Sights and sounds of Bengal

The best things that grace one’s life often drop in unexpectedly, without a hue and cry. One day, I got a personal email invite from Penelope Fowler-Smith, an Australian filmmaker and Aurovilian that stated “If you love cinema, theatre, poetry, music, photography, lyricism, beauty... please do not miss these films of Buddhadeb Dasgupta, Bengali poet and filmmaker.” It included a clincher last line informing me that an informal discussion with this auteur was also scheduled for the very next day. I immediately freed up my schedule to accept the invitation, delighted by this rare privilege of meeting one of India’s most acclaimed film directors of all times.

It was a small gathering – a spattering of film aficionados, peddlers of Indian culture, an odd tourist or two, and lay people like myself. Buddhadeb smilingly commented that it was the smallest gathering that he had ever addressed at a venue where his films were screened to which I embarrassedly responded that as a self-professed spiritual community, we were culturally ignorant. As the discussion progressed, this ignorance was revealed by people comparing his work repeatedly to Satyajit Ray, till Sohini, Buddhadeb’s wife and a filmmaker herself, bluntly pointed out that Buddhadeb with his minimalistic plots and surreal imagery was the polar opposite of Ray who favoured realism and leaned on strong narratives.

Better described as a “Merchant of Dreams”, Buddhadeb inimitably fuses flawlessly composed visual shots with carefully chosen music and sound to create an experience that like life itself embraces reality, fantasy, and even a surreal madness. Elsewhere, Buddhadeb describes his work as “extended realism.” A term, which to me implies, that Buddhadeb’s work exposes the limitations of the rational reality of our own lives: At one level, reality is inherently boring – “same home, same wife, same village” as Goja, a character in the film Tope (The Bait), points out; at another level, the personal reality of our lives blinds us to the madness of prevailing social reality – in the film Uttara, I was reminded how like the wrestlers, I too get obsessed and stuck in the mundane routine of my own life, turning my back on pressing social issues; and finally at a metaphysical level, in the movie Tope when the audience reels with shock at the action of the degenerate king, a deeper reflection leads to the realization that all the characters were being baited or using others as bait to get their needs met. Extended realism can also denote the fact that socially accepted reality is different from the individual lived reality of his characters, as exemplified by Goja in Tope and by Sumanto in Kaalpurush.

Buddhadeb forces viewers to pause, reflect, and draw their own meaning from his films. As he said at our gathering, he is “not interested in spoon-feeding the audience.” And given our consumerist culture where we are used to being passively entertained with strong story lines and fast-paced narratives, this aspect of Buddadeb’s work puts him in a class of his own. Buddhadeb has a unique talent of “suggesting” rather than “telling” through multiple story-lines that are woven together around one or two themes by intersecting lives of the characters and through evocative images. When Buddhadeb is at his best, the images depicting reality or illusions are skillfully blended with a surreal logic. However, surrealism is a challenging narrative mode, for when the “surreal logic” does not hold, then the montage of images jars the audience as occasionally happened to me, and one is unforgiving of the smallest incident that does not fit into the logical sequence.

Of all the skills of this audio-visual medium that Buddhadeb has in his repertoire, I was most taken by the images – long landscape shots, haunting silhouettes and lyrical compositions of colour and light. I was not too surprised, therefore, when Buddhadeb revealed, in the course of our conversation, that making films was a natural offshoot of his love for poetry, painting and his childhood fascination with still photography. He is a modern “Renaissance man,” for he is also an accomplished, published poet in Bengali, a prose-writer, a former economics professor and well-versed in the arts of music and painting.

A part of our discussion naturally focussed on seeking to understand Buddhadeb’s creative process and the source of his inspirations. But more importantly, we did not just get insights into Buddhadeb the filmmaker but also Buddhadeb the man. He was disarmingly honest in expressing his reluctance to use the word “spiritual” or have his work be described as “a quest for perfection.” Instead he spoke to us about the need of exposing our children to experiences that cultivate their humanity as his parents had done for him. Saying that while he has been inspired by some filmmakers, he has not been influenced by any of them, Buddhadeb attributed the rich cultural diversity of India (something that he had experienced as a child travelling with his family), his small- town upbringing, and the magical bed-time stories that were narrated to him as a child as persevering influences. Like all great artists, Buddhadeb transcends socio-cultural categories to recreate universal human experiences, values, and desires in his work. His films are all based in India and can be interpreted as commentaries on social issues in India. Yet, because he accesses the universal through the personal and the social, his films are widely appreciated all over the world, as is evident from the numerous awards he has won in the international arena. In that context, in our small gathering also The Mother’s abiding interest in films as a singularly creative medium that could help in fostering personal development was pointed out. Aster related how The Mother would not only have chosen films screened for the Ashramites and school children, but also engaged them in discussions about the movie.

Buddhadeb’s films do not always have a happy ending: The audience of Tope and Uttara decried that the horrific fate of key characters did not leave us with any hope for humanity. But I actually found his films to be realistic in that sense – I saw them as depicting life, where one is confronted with both good and evil.

As Sohini related to us, in a recent article in Bengali, Buddhadeb had commented that people lament when they lose hope in other human beings, but the pain is even greater when people lose hope in life itself. To me, the movies of Buddhadeb all have a sliver of hope running through them, for despite the evil that often befalls the principal characters, the actions of other minor characters give us hope that goodness will still prevail.

A distinguished director

Buddhadeb is the only Indian director who has had seven films screened in the Masters Section of the Toronto International Film Festival, which, each year, features the latest films of the top ten filmmakers of the world. He won the special director award for Uttara at the Venice Film Festival, is the first Indian filmmaker to get the Golden Athena Award at the Athena International Film Festival in 2007, and was honoured with a lifetime achievement award at the Spain International Film Festival in 2008. Most of his films such as Lal Darja, Mondo Meyer Upakhyan, Swapner Din and Kaalpurusn have won the National Film Awards in India.