An ode to Mrinal Sen

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Rare indeed, it is, to encounter a film critic making a bio-documentary on a filmmaker. But then, one has to concede that both the critic, namely, Chidananda Dasgupta, and the filmmaker - Mrinal Sen, are distinguished men in their own fields. The alternative universes they seem to carry around in their cerebral heads define their lives. So, surprising though it might appear at first glance, as you warm up to the fact, you learn to cope with the reality. Interestingly, Dasgupta is a filmmaker too, in his own right, just as Mrinal Sen claims to have had some interesting phases in his life as a journalist. Dasgupta earlier made two full-length feature films, namely Bilet Pherat and Amodini, respectively. Last heard, he was busy researching for a documentary on Prince Dwarakanath Tagore, the grandfather of Rabindranath Tagore.

“The film will have a running footage of 30 minutes. It will focus on Sen’s technique and his ideas, ideology and conception that led him to choose his subjects for his films. I should have thought of this earlier, but strangely, it escaped me. I should have made a similar documentary on Satyajit Ray while there was still time. I did not. Then, while I was researching for a book on Mrinal Sen, the Public Service Broadcasting System offered me a proposal to make a few biographical documentaries on some filmmakers, I jumped at the chance. That is how this film came about,” said Dasgupta.

But wasn’t 30 minutes too brief a span to capture a master filmmaker like Mrinal Sen? “Of course it is,” he said. “But that is the time constraint I have to work within. As a consequence, I had to give up my original ideas on the film. So, I have not been able to include all his films within my film. I have focussed on detailed explanations on some films like Calcutta 71 and Akaaler Sandhaane while I have kept out films like Genesis.”

Shot over a period of seven days, the film has a detailed interview of the filmmaker taken by who else than Dasgupta’s talented daughter Aparna Sen? The choice of Aparna Sen as interviewer is by design “not because she happens to be my daughter but because I chose to make the film centred on the interview. And I wished to choose a person who would preferably be a filmmaker herself/himself. That too, a filmmaker who is very familiar with and has deep regard for Sen’s work as a filmmaker. Rina (Aparna Sen), my daughter, has worked under Sen’s directorial wand as an actress and has done an in-depth interview with him for the magazine she edits. Besides, she is a filmmaker herself. She is articulate too. I wrote down the questions she had to ask. But as you must know, no questionnaire can remain rigid when one is interviewing a filmmaker. Rina made the improvisations whenever she had to. This has invested the interview with an air of spontaneity. The interview itself was shot over a three-day spread of shoots,” said Chidananda. “I decided to zero in on Mrinal’s own voice, his manner of breaking away from conventional norms of filmmaking, his dynamism and his vibrancy, his casual indifference to the traditional grammar of cinema to evolve his own individual style and language in my film,” he added.

The other strong element in the film is capturing the ambience of Calcutta, the city with an evolving history of its own. “Whenever one tries to recall the ‘voice’ of middle-class Calcutta as captured on film, the first name that comes to mind is that of Mrinal Sen. His films offer a microcosm of middle-class Bengali life in Calcutta, their problems, their hypocrisy, their pain and sorrow, their class struggle. So I, my chief assistant Aniruddha Dhar and my cinematographer Shirsa Ray wandered around the streets of Calcutta, took interior shots of the Town Hall, and some shots from inside a tramcar, traversing through streets frequented in the past by Mrinal himself who led many and adda with his friends of yore,” informed Dasgupta. The film carries archival clips from some of Sen’s films. “But this has been one of my main stumbling blocks because many of Mrinal’s films have just vanished without a trace. Such as Punascha, a telling comment on the man-woman relationship. A film much ahead of its time. So I had to make do with whatever was available. But I cannot say I am unhappy about the project,” he surmised.

Instead of shooting in the middle-class apartment of the Sens near Beltala Girls School in South Calcutta, Dasgupta turned his own Alipore Park Road apartment into a semblance of Sen’s flat for the setting of the film. Shelves filled with books, books and more books, masks of different hues and shapes, large-sized posters from international film festivals including the poster from Sen’s Berlin Retrospective with his face and his comment right there across the poster, were brought over from Sen’s own home to add the right dose of authenticity to this simulated reality. “I have tried to explore the mutations and evolutions in Sen’s ouvre as director. He first created a sort of a Marxist illusion in his films. Soon however, he stepped out of that trap to find his own language, to preset his own voice to his audience. I have observed his create illusion and reality together within his film. At times, illusion turns into reality and at others, reality metamorphoses into illusion. These are abstract qualities I wish to project in the film as Mrinal’s distinct stamp as filmmaker.” National Award-winning Arghya Kamal Mitra is editing the film. Shirsa Ray’s camera has tried to freeze Sen in his many moods. Sen writing, Sen brooding, Sen looking out at his favourite city from the terrace of his flat, the vast expanse of the Calcutta sky framing his salt-and-pepper head of hair. There is one shot showing Sen walking down a Calcutta street on a rainy day, oblivious to the rains drenching his milk-white kurta-pyjama. He never carries an umbrella you see!

Dasgupta honestly believes that Mrinal Sen’s contribution to Indian cinema has not been properly recognised or honoured. “Praises, awards, international acclaim have been showered on Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak, effectively marginalising Mrinal’s contribution. I consider this unfair and wish this film will shed light on his rich and unforgettable contribution to cinema per se.”

—SAC