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'Out of Ordinary Lives Emerges Something Extra-Ordinary': Dasgupta
New Delhi:
In many ways, filmmaker Buddhadeb Dasgupta is a typical product of the turbulent Seventies. The poet in him with pronounced, pro-Left sympathies could not hold himself back from the volatile atmosphere of the time. Dasgupta says that he never intended to be a political filmmaker. The fact that one can discern a political point of view in all his films is testimony to his awareness and his commitment to lend his voice to the time he lives and works in. Little-known facets of Dasgupta such as his love for and talent in painting, the deep influence of poetry on his life and on his films, his admiration for music in all its myriad forms emerge at different points in Portrait, a 21-minute documentary on the filmmaker by Sankho Ghosh, a documentary filmmaker.
Dasgupta's directorial style can best be described as 'anti-narrative'. The abstract collages that he puts together in his films do add up to a plot and theme but no necessarily a cohesive storyline. 'When you unfold a storyline, there is always something in-between,' explains Dasgupta. 'I have never strictly believed in narrative structure. In Charachar (The Shelter of the Wings), Lal Darja (Red Door), Bagh Bahadur (The Tiger Man) and Phera (The Return), you have a story. But slowly, as the films unfold, you realize that the story is not guiding you any more. There is something else that is guiding us forward, you have to wait and watch. I think I have never followed Ray’s narrative structure or Ghatak’s, but at the same time, I see Ghatak as an important person in Indian film history who attempted something in between narrative and non-narrative in his film Ajantrik (Pathetic Fallacy.) It is not outright narrative or outright non-narrative. I have also not followed a narrative pattern nor have I disowned it completely.'
His movies are about journeys and of loneliness. 'I never allow my sensibilities to follow the kind of rationality that is accepted and understood all over. I’d rather push it beyond the borders of rationality, where poetic rationality makes creative endeavour more significant,' he says, when asked whether it is poetry that serves as an inspiration, since he is a poet himself. 'I began in a small way with documentaries. I made a ten-minute documentary in 1968 titled The Continent of Love. I did several more in the following years, including King of Drums (1974) which won the Best Documentary Awar.' he says, going on to state that he never honed his skills and the art of film-making at any film school. “I learnt about my craft from watching films, reading about them and listening to people talk about them.'
When asked what makes him explore the anti-narrative within the narrative, Dasgupta says, “I never stop mixing a bit of dream and magic with the reality around me. Otherwise, it becomes very predictable, repetitive, boring and tedious. This is a process of evolution that started a long time ago. I was in primary school and a magician came to perform for us. My first encounter with the magician and his magic taught me many things in life – that one can blend magic with love and magic with loneliness. I believe that dreams are an essential ingredient of life and in its absence, one might actually invite nightmares, which is also a part of reality at times. Dreams and nightmares are just a part of reality and not the whole of it,” he elucidates.
He still finds inspiration from Andrei Tarkovsky’s structural pattern of filmmaking. There are others like Luis Bunuel, Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman who have been favourites. “But I always attempt to find out my own way of interpreting images which has the least to do with the styles of my favourite masters. I find people writing about their style, talking about it, falling in love with it and at the same time, condemning and rejecting it, but I cannot help it,” he says. Asked about the positioning of Indian cinema vis-à-vis the world, he repents the failure of Indian cinema in drawing international audiences for the reason that they are “Indian” and just that. But Iranian cinema on the other hand, is universally acclaimed. It has a steady audience and a good distribution network to support it. For Indian cinema, the borders are just about beginning to widen. “The problem is that Indian cinema is so vast in term of quality, quantity and genres that it is nearly impossible to define Indian cinema per se.”
Swapner Din starring Prasenjeet, Rimi Sen and Rajesh Sharma is based on Dasgupta’s own story written out completely as a script. “It is based on my favourite theme – never mind how ordinary we might be in life, we never stop dreaming. We are in fact, born out of dreams and dreams are born out of us. All I can say at this moment is that the film weaves itself around the dreams of three different persons and their journeys in search of their dreams which intersect at a point.” The film won the Best Director Award for Buddhadeb Dasgupta at the 52nd National Film Awards this year, adding one more feather to his illustrious career. Another film, Kaalpurush, is drawn from two published novels of Dasgupta – America America and Rahasyamoy. 'Since I work with a loosely structured narrative and do not believe in a linear narrative, I have no problem dealing with several strands and bringing them together. This film is about the relationship between a father and his son and how the relationship undergoes mutations over time and space, influencing in turn, their relationship with others,” explains Dasgupta. “The father and the son are both failures in life, if one is to take ‘failure’ in the common-sense meaning of the term in an era of globalisation and material success. They choose their way of living and have no problems with doing so. But is the world they live in prepared to accept this ‘choice’? These are questions I hope, the film will raise.”
“I find myself getting involved with ordinary people more and more. I have discovered that out of the ordinary, what emerges is something unique, something extra-ordinary. This is true of all my films and these two films are no exception. Other than dreams and the loneliness of individuals, my two passions, I have also found the concept of a man’s failure an interesting element to portray through my films. The concept of failure in common sense understanding attaches to one who fails to succeed – success here defined again by common sense perceptions of material status symbols or recognition through reward, fame and glory. Dooratwa, Grihajuddha, Phera, Andhi Gali, Tahader Katha, Charachar, are depictions of men who the world in general would consider failures. They keep chasing me all the time, and the best way I can present them is through my films,” sums up Dasgupta.
[icfdc.com
20 August 2005]
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