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March
15 is Lady Ranu Mukherjee’s death anniversary
The
Last Lady: A documentary
 A
biographical documentary is no cakewalk, as many documentary filmmakers
will tell you. So, one has bio-documentaries of all kinds - the
long and boring ones, the incisive and unbiased ones that offer
an insight into the person behind the image, or an unabashed public
relations exercise. Rarely does a biographical documentary offer
education, information and entertainment at one go. Does Alok Kumar
Das’s 28-minute documentary on Lady Ranu Mukherjee fulfil these
aims? It does fulfil the first two - education and information but
there is nothing entertaining about the film since he has neatly
cut out the media stink the lady was often subjected to, when she
was alive. The film, aptly titled The Last Lady, has been scripted,
directed and produced by Das himself. Perhaps his school teaching
background of ideals and ideology spills over into his films. His
first film, Lyrics of No Life, made in 1995 and screened at the
MIFF, was an 18-minute, no-holds-barred account of the tragic lives
of people who live in the slums on either side of the notoriously
dirt-ridden and unhygienic Rajabajar Canal in Calcutta. The Last
Lady weaves its way back and forth beginning with Lady Ranu during
the last phase of her life and often telescoping back into her past,
tracing her evolution and growth as one of the best cultural czars
of India in general and West Bengal in particular. We see the Lady
as a little girl with her sister in faded B&W photographs clicked
in Varanasi, where she was born in 1906 and spent a part of her
childhood. Then, she began a correspondence with Rabindranath Tagore
and her life changed forever. Tagore influenced her parents to send
her to Santiniketan. She spent 13 years there, learning drawing
from none other than Nandalal Bose but mainly imbibing a deep passion
of art, music and culture. Marriage to Sir Biren Mukherjee, son
and heir of the industrial scion RN Mukherjee brought Ranu to Calcutta.
The film throws up the striking contrast between the infinity of
art and the finiteness of life by placing Lady Ranu on a wheelchair
with an attending nurse in the midst of her spacious living room
choc-a-bloc with some of the best antiquities and art and sculptural
creations in the collection and an Indian collector. Her priceless
contribution to the history, geography and culture of Calcutta is
The Academy of Fine Arts, residing in the heart of the city, in
the midst of a beautiful garden replete with sculptures and artworks,
leading to four art galleries at front and an auditorium for staging
plays and performances in the rear. Though the Academy was originally
founded in one corner of the Indian Museum, in 1933, Lady Ranu got
actively involved with it from 1947 and later shifted it to its
present premises, as living testimony to the beautiful heritage
architecture of a bygone day. The film will never win an international
award. Maybe, not even a State award. But it stands out as an honest,
devoid-of-frills tribute by a loyal lover of art devoted to the
memories of the city’s ‘last lady.’
Music by Debajyoti
Misra captures the ambience of the Tagore influence. Brief comments
by theatre person Rudraprasad Sengupta and filmmaker Mrinal Sen
highlight the lady’s patronage of art, sculpture and theatre,
something that sustains to this day, beyond her death. Ananda Lal’s
clipped commentary takes away some of the emotional cotent of the
narrative. Bijoy Anand and Ashoke Dasgupta’s lighting and cinematography
enriches the texture of the backdrop. Unlike noted writer Sunil
Gangopadhyay’s unabashed descriptive details about the alleged
‘affair’ between Tagore and Ranu in his recent novel Ranu-O-Bhanu,
Das upholds the dignity of Ranu’s unforgettable sobriquet -
lady.
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