Shob Charitra Kalponik: The lost poem in the jungle

Javed Akhtar made a very pertinent point the other day. He asked if filmmakers get technically better with every movie, why do their films get worse? He answered it himself... because his passion drops proportionately. Now, there has been this big question in Calcutta, among those who still watch Bengali films, is whether Rituparno Ghosh's passion is gone.

There are reasons for this. When Ritu-da started out with films like Unishe April and Dohon, he could instantly connect to the ladies of the house. They could relate to his language, both the spoken one and the cinematic one. It became a ritual for them to catch the new Rituparno Ghosh film. And ladies usually don't go alone. So the men joined and they also liked what they saw. Rituparno Ghosh became a brand name which reached its zenith with Chokher Bali.

Antar Mahal, which Ritu-da called his most personal film, created the first tremors. There were quite a few scenes of rough sex in the film and coming from him it was blasphemy. Antar Mahal created more tension in Calcutta than Antichrist did in Cannes. He was billed as Ritu-porno and suddenly an entire section of his audience shut him down. Just like that.

Since then Ritu-da has tried to reach out. Like any sensible director, he wanted his audience back. But the road has been uneasy. Dosar, for all its brilliance, stopped short somewhere, too much was made of the colour of the film — black-and-white. Khela was his all-out attempt to bring in the audiences. Some did, some didn't. Not all those who did, liked the dilution. And finally came The Last Lear. The English kept the audiences away; it must have been Bachchan's worst opening ever.

Now comes Shob Charitra Kalponik. And interestingly, for the first time, Ritu-da himself is sure that people won't like it. And thankfully, he has again gone wrong with his audience assessment.

Shob Charitra... is Ritu-da's Slumdog Millionaire. Just like Simon Beaufoy-Danny Boyle used the quiz show answers as a device to dig into the past and create a tapestry of images culled from the boy's life, Ritu-da uses the subjects of a dead husband's poems for the wife to go back to his inspirations. Characters, objects, locations, which absolutely held no meaning to the woman back then suddenly waltz around her mindscape to create the portrait of a man, she now wants to love.

And if Half One churns the past, Half Two stirs the surreal. The unseen muse of the dead poet emerges from thin air, merges with the wife and becomes one. She realises she has always been the one. The dead husband himself drifts in and out of of the wife's consciousness and sometimes appears as the platonic lover. That lover is again a fan of the poet and his bonding to his words is as strong as the pull towards this lonely wife.

Ritu-da wrote the script of Shob Charitra more than a decade back. I seriously doubt had he shot this film then, whether he could have actualised the scope of the script. Because in the past few years, he has become such a mature visualiser. Just because his wordplay remains as strong, there is a tendency to overlook his images or to just compliment the cinematographer for those shots.

If you manage to catch Shob Charitra, watch the way Ritu-da shoots a poem. Just like Ritwick Ghatak used to shoot trees. It's hypnotic. Joy Goswami reciting a poem and you can't take your eyes off the screen even if it's just an aural experience. Then the way he uses Prosenjit's photo... I can't remember a still frame used better in a motion picture. Or the way the first half fades in and fades out but half two whites out and whites in.

He's of course been a brilliant director of actors. So many actors across the country have produced their best work in a Rituparno Ghosh film. And it's not a coincidence. Watch Jisshu Sengupta in Shob Charitra and you will know why. Bipasha... well, it's an idea gone wrong. Ritu-da has always accepted using stars to pull in more people. So here is Bipasha, full marks for effort, a few less for execution. And it's pretty obvious all the English lines in the film were written with her in mind and it's unfortunate she couldn't dub her own lines.

But some films rise above shortcomings. Shob Charitra... is one of them. It's a pure cinematic experience and you can't say the same about all of Rituparno's films. Watch it at a theatre where people respect cinema and don't walk in for the cheese popcorn. Because human tendency is to join the herd and smudge out individual viewpoints. The film is not as intellectual or 'antel' as people are making it out to be. It's a simple poem lost in a jungle. You have to make the effort and find it.