Indian Film Culture - 16.cdr - federation of film societies of india

Even though the working class garb of Abhijan,
the Tagore-oriented middle class minds of Ray
and Chatterjee show clearly through the thin
disguise of the different-style beard of its hero.
Soumitra has tried in many ways to play 'tough'
not only in this film but in others; but he has not
ceased to represent the charm, innocence,
unselfconsciousness, and the accompanying
weakness of the young Bengali romantic hero of
the Tagore period. A sort of protected hero, with
a dominating father-figure lurking somewhere
in the shadows, who is not destined to battle on
his own, still less to win.
In Kanchenjunga, the hero comes from an
altogether new social class, and his line of
thought is different from that of the Tagorean
dreamers. He is a product of today, with
idealism that is more capable of contending with
realities, because it is more clear-eyed and much
more of a piece. He is not the affluent son turned
idealist: he belongs more to the larger middle
classes which ceased to be land lords long ago.
He is not in the least ashamed of his comical
uncle, would call spade a spade any day, and
even if he is attracted to the daughter of the
impossible Ray Bahadur (a low-grade British
title), he sets no great store by her vague promise
of seeing him in Calcutta. If the liaison did not
work out, he would have no hesitation in
breaking it. But this different hero is hinted at in
the splendid isolation of the picture's Darjeeling
setting, and in this lightweight film obliquely
bypasses a set of values unfamiliar to the Tagore
mythology.
Another modern type, less of a hero, is presented
by Anil Chatterjee in Postmaster. But in both
films the basic emphasis is away from him; in
one on the child, in the other the woman. As a
result he is a somewhat shadowy figure, brought
in to fill the place of the traditional none-toobright
middle-class individual. He has acquired
the outward mental accoutrements of the Tagore
world, to the extent of wanting to teach the child
in Postmaster and counseling the wife to take a
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job in Mahanagar, without any sense of
dedication to either. His relationships, his
emotions, never reach the larger-than-life size
achieved by other Ray heroes, especially
Soumitra Chattertje, in their representation of an
epoch or an outlook.
Devi
One could say that in the films preceding
Mahanagar, Ray's preoccupation is with man.
The trilogy's heroines are the women of Indian
tradition, loving and sometimes loved,
providers of anchorage to the nomadic male
who goes out to do battle and whose fate is
therefore of greater importance. The girl in Devi
is not much more than an object, owned by her
father-in-law even more than by her husband;
even Sarbajaya, patient and loving in a motherearth
way, cannot decide either her own or her
family's future. In the Postmaster, the child is
little mother, already burdened with the
responsibilities of an outgoing love. In Samapti,
although the husband is a somewhat
'enlightened' young man the measure of selfdetermination
which the wife is destined to
enjoy does not seem to be too great. The film
does record a change in the outlook towards
marriage, but more from the man's point of view
than from that of girl, who accepts, with
happiness, what all others have accepted before
her.
June 2012
Indian Film Culture