Arguably, Bengal has the richest literary heritage in this country. Advantageously, many excellent films have emerged from the captivating crevices of Bangla writing.
We could safely add this ambrosial adaptation to the hall of fame.
Director Suman Mukhopadhyay’s Putulnacher Itikatha (released on 1 August) is a lush, layered, luminous look at the wages of patriarchy, the burdens of an “English” education during a time when India was under colonial rule, and it also taps into the taboo subject of female sexuality at a time when women were supposed to show only those emotions that flowed from the eyes.
Significantly, the most exploited woman in Mukhopadhyay’s village Gaudia, Sendidi (Ananya Chatterjee), goes blind in one eye after a neglected attack of Smallpox: patriarchal arrogance manifested in gender discrimination and decimation.
The novel, and happily its film adaptation, is soaked in socio-historical ramifications, though never at the cost of a fluid storytelling. Director Suman Mukhopadhyay’s narrative propulsions are remarkably coherent and uncluttered. The wider relevances of a society in frenetic flux are not allowed to impinge on the, shall we say, cinematics of the storytelling.
Cinematographer Sayak Bhattacharya lenses the lush greenery and the spiritual aridity of the village in welters of wistfulness, as if the narrator’s regretful voice-over was being given a visual form.
Standing tall in the stream of confounding flux is Abir Chatterjee, in one more triumphant portrayal of a character caught in a changing social order which he can neither escape nor change. Abir’s Shashi is a doctor in desperate need of healing. Shashi is progressive and yet trapped in this village and its primeval values and beliefs.
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Admirably, the director opens up the original novel without tampering with its timorous interpretation of the characters’ inner world. In the way the young and innocent Moti (Sargana Bandyopadhyay) seeks escape from the stagnancy of her village by marrying a charming travelling Jatra actor Kumud (Parambrata Chattopadhyay, charming), I was reminded of Gulzar’s Chinki (played by Kiran Vairale) in Namkeen.
We know nothing about what happens to the naïve Moti after she leaves her village. Is escape even possible for these characters, trapped as they are between tradition and transition? They all slip through the cracks, none more so than Kusum (a spectacular Jaya Ahsan) who openly lusts after Shashi, who lacks the courage to accept Kusum’s attentions.
Kusum, come to think of it, is the most progressive character in Putulnacher Itikatha. She is outspoken about her bodily and emotional needs. She is denied both. But at least she tries.
The least satisfying subplot in the film involves a “sun scientist” Jadav Chatterjee, played by the redoubtable Dhritiman Chatterjee, struggling to give shape to a nebulous part. This is the most unfilmable part of the original novel. The fact that writer-director Suman Mukhopadhyay has dared to venture into even the most literary parts of the novel so fearlessly is a measure of his confidence and his astute vision of a world where the only certainty seems to be uncertainty.
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