1.Something like a review
The film is very much at the same time. It is a chapter from the biography of one of the most important Bengali film directors Mrinal (called in this film Kunal) Sen, who was a mentor for Anjan Dutt. But it is also a film about the first encounter of these two man. Even though the time is not explicit mentioned, it is 1980 when Sen casts the young Anjan (called in this film Ranjan) for his film Chaalchitra (Kaleidoscope). In this sense it is Dutt´s second autobiographic film which begins where Dutta Vs Dutta ends. But it is as well a film about Kolkata.
We see them while shooting the film and often in long discussions. Beside discuusions about their different ideologies and the work on the film, there are moments when they talk more privately, about their families or for example how Sen became a filmmaker. These moments are hints that the relationship between the two men goes beyond a relationship between mentor and protege and it seemed to be something like these simple mundane but nevertheless poetic moments one can find in the films by Ozu and Ford. Like I mentioned the other protagonist is the city itself. Anjan Dutt played in his own films often very difficult, alienated and failed fathers or father-like characters. In this film he plays Kunal (Mrinal) Sen another father-like figure but exactly the positive opposite of the father in Dutta Vs Dutta (also played by himself, an aspect which connects and distinguishes these two films at the same time.
Sawon Chakraborty plays the young Dutt. Both performances moved me in different ways. Dutt´s portrait of Sen seems to happen completely out of his memory in his mentor without mimicking and without hyperbolic make-up. Sawon Chakraborty seems to me very credible as the lanky young man. There is for example the funny habit of Sen to collect match boxes. When I saw this film for the first time I enjoyed the affectionate humor. At the first sight I did not feel the same melancholy like I sensed in his Dutta Vs Dutta or Aami Ashbo Phirey. But when I saw it for the second time, I realized that the songs had as well subtitles (only one of them is sung in English) which changed my mood and changed my perception of this film.
There are two different alienation effects in this film. The one, often tangible in the shooting programme (which take places on non-designed real streets, in cars , trams and lanes and recorded with handheld cameras). Sometimes freeze frame shots interrupt the flow and suspend for a moment the cinematic illusion of movement, the film is for seconds reset to its primordial state, the photograph. This alienation effect reminds me in some films by Mrinal Sen. But since I watched the film again, I discovered a second and very different alienation effect which I connect rather with Anjan Dutt. The wonderful songs by Anjan and Neel Dutt might be the most popular elements in all films by Anjan Dutt. But the songs were always interwoven with care and very thoughtful into into the architecture of his films, as coordinates for orientation in the artificial spacetime of Dutta Vs Dutta or more experimental as another level of perception in Aami Ashbo Phirey or Finally Bhalobasha. The lyrics from the songs used in Chaalchitra Ekhon suggest a retrospective perspective, from another time rather our present than the passed time of the film´s narration. During this songs, the film sometimes digresses from the narration into lanes, market places or river banks etc. The narrative flow is interrupted and suspended for a moment. But sometimes they seem as well here the pendant to Anjan Dutt´s voice over narration in Dutta Vs. Dutta. While watching the film again, I laughed a bit less and felt a bit more the melancholuc under current. The film becomes more a memory of a time and especially of a person who is already missed. It is rather a personal, poetic cinematic epitaph. And those we miss, we sometimes remember with a smile.
There is a great moment which gives an image about the visual imbedding in Kolkata´s urban landscape. Ranjan Dutt and Kunal Sen are discussing on Sen´s balcony. Later we see them on the balcony from the streets in a long shot. The two characters appear now a living part of the city´s architecture. That is almost an Edward Hopper-moment.
My experience with this film
“I celebrate myself and sing myself
And what I assume you shall assume
For every atom belonging to me
as good as it belongs to you.”
(Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, published in Leaves of Grass))
While writing my review on this film, I came across of a lot of reactions, most of them share my enthusiasm, few of them are more reluctant reviews. Especially the more reluctant with which I can not agree made me thinking about a general problem of film criticism, the judgmental and often smart-alecky perspective. What is the right language one uses when one loves a film with skin, hair and bones despite its highly sophisticated alienation-effects?. It is relatively easy for me to articulate from the safe place of a reviewer why Chaalchitra Ekhon is a great film but I still think there is more and I am often too shy to articulate when films goes much deeper than for example satisfying the vain connoisseur in me. The kind this film evokes intense emotions and the kind the film haunts me uncalled for days, sometimes weeks, asks for a more personal perspective. Through the films by Ritwik Ghatak and Terrence Malick (from up to 2011), I got a strange awareness of vulnerability which stands often side by side with what we call great art. I could mention other examples, but this would be a completely different story. Moments in films which let me lose very easily the control over my emotions and which are burnt in my memory are the ending of Dutta Vs Dutta and Chaalchitra Ekhon. The faces who hunt me have nothing designed anymore (they seem often like modern version of Dreyer´s presentation of human faces in La Passion de Jeanne d´Arc) the emotions evoked by these moments hit me in their vulnerability. I experienced these moments as what I want to call cinematic singularities, strong moments of truthfulness in which the critic or the connoisseur in me is suspended for moments. Usually my cinephilia works like that: I watch, some moments evoke emotions in me or memories and I entrust the film with my innermost feeling like in a confesstional box or during a therapy session. But there are also experiences with films where this discreet intermediate area is more variable or even unstable. The faces, for example of Anjan Dutt or Sawon Chakrabory, are exposed, last but not least through the non-human but precise and often merciless non-human gaze of the camera. Is the exhaustion we see in these faces the performed exhaustion or do they include signs of exhaustion of the performers themselves or probably both together?
Like I suggested how the songs are integrated in Chaalchitra Ekhon, make this film a kind of very personal obituary on Mrinal Sen. The scene when the young Ranjan hugs Kunal/Mrinal Sen clumsy and cries in his arms is for me one of these strong moments where the awareness of just watching a film disappears for a moment. This images goes far beyond a mark of respect of a protege towards his mentor. It is a gesture of love of a young man for an elder man he wished to have as a father and who finally enables him to find his own path. While seeing this moment the end of Dutta Vs Dutta in my mind like a phantom image. Before this scene the voice over of Anjan Dutt resumes that no one from the family he was born in will ever see his films. This moment suspends again the artificial spacetime continuum of the film for a moment. Later we see this other “hug-scene”. Here, Anjan Dutt plays his real father called Biren in this film. Biren has lost everything. He is a very sick man, hardly able to move and unable to speak. The relationship the son (Ronno/Anjan Dutt´s Alter Ego as a young man)) had with his father was difficult. Now, he can not do anything but forgive this godforsaken lost soul with a last hug, the last gesture of love he can offer.
Shall I praise this work Chaalchitra Ekhon forged with the heat of life,- and art experiences or shall I praise the heat which made such films possible at all? Often , my most intense experiences with a film force me to admit that I don´t know nothing anymore at all. There is no question that personal filmmaking today is a big challenge. Despite the amount of work which is necessary, the sweat and the stress, Chaalchitra Ekhon looks appears like radical Caméra Stylo, written down and filmed like felt and thought, honest and authentic to the bones.
Rüdiger Tomczak
Wonderful... Filthy feeling
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