Thoughts Sparked by Mahanagar

Saw Mahanagar last night. What a terrific film!

With each Satyajit Ray film I watch I have this growing satisfaction that this is a filmmaker I 'get' - finally. So permit me a ramble before I get to the film

Film Medium

I have a distant relationship with the medium of film, which IMO is fraught with risks of miscommunication when attempting themes which are 'far out'. I expect a film to acknowledge a natural limitedness in scope and choose modest subjects becoming of it and execute them to perfection. Themes where at no time the viewer - that is me - is struggling to grapple with the 'core' - so to speak.

When my cynicism is pierced and I react 'exactly' as the work expects me to: joy, anxiety, ball-in-throat, emotions heightened with musical cues etc. I know I am so in. There is joy in the helpless realization about the emotional vulnerab

ility that the film has managed to wrangle out of me, by managing to tease out a degree of empathy with the situations of those who people the story. Yes I said story. Shoot me, you lovers of plotlessness.

Plot and Visuals

I do not understand plotless exercises. They seldom satisfy me. Esoteric attempts where one is perpetually conscious of the huge divergence in possible 'readings' of the work do not impress me. In fact they end up annoying me. I find them tedious and I am left in no frame of mind to appreciate the technical excellence or artistic achievements that the said work may allegedly be brimming with.

And then there are those films that take 'visual medium' far to seriously for their own good, making them visuals front and center. 'A film need not mean, it just needs to be' types. How would you 'explain' a sunrise etc. There again I respectfully doff my hat through which I talk and walk away.

Mood

I am not beyond liking these in small doses. But how can a film be all about 'being there', the angles, the beautiful badlands of Nebraska etc? A film cannot be about, say, flowers. To quote one of my favourite lines, from one of my all time favourite films - Adaptation- "To write about a flower, to dramatize a flower, I have to show the flower's arc"

And last, but never ever the least, are the 'moments' and 'mood' films. I care squat how difficult an achievement it is to establish and evoke the mood. Lighting, music etc. To me these are, NOT offerings themselves - be it in films or literature. If they do not to color a story - about which, by now you would understand, I have rigid archaic expectations - they leave me cold. It is the Grand Illusion for me, not The Rules of the Game.

I generally regard critics an unenviable lot. Imagine having to opine on everything, that too under a deadline and also bear the expectation of consistently maintaining the opinion forever.

But envy does creep in, when considering someone like Baradwaj Rangan - not just for his natural gifts as a writer, but also for a frame of mind that enables him to say:

Fuck plot. Give me moments, stray moments, and I’ll walk home a happy man.

And the less I say about plausibility, the premium I set on 'believable dialogue' the better. So, overall, my views are possibly fifty years old and incorrigibly mainstream. And, as in many other things, I am possibly going into the future kicking and screaming. I can at best, try to not

let my grumpiness show.

Now to Mahanagar

A wife of a conservative household takes up a job to make ends meet. The impact on the household, its people, the changes, her social experiences and their marriage is what the film is about. Each and every one captured on screen are fleshed out wonderfully, in all their complexities, that Ray earns our deep interest in the proceedings.

Home

What is particularly amazing is the way in which the home is painted. The child collecting the ticket, the child's own concerns quite orthogonal to the domestic situation, and the goodness of the family that humours the child are brought out with incredible ease. One would think the constraints of joint family would have been brought out well in many Indian films. But I can't recall anything half as good.

For instance...

You have the husband and wife in physical proximity - not even a private display of affection. The adoloscent sister - played wonderfully by young Jaya Bhadhuri - enters the room, sees them and exits immediately closing the screen. Of course, in such a house one cannot be beyond earshot. We the audience see her shadow as she waits a moment in the adjoining room. The wife has now moved away.

And from their sounds it can be inferred that the husband and and wife are in two different parts of the room and now it is okay for the sister to enter. All this happens in a couple of seconds - quick cuts and beautiful storytelling.

How many movies have captured quirks such as a middle-class man using his matchstick for a toothpick, an old woman cleaning up strewn about remains after a meal - suggesting the power structure in the household, a child who has become too old to lift now and makes his mother grimace (below)?

Dialogues and Believability

Some lines are trite and convenient but made convincing by acting. The old father verbally records how, as a teacher, proud as he is about the station of his students, he can't help feel jealous. A straight, self-summarizing line. But progressively the movie shows him 'changing', crossing limits of decency and sinking to new lows. It is always the first transgression that is the problem. After that the line cross becomes the standards and dictates the progress. And anyone can see the old man is 'sinking' because of the smouldering anger that things are going beyond his control.

The long line where the wife decides to take up the job, is said in quasi-soliloquy, to a half-asleep husband. Thus, the situation is easily becomes a valid justification for an unrealistically perfect enunciation of a logical sequence of thoughts.

The whole suggestion of the housewife seeking a job is fantastically dialogued. The husband comments half-jokingly about the pointlessness of his sister studying. He mentions his friend's wife working. But refuses to answer straight when his wife presses him on the question of whether he wants her to work. He even mentions the English quotation "a woman's place is her home" - but quite crucially - in a faux tone. What he intends is captured only in the weakness of his resistance to the idea, rather than in a direct suggestion from him. Or, to take an uncharitable point of view, the man does not want to take responsibility for the decision, but is content with appearing to be democratic in allowing the idea to pass. How much better can a marriage be captured?

Camerawork

There is something to be said about the allure of B&W camerawork. But such ambitious topics ought to be entrusted with someone more knowledgeable about the intricacies. I'll just leave you with some captivating frames and some lighting that I found impressive.

The musty gloom of the evening, punctuated by the sparks at each crossing of the tramway forms the entire opening sequence (first pic in the post above). Apart from the inherent loveliness, it feeds the appetite of those like me with a dangerous proclivity for seeing symbols everywhere.

Here camera ascends the stairs, camera approaches new houses she hesitantly enters as a salesgirl (heck this is the man who made the camera hop in tune with a dance step in Charulatha. In a couple of frames you have a small source of light/ reflection elevating it wonderfully.

One where the old father visits an opthamologist - a former student of his - and bares his vulnerabilities. Another is where the wife - just before entering the house after a day of work - checks to see ifshe has erased her lipstick. That she has begun to use lipstick is itself conveyed to us in this shot where she is checking that it is not there!

The recorded background running when people are driving - is something seen in many old films. Ray throws in a right-angle turn, grunts of horn, an arm hanging out of the window

Sounds

And all this is to say nothing of the sounds, the radio of some neighbour, the background sounds of household chores, the distant sound of a boss yelling behind a closing door, the temple bells of an evening and so on.

Women working

The central problem about women going out, stripped off all the euphemism, is about providing an opportunity for them to be viewed as sex objects and their being provided a chance to decide on such affairs outside the confines of the home.

In Ghare Bhaire - a film that deserves an even longer ramble than this - has Ray/Tagore confronting the problem quite directly. The inability of the woman coming out, to deal w

ith the complexities of the outside world, her emotional vacillation are presented beautifully but the question of sexual vulnerability is never deflected. In fact there is a lingering sense of doom, a certain inevitability that is evoked extremely well in the film. In Pratidwandi, the sexuality of the working sister is pretty much front and center. In fact Ray achieves an aesthetic high in translating into film some extremely tricky nuances of the novel there.

Here too, the 'attractiveness' of his wife is the point of contention, inevitable insecurity. And it is not as if they enter into it with no awareness about the issue, the advertisement for the job specifically calls for 'smart and attractive' women for the sales girl position.

As the couple read the ad, those specific words, Ray captures in a frame, the adoloscent sister - in the background but listening with rapt attention. After all, isn't it her world that they are talking about.

Control

And Ray is in perfect control throughout. With a film demanding us to understand what is running in the minds of various actors, we seem to have no problem at all given the impressive performances all around, right from Madhabi Mukherjee who plays the lead role of Arati Mazumdar, including those appearing for just a scene - like the man who plays Arati's friend's husband and jokes about the knitting machine she is trying to sell him: "knitting machine, washing machine...will they not let women do any work?"

He even teases you. The tension about the boss driving home is already built-up in the audience. He already has you anticipation a domestic disappointment, if not a showdown. He has a car honk and it is a wrong 'un. But it is the most appropriate wrong 'un ever. Because it brings a thread, you the viewer were not thinking about at that moment - but it is quite unforgivable that, that is not your central concern at that moment.

This is storytelling excellence. And a movie, will always be to me, a story well told.

Courtesy: Huge thanks to the soul who has uploaded the movie on youtube.