Bengali

Shesh Thikana
Disappointing
Prabhat Roy promised his audience that in his first film of the millennium, he would celebrate the tolerance of the Indian woman down the ages and crown it with a tribute to the rebellious woman of the 21st Century, whose threshold of tolerance is far removed from that of her predecessor. Alas! This film, Shesh Thikana, has not been able to live up to that promise. Yet, in an ambience of shoddy films like Sasurbari Zindabad and Sindur Niye Khela, it does offer a ray of hope. The intentions to make a good film within the mainstream format is by itself an assurance of better things to come.

Sreeradha, a dusky young beauty, has learnt to rebel against any injustice to women in general. Her grandmother has inspired her not to take things lying down. So, when she discovers a Harijan woman being burnt by her husband and mother-in-law, she rescues her. She dismisses her upper cast parents’ pleas not to get involved. Yet, strangely, when her lover suggests that she marry a man of his choice, she agrees at once. Marriage to a young marketing executive takes her to Mumbai. She soon discovers that her ambitious husband has no qualms about using her to realise his ambitions. She rebels when he tries to rape her and Roy thus does his quota of celluloid lip-service to marital rape. When Sreeradha asks a woman who has quit her husband’s firm about why she quit, Roy brings up the issue of sexual harassment of women in the workplace. Sree rebels yet again and divorces her husband to come back to her parents. Then, she suddenly tries to find her independence through films.

The link is a director of art films she met on the Mumbai-Calcutta flight. She is fascinated with his approach to filmmaking. He casts her as the leading lady in one of his woman-centric films and she is happy. But only till the sweet-smiling mask of the director is ripped off to reveal a man who breaks every womanly cause he espouses through his award-winning films.

In so doing, Sree is trapped in a severe burning accident which leaves some scathing scars. Finally, she finds love with her London-returned doctor who has settled to help the rural poor with his medical practice. The closing scenes show the couple with their daughter who is now a doctor, newcomer Jaya Seal in a dual role, introducing to her parents the man she wishes to marry. “We took so many years to make the decision of spending our lives together” Sree tells her husband, adding, “but our children have done it in a minute.” That is why they are 21st century kids, the film sums up.

NSD graduate Jaya Seal, who made her debut is Buddhadev Dasgupta’s Uttara, has done remarkably well as Sreeradha and her daughter. She brings in a whiff of fresh air in a world filled with jaded faces. She is not beautiful in the conventional sense. But she exudes an aura of confidence and sensuousness, rare in feminine personas of the Bengali screen. Supriya Devi with her white wig hams her way as the influential grandmother who has a long ghost-scene focussed on her. Of the three men in Sreeradha’s life, the top award should go to Sabyasachi Chakravarty, the man she finally marries. Ashish Vidyarthi in his debut-role in Bengali cinema as the art film-maker, plays too much to the gallery and tends to over-act while good-looking Sanjeb Dasgupta as the husband ought to take a sabbatical to go back to acting school. A few of the marginal characters have been fleshed out well while the others are allowed to wallow by the roadside. The songs are okay but too, too long and could do with some merciless clipping. The cinematography is impressive and perhaps, one of the high points of the film. Roy seems to have had a personal axe to grind with one of the biggest young directors in Bengali cinema today whose directorial films are bagging international awards and screenings left, right and centre because the director’s role in this film is shaped after this real-life director in Bengali cinema.

The film is too blatant a statement that reinforces the very accusations Roy labels his art-film-director character with. His lip-service to the woman’s cause is belied throughout the script at every turn. So much for her rebellion. The disappointment stems from the fact that one expected much more from Prabhat Roy who gave us some good socially relevant mainstream films like Swet Patharer Thala and Laathi.

Shoma A. Chatterji