Tahader Katha, 1992
[Their Story]
A
disoriented, lumbering man named Shibnath (Mithun Chakraborty),
recently released after an eleven-year incarceration (which he
served, in part, at the prison asylum) for the death of a British
officer during the country's anti-colonialist resistance movement,
is escorted on a train ride home by a former comrade - now a successful
businessman and aspiring politician - named Bipin (Dipankar De).
It is a homecoming that proves to be a hopeful illusion as the
former respected scholar and militant activist soon discovers
that his native village - and bitterly fought homeland, Taherpur
- now lies on the other side of India's post-independence sovereign
border, subsequently lost in the country's culturally traumatic
Partition of Bengal in 1947. Instead, his wife Hemangini (Anashua
Mujumdar) and their children have been forced to resettle as refugees
in the neighboring village of Garshimal after their villages were
burned down in the aftermath of the partition, living in desperate
poverty and forced to make ends meet by removing their eldest
child, Puni, from school so that she may earn extra income for
the family by working as a maid for a dubious and lecherously
over-familiar statesman. Once cutting a formidable figure as a
virile and courageous freedom fighter crusading for a united and
independent Bengal to drive away the British, Shibnath now stands
in stark contrast: a fragile, fragmented shell of his former self
as he awkwardly hobbles along an unpaved road through the countryside,
stopping frequently along the way to relieve himself in the woods,
unable to control even his own bodily functions (undoubtedly the
autonomic legacy resulting from years of physical torture and
inhumane treatment that he sustained while in police custody).
Hemangini urges her husband to ally himself with the opportunistic
Bipin in his bid for political office, who now seeks to capitalize
on his old friend's legendary reputation for patriotism (and near
martyrdom) by asking him to accompany him through a campaign
tour of the villages in order to testify to his character and
endorse his candidacy in exchange for his aid in arranging Shibnath's
employment as a schoolteacher using his extensive political connections.
However, Shibnath remains disillusioned and mystified by the life
that now lies before him away from his beloved - and irretrievably
lost - homeland. Unable to abandon his crushed idealism and put
his devastated past behind him, he withdraws further away from
family and former colleagues, retreating into the tenuous company
of his own fractured and haunted memories.
Acclaimed Bengali poet turned filmmaker Buddhadeb
Dasgupta creates an elegantly spare and contemplative, yet richly
textured and incisive portrait of broken idealism, exploitation,
opportunism, and exile in Tahader Katha. Filming in predominantly
medium shots, Dasgupta incorporates underlit interiors and bold,
often primary colors that enhance the prismatic qualities of objects
and spaces, creating a sensuous juxtaposition that visually and
thematically provide a distilled, singular focus in an otherwise
murky, somber, and obscured environment - reflecting, in turn,
Shibnath's confusion, uprootedness, estrangement, and ambiguity
of direction after returning to a foreign landscape and endemic
culture of petty self-interest. Dasgupta further employs exquisitely
sinuous tracking shots that create an illusion of continuity within
visually bisecting or framing architectural elements and confining,
natural objects that reflect Shibnath's pervasive sentiment of
captivity and isolation from his family and native land: the recurring
shot of a bridge underpass; the tracking shot through the rooms
of Bipin's home as Hemangini listens attentively to his attempts
to persuade Shibnath to join his campaign; the alternating, isolated
framing of Hemangini and Shibnath's late evening conversations
as the couple struggle to make sense of their past and determine
a course for their future; the repeated, circular panning shots
of Shibnath in the woods as he walks with Bipin and subsequently
encounters the traveling magician, Abdullah (terminating with a
cleverly conceived shot of Abdullah's ornately decorated mirror
that similarly completes the cyclical image). In the end, it is
through Shibnath's refracted view of his brave new world - an alienating
and ultimately terrifying clarity borne of idealism and profound
suffering - that his fate becomes inextricably sealed: a displaced,
anachronistic tragic hero eternally imprisoned in a modern world
of seductive conjurers and false idols.
© Acquarello 2004. All rights reserved.
