Srijit Mukherjee,like several of our clan,grew up worshipping Satyajit Rays Nayak. Arindams anguish,fears,obsessions are engraved in the Bengali sensibility like nothing else is. So when Mukherjee decided to make his first film,it was difficult to drive it out of his subconscious. Thats when I decided to pay a tribute to the stalwarts of Bengali cinema Satyajit Ray and Uttam Kumar. Its just twice that the giants have together once for Chiriakhana and once for Nayak, says Mukherjee. Autograph revolves around a successful actor who with time has turned into a loner,as aspiring actress and a director who is an outsider in the industry. Nayak is the film that the young director in Autograph,tries to re-interpret in a contemporary setting. Nayak is almost like a backdrop in my film. The main thread of the narrative doesnt bear any resemblance to Rays classic, says Mukherjee. The cast of the film includes Prosenjit Chatterjee,Nandana Sen and Indraneil Chatterjee. Prosenjit was the obvious choice when it came to playing the superstar. He would play himself on screen. In a Bengali film,choosing Prosenjit for such a character is but obvious, says Mukherjee. Indraneil,who plays a young director trying to make inroads into the film industry,was chosen because he is a face not over exploited according to Mukherjee. Mukherjee maintains that Nayak cannot be remade,its a classic. But for a Bengali filmmaker,its also difficult to resist the temptation of interpreting Nayak his own way. Since,Autograph is not a complete re-interpretation of Nayak,Mukherjee was not apprehensive of the films reception. If I was remaking a classic like Don or Dev D,I would have been apprehensive. But since Nayak is more like a sub plot in the film,the challenges are less. However,since the director,created by me in the film re-interprets Nayak,I get an opportunity to place Nayak in our times and talk about it, says Mukherjee. Mukherjees Nayak does digress a little from the original but the director refuses to divulge the details as of now. Since the film is set in the present time and is being directed by a young director,it has to reflect his vision and also our times, he adds.However,since the director,created by me in the film re-interprets Nayak,I get an opportunity to place Nayak in our times and talk about it, says Mukherjee. Mukherjees Nayak does digress a little from the original but the director refuses to divulge the details as of now. Since the film is set in the present time and is being directed by a young director,it has to reflect his vision and also our times, he adds. 'Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses. reflecting the figure of a man at twice its natural size.' Virginia Woolf,'A Room of Ones Own.' Directed by a man (Jamil Ahmad) and performed by students of the Department of Theatre and Music,Dhaka University.),Behular Bhashan (which was staged at the Minerva theatre last week) will nevertheless be tagged with the demeaning 'womans play' label simply because it focuses primarily on female pain . And the plays focus on the legendary Behula,a woman who sailed down a river with her dead husband to ask Yama to restore his life,is most definitely one of the earliest proponents of feminist thinking in Bengali literature,is also unlikely to have young men lining up for tickets. But if indeed Behular Bhashan is dismissed just as a womens play,it will be garve injustice to the choral energy of the play,to its brave soul. For Ahmad uses a womans tale of suffering to revoke a hearty,traditional form of storytellingthe pala gaan where rural minstrels sing about conflicts between religion and power. He empowers each of the character,no matter how trivial,with a strong,confident voice. And in that sense,Behular Bhashan is a truly democratic theatre experience. Even though its steeped in tradition,Behular Bhashan never shies away from embracing modernism. There is a hip-hop like vibe to the choreography of most dance sequences. The movements and mudras are distinctly Indian,but the energy an zest with which the actors take the stage is very Western. The sets are minimalistic but incredibly ingenious. Set designer Kamaluddin Kabir has made a simple wooden grid on the stage which doubles up as a boat as well as a ghaat according to the sequence. And the sequences are elaborate,adorned with choral presence,highlighted with meticulously choreographed dance recitals. A lot happens in Behular Bhashan. Yet nothing happens. That quiet paradox powers the playan exquisitely insightful exploration of a womans life. But thanks to Ahmads almost dogmatic dedication to his craft,the play manages something more. Its a play-polyptych,constituting handsomely mounted panels inhabited by not just one story of a wronged woman,but series of situations which make it a compelling journey of the feminism movement in India.
