Film Impressions

REVIEW: Goynar Baksho

THE GHOST HAS THE LAST LAUGH

There’s something intimate and otherworldly about Rashmoni’s (Moushumi Chatterjee) wooden jewellery box. She guards it with her life and grudgingly doles out little pieces of intricate gold to new brides in the household with a bitter word thrown in to underline her disapproval. She keeps meticulous records of her cherished possessions and secretly tries them out in the confines of her chamber. They represent everything her life may have been if fate (or more accurately, the force of patriarchy) hadn’t played its cruel hand. Married at 11 to a much older man, widowed at 12, she has lived in deprivation and neglect ever since, her long tresses cruelly chopped off, her desires trampled even before she discovered them.

DVD REVIEW: Titli (2001)

CHARMING COMING-OF-AGE DRAMA

*This review contains spoilers

There are seminal moments in relatively ordinary films which stick in the mind for years. There's one such in Rituparno Ghosh's Titli, his most unusually light and bubbly, coming-of-age story appropriately shot in the misty hills and tea estates of North Bengal. Urmila (Aparna Sen) and her daughter Tilottama a.k.a. Titli (Konkona Sen Sharma, more on her performance later) are travelling to Bagdogra airport to pick up her father. Film-crazed teenager Titli draws the mother into a conversation about movies and stars and Urmila recalls how she once had a man with dark glasses sitting next to her on a flight but didn't recognise him as Dilip Kumar, and her obsession with Rajesh Khanna like every other woman of her generation.

DVD REVIEW: Paromitar Ek Din (2000)

KINSHIP OF THE SUFFERING 

Aparna Sen's Paromitar Ek Din (House of Memories in English) explores female bonding between two formidable women trapped in a rigid patriarchal family. While the edifice of this oppressive system is crumbling as gradually (but surely) as the old mansion the family occupies in North Kolkata, these two women must pay a heavy price for their individuality in the meantime.

The film opens with a framed photograph of Sanaka (Aparna Sen) and then on to a bright courtyard where her death rituals are being performed. Against the backdrop of a priest chanting mantras, we see Paromita (Rituparna Sengupta) sitting quietly in a corner observing the scene playing out before her, but mostly lost in her own memories of the deceased. The narrative, which travels freely in time taking the shape of Paromita's reminiscences is framed entirely from her point of view, beginning with her entry into the Sanyal house on her wedding day as Sanaka's younger daughter-in-law. 

Rituparna Sengupta

ESSAY: The Curse of the Cerebral Woman

WHERE ARE THE CLEVER WOMEN?

While browsing through titles at a Crossword’s in Mumbai, I came across a book that carried a recommendation by the actress Gul Panag. Now, ordinarily publishers would quote such worthy progenitors of good taste as the New York Review of Books, or the color supplement of The Hindu or even that most prolific of ‘blurbers’—Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. It wasn’t quite a ringing endorsement either. Panag said, of the book, “It’s such a quick read that I’m surprised I didn’t finish it earlier.” Quite cleverly back-handed there, and I’m sure she totally gets the irony, because although celebrities are now ubiquitous at book launches and readings (that’s the sideline that keeps them afloat), they’re usually not the go-to people for literary seals of approval. Not to take anything away from Panag, she is considered one of the few ‘thinking’ actors out there, but that blurb did still seem a little out of whack.

REVIEW: Iti Mrinalini

PRETENTIOUS AND POINTLESS

An aging actress has come out of self-imposed retirement of 15 years (she went off cinema because Satyajit Ray died without working with her) to play Kunti in an arty English language film about Karna. At the film’s after-party, she finds out that the much younger director (Priyanshu Chatterjee) who’s also her lover, has offered the lead role in his next to a younger actress after pledging it to her. The actress decides to commit suicide. She goes home, tells her maid she’ll be sleeping in late, and proceeds to rummage through a trunk filled with old albums, posters, diaries and other memorabilia which takes her on nostalgic journey.

Her life unspools in flashback. She may be an actress by profession, but the memories are mostly about former lovers and a love child, and about life passing her by. By the time it’s all done, dawn is breaking through. Sleeping pills in hand, she spots messages and missed calls on her phone. They’re from another lover saying, “I’m there”. She puts the pills back in the bottle for another day and takes her dog for a walk instead.

Aparna Sen with Priyanshu Chatterjee in Iti Mrinalini