Was the National Award a big inspiration though commercially Herbert, your first film, did not do well?
Herbert did not do well commercially because of bad distribution. The DVD sales of the film suggest something very different. Even before it got the National Award, the DVD sales were good. The National Award is a great encouragement for a debut director.
From a contemporary novelist you moved back to Tagore. Why?
The novel has provoked and disturbed me since my college days. It interrogates our perception of the human evolution. Chaturanga does not provide a single reference to the contemporary political situation. I think Tagore was trying to address deeper concerns about human ethos and codes of existence. In the film, the protagonist Sachish metamorphoses from a staunch rationalist to a devout spiritualist. Yet, there is a complete reversal in Sachish’s viewpoint and perception about religion, faith, etc. at the end of the film.
Have you remained faithful to the Tagore original or have you taken licences for the sake of the different medium of cinema?
I have taken some creative licenses. I always try to remain faithful to the original text. It is obvious that the moment a novel is adapted for a different medium, changes are inevitable. In Chaturanga the narrative movement of the film is different from the novel. Tagore tells the story from Sribilash’s point of view. However, to give the whole thing a cinematic expression, I decided to forego that. There was to be no voiceover explaining the psychological nuances. Everything had to be conveyed through visuals and sound. Damini or Nanibala’s muted desires for instance had to be conveyed through movements across spaces, looks, framings, or even landscapes and elements. I decided to impart a spiralling, fragmentary structure to the fourth ‘chapter’, the segment entitled Sribilash. Tagore himself has a strong presence in my script through his two poems.
We would like to know about Debajyoti Mishra’s musical score. We hear he has experimented a lot with Sufi, Tagore, Keertans and even Bauls.
The Sufi songs were my idea. There are more than a dozen songs and songlets in the film. They create a soundscape that accompanies the dialogue. Chaturanga is a human drama of extreme ideals and repressed desires. The songs express feelings that cannot be uttered. Most of them are from folk traditions of Bengal and North India that are eclectic blends of Islamic, Buddhist and lower caste Hindu thought. They are testimony to a syncretic civilization that exists till date despite the religious intolerance of our time. The songs, especially those from the Vaishnav tradition, are erotic. Radha’s love for Krishna is beyond all social norms. It is directly expressed, without the Brahmin sanctifying the union. When devotees sing and rejoice in that form of love, it is thus a popular and democratic process that defies caste divisions.
How did you re-create the period the film represents?
I desperately wanted to avoid a synthetic studio look. It was important to recreate the period, but we were careful in not packing frames with so much material that they end up looking like museum interiors. Props were thus sparingly used, despite the fact that the beginning of the film is set in a pretty affluent Bengali household. We did our historical research and worked very hard to find real locations.
Do you permit your actors to interpret the character or are you extremely rigid about your personal perceptions of how the character should be enacted and portrayed?
Dhritiman Chatterjee was an obvious choice for his role, not only because of his suave, urbane presence, but also because of his iconic ‘young radical’ roles in Ray’s films. Rituparna will surprise everyone as Damini. Ritu brings both fire and a poignant vulnerability to the character. Faces and voices that remind one of hidden demons in the human mind without resorting to caricature. Subrat Dutta’s wild-eyed intensity made him a natural choice for Sachish. Joy, on the other hand has a very noble face and bearing. The key to Joy’s marvelous performance is the effortless manner in which he has blended deep empathy with profound irony.
Though I am rigid when I need to be, I give them freedom when I find their suggestions commendable.
A brief of the film?
Chaturanga is about a love caught between conflicting worlds of ideas. Set in Colonial Bengal at the turn of the twentieth century, the film weaves a rich tapestry of crisscrossing desires and moralities. The protagonist Sachish fleets from radical positivism to religious mysticism in his quest for life’s meaning. However, his search leads to disillusionment. He fails to square his abstract ideals with the powerful presences of two women in his life. One of them is Damini, a young Hindu widow, and the other is Nanibala, the abandoned mistress of Sachish’s brother. During his later religious phase, he pretends that the widow Damini is merely an enticement of Nature to be avoided for spiritual salvation. After a point, Chaturanga becomes a psychodrama of unbelievable cruelty. I am grateful to Avik Saha and Campfire Films for producing the film.
