A Selective Study in Post-Colonial Bengali Cinema - always yours

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45|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2 affiliated themselves with communist movement. The rationalist movement in Bengal, we could say, came to be dominated by a characteristically communistic spirit. There is no denying that Bengal's rationalists constitute a part of the larger left, liberal and progressive paradigm dominating a state that has seen the longest rule by an elected communist regime in the world, and also been the birthplace of naxalism. Many rationalists being naxalite radicals, a reader/viewer of Herbert might feel curious to know their response to the explosion at Herbert's cremation. Herbert retorts to the rationalists In many ways the Bengali continuum of compradorship reveals itself in the trajectory of Bengali cinema, and the life-movie of Herbert. Satyajit Ray accuses that most of the early Bengali cinema used to copy Hollywood, and even Pramathesh Barua's films had an overt appearance of hybridity, instead of pure Bengaliness (Bishoy Cholochchitro 39-40). There is substantial truth in this statement. Bengalis have long been captivated by the fascinating power of the west. The photo album of failed director-producer Lalitkumar Sarkar is a case in point in Nabarun's Herbert (20). It contained the colour images of the who's who from Hollywood. The very name of Herbert is borrowed from the west: it signifies a submission to the charm of the west. Herbert's father who made movies in Tollygunge was an ardent admirer of Hollywood movies. The name of Herbert derived from the name of Leslie Howard, as Lalitkumar thought that Herbert resembled that particular Hollywood actor (21).
46|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2 Herbert was given a worn-out moth-eaten Ulster coat that originally belonged to his uncle, Girishkumar (27). Herbert wore that and stood in front of the mirror and uttered “Cat, Bat, Water, Dog, Fish” (47). There is a post-colonial angle in “Cat Bat Water Dog Fish”; these words may be the first line of any English primer. These words signify the charms of English for Herbert who otherwise does not know the language. The angel's statue at a Shahebpara curio shop, the fairy outside the window on the night of Herbert's suicide, the Ulster coat are core symbols of Kolkata's fascination with the its former rulers from the western hemisphere. Herbert takes a regular walk everyday during winter in his memorable attire of the Ulster coat (called “Olestar” in Bengali), and Suman Mukhopadhyay's visual imagination of these strolls is brilliant, though his Herbert wears a simple overcoat. Herbert stands apart from the crowd. His walks along the streets of Shahebpara constitute a melancholy signifier of a trapped past that is still powerless to be redeemed. While he takes solitary strolls in the white town of Kolkata, the janitors and ayahs suspect that Herbert may have European blood in his veins (47). In the film, Herbert in his black overcoat also foreshadows his own death, and I am reminded of Terry Eagleton's lines: “Peerlessly self-composed, resisting the dismembered crowd, the flaneur moves majestically against that historical grain that would decompose his body into an alien meaning, reduce his numinous presence to an allegory of loss” (Walter Benjamin 154). There is a certain human difficulty in living without myths. The second film of Suman Mukhopadhyay, Chaturanga, based on Tagore's eponymous novel, traces a post-enlightenment, post-rationalist journey of two Presidency College educated friends, who find solace in Hinduism and become disciples of a spiritual Guru. Herbert never needed a Guru to access myths. A divine simpleton, he can directly approach certain raw and primordial spaces within human desire, in the unrepressed gesture of communicating with the dead. Herbert signals the arrival of postenlightenment, post-rational, post-modern and most importantly post-communist consciousness. Significantly, Herbert is no dissident manifesto of a Foucauldian madman: saying so would be a
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