancholic on Sita. The close-up in the end moves in extreme leading to her final demise. One could trace the origins of this shot in the close-up of Nita when she is walking down the flight of stairs after meeting Sanat in Meghe Dhaka Tara. And Nita and Sita are two characters of the Partition Trilogy who are reflection of each other. Another Brechtian aspect of his close-up was that sometimes the ‘spectator’ felt that the filmic characters directly spoke to them, breaking away from the ‘fourth-wall’ and one can feel this intrusive aspect of his close-up in Meghe Dhaka Tara when Nita’s father points out directly towards the camera Vis-à-vis spectator.

The use of the telephoto lens to flatten down the space works in direct contrast to the use of wide angle lens. Both the close and wide shot share more than the reflection and realities of the character. And every great filmmaker has a distinctive signature of using them in his oeuvre. Ghatak preferred composing in depth, and using all the three degrees of spatial plans available to him. The staging in depth in his mise en scène is seen from the opening shot of Meghe Dhaka Tara, where he places Nita in the foreground, her brother Shankar in the middle, and a train runs across in the background. Ghatak in the film continuously uses the space to form a ritual of emotions, drama and conflict and the ‘Tree’ reflected in the frames becomes an important witness to her changing fortunes of life and the characters who inhabit the space.

Ghatak’s usage of wide- angle lens in his mise en scène served two important purposes: One to allow him the freedom to compose in depth, and second to capture the geography he so much loved. The seeds of his wide-pan and wide shots can be seen in the finale of Meghe Dhaka Tara, when Shankar goes to meet Nita in the sanatorium. The entire scene is the foundation from where Ghatak’s revitalizes the shot in his subsequent film, returning to it again and again in capturing similar geographical landscapes- hills, rivers and mountains. When Anasuya and Bhrigu stand on the hill overlooking their homeland and the beloved Padma, Ghatak uses a similar wide-pan, where the camera moves from the right to left often capturing characters reflecting and reminiscing about their motherland. Ghatak takes the wide-pan one step further in Subarnarekha where Sita is seen singing, and evidently one can trace an important plane in all three subsequent crucial usage of the lens.Firstly, he establishes a visual code of capturing nature, which he loved, and secondly all the central characters in the scenes expressed some form of desire or longing. Nita in Meghe Dhaka Tara to live, Bhrigu and Anasuya their desire for their homeland, and finally Sita expresses through a ‘song’ her desire and longing or her unrequited love.

Normally most melodramas are classically constructed and the mise en scène also moved in that pattern, Ghatak’s does just the opposite, his film cuts at odd angles; from high to low, low to high and juxtaposes odd angles. This is an important ‘distancing’ technique he has used in his montage. Now this shift from different odd angles creates a chaos that could have made his entire work and especially this trilogy unwatchable, but it’s the genius of Ghatak’s that he could blend seamlessly such distinctive angle and cuts, and form such poetic rhythm. Furthermore, his montage and his mise en scène were guided by his mastery over different modules of sound effects. That gave a distinctive tension to the expression he usually brought out from the sequences.

Ghatak though is not a formalist, but his ability to mould distinctive sound patterns to create unique and haunting sound effects added an important voice to the image:. The voice of the past, longing, and sadness. The classic example of Nita coming down the flight of stairs in Meghe Dhaka Tara where her close-up is accompanied with the sound of lashing. Bhaskar Chanavarkar, a great musician in his own right, and who worked with many of the masters of Indian cinema describes Ghatak’s method of creation of ‘unusual’ sound’:

‘He breathed into an Indian flute to obtain a sharp sound like a shrill whistle, tapped on three different tablas with sticks, struck a Burmese gong, and so on, during one of his good moods’

The ‘sound’ served the purpose of adding a mental image into the minds of the viewer that the camera or the eye couldn’t perceive. Here the image is not only exposing the inner feeling of the characters but also the director himself, making the sound effect expressionistic in nature. This is precisely evident in the second film of the trilogy Komal Gandhar (E-Flat), when Brighu and Anasuya are reminiscing about their lost motherland towards the end of their conversation, there is a cut to one of the most haunting tracking shots in the history of cinema. Wherein the tracking shot pushes towards the blocked railway track that once were sign of union, but now were of separation. The sound effect which follows the tracking makes the mise en scène visually haunting.

It’s because of the experimentation with the usage of sound that the image transcends the boundaries of reality and become an honest stimulus affecting viewer senses. Furthermore, the off-screen staging of Sita’s death in Subarnarekha is a highlight from his oeuvre where Ghatak completely is in control of the forms of the medium. And it shows his understanding of the techniques of montage. He exactly expresses and calculates the movement of the image and punctuates the image with a startling sound at the precise moment of glances and build-up that the whole scene become ‘shocking’; due to the absence of the required ‘image’ of death which makes it even more horrific. The sound allows the brain to build up an experience in the absence of a priori.

Every element within the mise en scène evokes a deep nostalghia. This is evident through the course of the trilogy. For Ghatak, the trilogy offered him the means to recapture, rethink and reflect his own life and his own desires. Moreover, every character minor or major had a deep sense of melancholy for the past. Much like Ghatak they too were accentuated into an act of discovery about themselves, their history, their tradition, their culture in a new environment. Social, political, personal or private, every aspect of living became a documentation of looking at the past. In the end, it’s a small epitaph that the Bengali poet Michael Madhusudan Dutta wrote for his own grave that expresses as much for Ghatak as it did for him:

Stop a while, traveler!

Should Mother Bengal claim thee for her son.

As a child takes repose on his mother’s elysian lap,

Even so here in the Long Home,

On the bosom of the earth,

Enjoys the sweet eternal .

-Poet Madhusudan of the Duttas

Citation/ References:-

-Chidananada Das Gupta, Seeing is Believing: Page 222, 226

-Shoma A Chaterjee, The Marginal Man, Rediff.com

-The Film We Accompany, Raymond Bellour, Rogue

-Michael Madhusudan Dutta: Wikipedia

-JumpCut- Films of Ritwik Ghatak-Eric O’ Donnell

-Title of the article is a citation of Acquarello’s article on Hong Sang Soo on Senses of cinema.

Tags: Bengali Cinema, Indian Cinema, Kamal Gandhar, Meghe Dhaka Tara, Ritwik Ghatak, Subarnarekha

Posted By Nitesh | Saturday, November 14th, 2009 | Filed under Auteur, News