Review: Bollywood, Tollywood and Beyond – Literary Essays on Indian Films
Movie research has widened the scope of writing on movie and has additionally broadened the readership, taking it past the unique area of movie students and lecturers who educate movie principle. Pushed alongside by the necessity to categorical their ardour for cinema, lecturers from completely different fields and non-academics too are entering into this discipline of specialised writing.
Somdatta Mandal, who retired as chairperson of the division of English at Viswa Bharati, Santi Niketan, is the writer of Reflections, Refractions and Rejections: Three American Writers and the Celluloid World (2002) and Movie and Fiction: Phrase into Picture (2005). Her newest work includes 18 highly effective essays that cope with three fully completely different segments – Thematic Research, Eminent Personalities and Administrators, and Particular person Movies. Certainly, this ebook has sufficient matter for 3 separate volumes. Although a pure educational, Mandal steers away from heavy principle that may confound common readers and her language and magnificence are freed from jargon.
Her socio-historical strategy to cinema touches on such topics as movies on the Partition and its influence each in Punjab and Bengal, and on the illustration of minority communities equivalent to Anglo-Indians and Muslims. Whereas this ebook gives a robust body of reference for college kids and students of movie research in these areas, it’s a bit shocking that the writer has omitted Shyam Benegal’s three Muslim-centric movies – Mammo (1994), Sardari Begum (1996) and Zubeida.
Curiously, the ebook options each broadly identified movies that the reader might need watched a number of occasions and some which can be lesser identified too and contains discussions and analyses that stray deliberately into sociological points that shed gentle and likewise elevate questions. Amongst these one could point out her evaluation and research into movies like Deepa Mehta’s Earth 1947 primarily based on Bapsi Sidhwa’s novel The Ice Sweet Man, and a really detailed evaluation of Eisha Marjara’s little identified movie Desperately Looking for Helen within the chapter Aping the Vamp & Id Points within the Diaspora.
Mandal’s evaluation of “Partition” movies could be very insightful. The occasion has change into one thing of a two-edged sword for filmmakers, who typically take a look at it by cinematic lenses and private views. This part is split into 4 detailed chapters. The primary, Dismemberment and/or Reconstitution: Visible Illustration of the Partition of Bengal is essentially the most vital as most Indians hyperlink Partition with Punjab and Bengal is hardly mentioned. The second, Reliving the Bengal Partition in Documentaries features a detailed research of Supriyo Sen’s two-part reminiscences in regards to the Partition as seen by his personal dad and mom within the movies Method Again Residence and Imaginary Homeland. The third part, Celluloid Representations of the Partition of Punjab, scans movies like Tamas, ML Anand’s Lahore (1949), thought-about to be one of many earliest makes an attempt to depict the Partition of India on celluloid, and Kartar Singh (1959) directed by Saifuddin Saif, which the writer states “is taken into account to be one of many all-time nice Punjabi movies to ever come out of Pakistan.”
Amongst mainstream Indian movies, surprisingly the writer mentions Manmohan Desai’s Chhalia (1960) which offers with the director’s favorite lost-and-found method however with the motion positioned on the eve of Partition. And who can ever neglect MS Sathyu’s basic Garm Hawa primarily based on Ismat Chughtai’s story? The part entitled Movies on the Partition, Border-Crossings and Survival, discusses basic movies like Nemai Ghosh’s Chinnamul (1951) shot virtually totally on location within the Sealdah Station in Calcutta full of actual refugees ready – for what, they do not know. Curiously, a small position was performed by a younger man who approached Ghosh for work in his movie. His identify is Ritwik Ghatak.
Aside from the Ghatak trilogy primarily based on the influence of Partition amongst households and the youth of Bengal, the writer additionally takes an in depth take a look at some Bengali movies made within the Nineteen Seventies. Amongst them are Bimal Basu’s Nabarag (1971) starring Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen, Rajen Tarafdar’s Palanka (1976), and the primary Bangladeshi manufacturing, Surya Dighal Bari (1976), collectively directed by Masiruddin Shaker and Sheikh Niamat Ali.
In Ladies in Cinematic Illustration, Mandal walks us by cinematic variations of Tagore’s tales and novels. Although questions like “Was Tagore a Feminist?” have been explored and analysed to dying, they do spotlight Mandal’s private interpretation of girls characters from Teen Kanya by Charulata to GhareBaire.
An enlightening chapter, Could You Be the Mom of a Hundred Sons! analyses Barrenness vs Motherhood in Bengali Cinema with a concentrate on Rabindranath Tagore’s childless girls in his artistic work and likewise throughout the Tagore household. This can be a topic that few have dared to the touch. Throughout the Tagore household, Debendranath Tagore’s son Jyotirindranath and grandson Balendranath (son of Birendranath) had no youngsters. Three of Tagore’s youngsters’s marriages had been childless and his solely son Rathindranath too didn’t have youngsters. Mandal additionally appears at childless girls in Satyajit Ray’s movies (Monihara, Devi, Charulata and GhareBaire) together with some girls in Rituparna Ghosh’s movies like Khela and Antarmahal.
The ebook has a concisely worded foreword by famous movie theorist, critic and scholar MK Raghavendra and an in depth introduction by the writer herself. Whereas the duvet is engaging, the photographic reproductions of stills from movies lack readability as they’re printed throughout the textual matter and never on individually printed and sure artwork paper.
In sum, this can be a ebook wealthy in insights that can enchantment to each the movie scholar and to the clever common reader.
Shoma A Chatterji is an impartial journalist. She lives in Kolkata
The views expressed are private
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