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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. Although nowadays his films have won much critical acclaim, the fact is that in his time they were mainly running to empty houses in Bengal. Ghatak’s films project a singular
sensitivity. They are often shiny, 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 plunges into abject poverty and their love story turns sour as well. 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 stint followed by his return to his old Calcutta, he made Ajantrik (1958) about a taxi driver in a small Bihar town and his vehicle, a jalopy old Chevrolet. A variety of passengers gives the film a broader frame of reference and provides situations of drama, humor and irony.
However, his “magnum opus” 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 for a family of five refugees. Everyone exploits her and the tension is too much. she succumbs to
tuberculosis. In an unforgettable moment, the dying Nita screams “I want to live…” while the camera pans across the mountains, thus accentuating the indifference and eternity of nature while the echo reverberates on the shot.
Despite the complexities, Meghe Dhaka Tara reaches out to 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 presentation of a family struggle for survival, which has lost its dramatic force and poignancy through real-life repetition.
In Meghe Dhaka Tara, everyday events are transformed into grand drama: Nita’s tormented romance intensifies with 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 echoes through Nature, amidst from the distant peaks of the Himalayas.
The three main female characters in this film embody the traditional aspects of girl 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 looming source of her tragedy.
Also, 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 a great whole through an intricate yet harmonious blend of each part with the whole within.
film cloth. Meghe Dhaka Tara transcends into a great work of art that enriches and transforms visual images into metamorphic meanings…
The film’s music seamlessly intermingles with the visuals, neither taking away from the other, be it a remarkable orchestration of a hill motif with a feminine moan or a breathy cough with a rising song.
Here, it would be relevant to mention that Ghatak weaves a parallel narrative evoking the celebrated Bengali legends of Durga, who is believed to descend from her mountain refuge each autumn 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 language of the cinema itself through elaborate, sometimes non-diegetic sound effects that function alongside or as commentary on the image (e.g. the refrain Ai go Uma kole loi, i.e. Come into my arms, Uma, my girl, used in the last part of the film , sp., on Neeta’s rain-drenched face shortly before her departure for the sanitarium).
This approach allows the film to transcend its story by opening it into the realm of myth and the conventions of cinematic realism (eg 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 instead of
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 in 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, it 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 the 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 unpublished for years, he abandoned almost as many projects as he completed. Ultimately, the intensity of his passion, which gave his films his power and emotion, took its toll on him, 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.
