The film is about 100 minutes long and
about as long as a walk of a family near the mountain Kanchenjungha The family spends here their last holiday. In the background we see
always the mighty mountain landscape whose existence seems to be
everlasting compared with the span of a human life. Paths delimited
by walls and balustrades are leading through this landscape – and
behind this demarcations one forebodes dizzying abyss. The free
moving space of the people (who walk through this landscape are
reduced on the limited space of man-made paths.
Kanchanjangha is a film about
limitations. That concerns the limitation of the film´s length its
frames and the very concrete and visible demarcations of the paths.
One even does not dare to think about deviating from this
demarcations because they are the border between the part of the
landscape which is accessible for men and the dangerous and
inaccessible part.
The father Indranath Roy represents the
societal power, a big industrialist who even considers the planned
arranged marriage of his barely 20 years old daughter as an important
economical business. He is someone who knows how to establishes power
if under the colonial rule of the British or under the rule of an
independent India. The brother of Roy´s wife is only interested in
the beauty of the birds and he has no interest in being involved in
the intrigues of men and their power which makes him to a close
relative of Manmohan Mitra in Rays last film Agantuk. The daughter
Roy's, Manisha is supposed to subordinate all her wishes for the
benefit of her father´s plans. They expect from her what Roy's wife
and an elder daughter already did.
During this walk all characters will go through a transformation or they will find a new cognition about themselves.
The youngest son of this family flirts
randomly with female tourists. During these excursions, the film
jumps from one person to another or from one constellation of persons
to the next. In one scene we see the daughter Manisha walking with
the man which is chosen by her father as her prospective husband on
these narrow paths. Later she meets Anil, a young man whose uncle
once worked as a tutor family.
The eldest daughter tries during this
walk to discuss the problems of her relationship with her husband
while their child who finally will be the reason that the couple
stays together) is riding a pony. They talk about divorce and finally
find a compromise. The woman (an actress) tears the love letters of
a lover and the husband promises to give up his guilty pleasures.
These characters who are close to a
primal landscape which begins just right behind the road side are far
away from their urbane home. It seems that for moments some of the
characters are getting rid of the constraints of an urbane upper
class culture.
Labanga , the mother has objections in
the plan to marry her daughter with a stranger and as his wife she
suffers most under the power of the patriarch Roy. In a very moving
moment, she sits on a bank and sings a song by Tagore. The only
person who listens to her is the brother who loves birds.
Anil, the young man who is looking for
work rejects a job offered by Indranath Roy because he is disgusted
by the arrogance of this rich man.Later he will admit to Manisha that
he never had dared to reject such an offering in his home town
Kolkata. But here in this wild landscape he felt enabled to do so.
The man who is chosen as the wedding
candidate for Manisha separates himself from Manisha. During the walk
with her he realized that she never will marry him by her own choice.
They separate almost amicable. He just takes another path and he
won´t appear anymore in this film.
Later the young woman will bid farewell
to Anil and expresses her hope to see him again in Kolkata. The film
ends where sympathies develop between the young people. Just the
notion that both of them came closer to each other seems here almost
like a Happy End.
Kanchanjangha is not a very long film
and though it seems paradoxically like an eternity from which see
just a few more than 100 minutes which seem to be visible just by
accident.
In a strange way the contrast between
the mighty mountain landscape and the people moving on strict
demarcated ways appears nearly dramatic. There is the landscape in
and beyond the demarcations of the paths and the inner world of the
characters who act in conventions - and seldom beyond it.The
landscape beyond human actions is always visible but it seems as
something engrossed from human concepts
It has been told that the film was shot in 28
days but sometimes it evokes the illusion that it is shot just during
a walk.
At the very end we see the patriarch
Roy alone on a path. The day is going to end. He calls his family.
Nobody answers. In this moment the old man seems to sense for the
first time that his power is neither unlimited nor infinite. Now, he
is not more than a mortal being surrounded by this mighty landscape.
Even though the persons, things and the
landscape appear just as what they are, the whole film seems to be as
engrossed like a dream And even though this film takes place on
demarcated paths the landscape beyond of this mighty Kanchenjungha
appears as a strange world of its own. Also present is the abyss just
a few metres behind the paths. There is a remarkable moment when we
see Manisha standing on one of this narrow roads. A horseman passes
by. One is scared that he will hit Manisha. He passes by a hair. And
at all – the characters move with an almost somnambulistic
precision like the abyss beyond the man made paths are no risk for
them.
Kanchanjangha is made during a period
where Ray made one wonderful film after the other. The fact that this
film remained relatively unknown and that it was mostly shown on
retrospectives in the last decades is for me hard to believe. Among
Ray admirers it is a kind of insider tip. If the film might be one of
Rays most beautiful films (what I believe) or if it is one of Rays
most daring experiments is of no consequence. My visions of Rays
complete work has changed enduring since I have seen this film. I
like to see the work of a filmmaker as a versatile and complex
landscape. Some paths through this landscape are well known and
proven, others are abandoned and forgotten but lead through a part of
a landscape which a like an exciting discovery.
Rüdiger Tomczak
(translated from a German text in
shomingeki No. 23, March 2011.)
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