Film:Chaturanga
Director: Suman Mukhopadhyay
Cast: Rituparna Sengupta, Joy Sengupta, Subrat Dutta, Dhritiman Chaterji, Trina Nileena Banerjee
Rating: ***
Running at: Inox, Metro, Nandan

Adapting a Tagore novel into cinema can prove to be a double-edged sword. On the one hand it gives you the creative opportunity to explore a wealth of characters and situations, but on the other it burdens you with the responsibility of living up to the collective expectation of a whole race which considers each work of the bard more sacred than any holy text.

That is a lot of baggage for a film to carry, and director Suman Mukhopadhyay seems to be strangely aware of it in his adaptation of Rabindranath Tagore’s iconic Chaturanga. The film is at its strongest when it creates the atmosphere of repressed sensuality and the complicated byplays in the relationships between the three main characters. However, it almost feels more heavy-handed when it deals with the consequences and aftermath of these developments, setting them against current events and debates.

Set in Colonial Bengal at the turn of the twentieth century, the film almost matter-of-factly addresses its settings, without the brouhaha of its direct predecessor, Rituparno Ghosh’s Chokher Bali. So there are no ornate tiles and mirrors here, nor are there filigree screens and twisting staircases. Mukhopadhyay’s world is not about overheard conversations and half-glimpsed secrets where sensuality seems to be part of the furnishings, his approach rather seems to be more philosophical, where lead characters take long, silent walks in sandy beaches to reconcile to their realities. The lead protagonist Sachish (a disturbingly unlikable Subrat Dutta) fluctuates between radical positivism to religious mysticism in his quest for life’s true meaning. Unfortunately, his search is quite futile, as he is yet to come in terms with his own desires. Two women distract him from his quest for nirvana—Damini (Rituparna Sengupta sleepwalks her way through what could have been a career-defining role), a young Hindu widow, and Nanibala (Trina Nileena Banerjee sparkles in a cameo), the abandoned mistress of Sachish’s own brother.While he believes that he is doing a great favour to Nanibala by proposing marriage to her, he treats Damini as a mere distraction on his route to spiritual salvation. His faithful aide, Sribilash (Joy Sengupta), however, proves to be the true liberal who negotiates idealism and reality with honesty.

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