{"id":4607,"date":"2018-12-20T14:17:07","date_gmt":"2018-12-20T08:47:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/?p=4607"},"modified":"2023-08-09T13:20:47","modified_gmt":"2023-08-09T07:50:47","slug":"filmic-journey-mrinal-sen-filmyatra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/filmic-journey-mrinal-sen-filmyatra\/","title":{"rendered":"The Filmic Journey of Mrinal Sen"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Mrinal Sen-er Filmyatra <\/em> by Siladitya Sen<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

Hardcover:<\/strong> 160 pages
\nPublisher:<\/strong> Pratikshan Publication (2015)
\nLanguage:<\/strong> Bengali
\nISBN-10:<\/strong> 8189323873
\nISBN-13:<\/strong> 978-8189323875
\nAvailable on: Amazon<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Though the Indian New Wave cinema is mostly attributed to Bhuvan Shome<\/em>, and its director Mrinal Sen donned as a pioneer, the Indian film-going \u2018public\u2019 has almost a strange sense of aloofness towards Sen and his films. The glitter of the foreign film-festivals ensured that Sen has been revered and not ignored, but yet, his cinema is something that the middle-class has chosen succinctly to look away from. While his contemporaries, Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak, have received their share of audience adulation, for Mrinal Sen it has mostly been a stoic silence suspended in the lightness of discomfort. In an interview, Sen once commented \u201cIt is not enough, to my mind, to be just \u2018realistic\u2019. The point is to give direction. Which means, one needs to develop a partisan attitude as one gets to the analysis of reality. This, of course, calls for commitments, political and social\u2026I, for one, believe in involvement. I stand by my commitment.\u201d In a sense he deserves and desires a commitment from the viewer too, an involvement which is not mere \u2018entertainment\u2019 associated with the art form. He continues hence, \u201cFilm, like literature and other art media, has a certain role in our society. It creates a certain climate. It may also provoke a certain kind of debate. My job is to provide information from a point of view which is clearly not neutral\u2026My intention is to communicate as effectively as I can, to provoke the audience.\u201d This goal of a director provoking his spectator to act upon the injustices around is a rather tall ask specially in today\u2019s commoditization of art. It is even more important from that perspective to look at Mrinal Sen\u2019s cinematic oeuvre and his social comments.<\/p>\n

Siladitya Sen\u2019s book Mrinal Sen-er Filmyatra<\/em> (Pratikshan Publication, 2015) is an important book in this respect. Siladitya is a veteran film critic, author and an authority on Mrinal Sen. In the preface he mentions how Sen relies on him for writing on cinema and Sen\u2019s own films. Siladitya has structured the book interestingly enough interspersing Sen\u2019s conversations, comments, soliloquies and the testimonials of others including Sen\u2019s wife and actress Geeta Sen and actor-director Anjan Dutt as well analyzing Sen\u2019s cinematic aesthetics and politics as critiques. This lends the book a delicate fervor and helps the reader to understand the art of the master film-maker.<\/p>\n

One notable observation of Siladitya is the fact that Sen, unlike Satyajit Ray, didn\u2019t fall back on classical literature to commence on his journey of cinema. This, almost non-literary source of his narration, gave his films a rare aura and a unique fragrance.\u00a0 The primary reason for such a decision is probably embedded in the comments quoted above. \u2018Poverty\u2019 has always been a primordial focus of Mrinal\u2019s work. Mrinal once quipped that since he made films on poverty, hence the spoken language of it is immaterial, due to which apart from Bengali and Hindi Mrinal Sen\u2019s ventured into other languages as well.<\/p>\n

In the chapter termed \u2018Kathopokothon\u2019<\/em> (meaning \u2018Conversations\u2019) Sen writes about his deep understanding of the medium, its interaction with the other art forms as well as the need for a different politico-aesthetic vision of the audience for viewing films. He explores the need of improvisation on the locations (another marked difference from Ray), the different editing techniques he adopted in his films and the nuanced frame compositions almost all of which may be safely termed as \u2018non-traditional\u2019. One brilliant example can be in Khandahar<\/em> where he used the sound of a bucket falling in a well as an edit transition between two shots.<\/p>\n

In the book, Mrinal Sen also explains why his cinema is replete with instances of strong women characters \u2013 \u201cThroughout my life I have worked with these \u2018Durga\u2019s in my films. Insignificant, name-less faces of women thronged my films\u2026 but how powerful they are as individuals. Their internal strength is so powerful that more ofthen than not you will rarely find such intensity in a male\u201d. Here, in a sense, Sen merges in thought with both Satyajit Ray\u2019s and Ritwik Ghatak\u2019s in finding the woman\u2019s voice more significant in the cacophony of man\u2019s. Geeta Sen\u2019s account of her roles as the recurrent mother archetype is hence important \u2013 to understand not only Geeta\u2019s preparations but also to understand Mrinal Sen\u2019s approach towards the other gender through his cinema.<\/p>\n

Siladitya has reviewed Mahaprithibi<\/em>, Amar Bhuban<\/em> and Khandahar<\/em> in detail though he glanced upon Sen\u2019s repertoire with the inquisitiveness of an avid observer, thereby not missing on any significant information. Particularly interesting is his comments on Sen\u2019s use of ruins in his films \u2013 either as home of the characters or as a destination to them. The author contemplates if Sen is trying to put forth an element of uncertainty to the middle-class dreaming of a happy and settled life. Elsewhere he regards the aesthetic conditioning of Mrinal Sen\u2019s films transcending a false beautification of art and leading us to echelons of truth.<\/p>\n

Mrinal Sen\u2019s first contribution to cinema and the Bengali audience is his writing on Charlie Chaplin \u2013 the eternal tramp whom he visited more than once in his long artistic career. The depiction of \u2018truth\u2019 in Sen\u2019s films is markedly different from that in Chaplin\u2019s cinema. Sen probably never aspired to become a Chaplin. It was not be, neither did it happen. Yet, Sen\u2019s films always remind us of a world within us, one that the upper-middle class wishes to look away from \u2013 the frailties, injustices and inequalities there in. In his film Yatra<\/em>, Mrinal Sen wanted his audience to focus on this uncomfortable truth of being human.<\/p>\n

More to read\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ek Din Pratidin \u2013 Mrinal Sen\u2019s Indictment on Patriarchy<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Where Morality Counts<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Book Review: Beyond Apu Brings Out the Versatility of Soumitra Chatterjee<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Re-claiming Indian Parallel Cinema<\/a><\/strong> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mrinal Sen is one of the leading filmmakers of India. His films deal with poverty and other uncomfortable truths that plague India, probably a reason why his films have been less discussed and watched as well. Veteran film scholar Siladitya Sen\u2019s book Mrinal Sen-er Filmyatra<\/em> explores the journey of the filmmaker through the decades. A Silhouette book review.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":374,"featured_media":4610,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2470,2416],"tags":[893,2125,2126],"class_list":["post-4607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-review","category-mrinal-sen100","tag-mrinal-sen","tag-mrinal-sen-er-filmyatra","tag-siladitya-sen"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/374"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7235,"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4607\/revisions\/7235"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}