Putulnacher Itikatha: A Tale of Allegory, Rupture and Symbolic Order

Putulnacher Itikatha poster (Pic: Kaleidoscope)

Can death mark a beginning? In the film Putulnacher Itikatha, it does. The film opens with Shashi, the doctor, encountering a death — or perhaps more fittingly, a departure — that sets his journey in motion. Following the river with the lifeless body, Shashi returns to the place it belongs: the faded, weary landscape of the village of Gaodiya. The novel ‘Putulnacher Itikatha’ (published in 1936) by Bengali writer Manik Bandyopadhyay has long been an inspiring and intimate work for generations of readers. It is set against an era marked by transition, uncertainty, and malaise. The socio-political unrest it depicts is largely internal and deeply rooted.

In his film, Suman Mukhopadhyay has deviated from the original timeline depicted in the text and set the backdrop against World War II. Reading the film just by comparing it with the original work would be a fallacious attempt. For an adaptation, the divergent approach and alteration from the source are necessary to form the cinematic language.

Fascinatingly, the temporal shift has added a new dimension to the narrative flow and elicits a profound unease. It is witnessed that the turmoil of World War remains largely peripheral to Gaodiya, until the sudden crashing of the warplane ruptures its pastoral calm. The catastrophe is illustrated through the coexistence of water and fire in the sequence of the plane crashing. For the people of Gaodiya, this incident is not of a historical predicament; rather, it is a disruption to the fabric of everyday life. We can hear water drops amidst the stillness in the screen, the frozen time, and the detachment of the space turn out to be unnerving for the audience. Therefore, the notion of isolation is not restricted within the sphere of the village and the world; it isolates Shashi (the ‘modern man’) from the village and its people. Through the characters, the director attempts to portray the binary and the complexities of relationships conditioned by the socio-political nuances.

Delving more into the tapestry, the film addresses the fences around the domain of ‘the Man’ and ‘the Woman’. Kusum climbs over the fence to meet Sashi. Allegorically, the fences stand as a barrier, separating the world of Kusum and Sashi. These two worlds collide, but the dichotomy endures. The film follows the distinctive journey of the hero, escorted by conflict and indecision. He longs for an escape to the modern world; he seeks the courage to resist, but remains exiled in the ruined region. The use of long shots in the film’s framing, Shashi (Abir Chatterjee) strolling across the rural landscape, conveys his seclusion and unspoken unrest, surrounded by a sense of impending doom. The cinematic frames, with muted cool colours, coupled with the magical interplay of light and shadow, establish a mirage-like realm — stripped of warmth yet dominated by a suppressed violence. The emptiness soaks into the mise-en-scène of the screen.

A scene from Putulnacher Itikatha (Pic: Kaleidoscope)

Andrei Tarkovsky, in his film The Sacrifice (1986), used static long shots and muted colours juxtaposed with enchanted natural light to create a poetic interpretation of the psychological confinement of the individual transcended into the eternal immobility of the exterior waiting for the final catastrophe. Thematically and visually, some of the frames of Putulnacher Itikatha provoke the audience to recall the imagery of Gotland in Sweden from The Sacrifice.

(L) The Sacrifice (1986) (R) Putulnacher Itikatha (2025)

From the very beginning of the film, the river is portrayed as a means of escape. As the film progresses, we witness the characters embarking on a journey with an altered self, deserting the land, leaving behind the memories. Death appears as a metaphor for liberation, releasing the characters from their suffering. Only Shashi stays over. His encounters with the solitary fox (an extension of the ‘self’?) watching over the landscape. The existential questions find a new voice in Shashi’s monologue.

(L) ‘Ophelia’ – a painting by British artist Sir John Everett Millais in 1851-52 (R) A scene from Putulnacher Itikatha (2025)

Intertextuality in the film involves a conceptual fusion, going beyond the limitations of culture and space. Kumud (Parambrata Chatterjee) and Moti (Surangana Banerjee) embody both Krishna and Radha, while also echoing the tale of Adam and Eve. Similarly, the separation of Shashi and Kusum (Jaya Ahsan) is rendered poetically through the image of Kusum on the waterbed, evoking both the death of ‘Ophelia’ (Sir John Everett Millais 1851-52) and the motif of immersion, as Kusum declares her need to kill her true self. In the same scene, the duck circling her represented the only loyal followers, nurturing and navigating the emotion. Religious, mythological, and artistic narratives, emanating from disparate cultural hearths, frequently exhibit uncanny parallels and symbolic resonances, thereby providing fertile ground for comparative analyses that illuminate the shared psychological and archetypal underpinnings of human experience.

Once again, water reconnects with death, if not literally but spiritually. A similar approach can be seen in the sequence depicting Jadav Pandit’s (Dhritiman Chatterjee) death, where heavy rainfall pours down on villagers who wait for the body like vultures, determined to uphold age-old belief systems, faith, and superstitions. Before his death, Jadav Pandit reveals that a demon resides within Shashi. Is this a demon intent on unsettling and dismantling tradition? Is it the sceptical self—burdened by the dilemmas of modernity—that returns in the form of the fox at the film’s conclusion? The search for these answers unfolds within the film’s layered narrative, which becomes a canvas transporting us from the real to the surreal, beyond the limits of absoluteness.

Putulnacher Itikatha (Pic: Kaliedoscope)

This cinematic space weaves together the world of Shakespearean drama, folk traditions, and mythology, where the melancholic tune of violin blends seamlessly with folk music. Tradition and modernity do not merely coexist here—they interact, debate, and challenge one another. The film transcends temporal boundaries, speaking to the present with startling relevance. It addresses the stagnation embedded in society, while the postcolonial dilemma breathes through every frame, mirroring the world we continue to inhabit. The film ends with a scene open to interpretation – Shashi’s ceaseless negotiation with the fractured existence haunted by the memories or an anticipation of the upcoming darker hour, an absent prelude to Bengal Famine of 1943.

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