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Rituparno Ghosh’s latest film, The Last Lear, had raised immense expectations among film lovers all over the country. Long before the film got onto the screens, there were reviews, anticipation and eager waiting for the big-budget film – certainly by any standards, a Bengali director getting the opportunity to direct the likes of Amitabh Bachchan, Preity Zinta and Arjun Ramphal is indeed an event. And it’s only Ritu who can accomplish that – so it comes as no surprise that there were expectations, more so because the previous release, Khela, was a blunder in all respects. However, after two weeks of its release, Ritu as a director and The Last Lear as a film get scorn reviews, so much so that one of the critics went on to suggest that Ritu should stick to his low-budget Bengali films with linear and simple narratives. Quite an insult for a director who has been a favourite amongst national award juries, ever since the time he emerged with his Unishey April.
Many of my friends, film technicians and critics with whom I happened to get an update on the film, warned me about the film: ”Don’t go. It will be an absolute waste of time.” But like in most cases, I went and watched the film. And did I like it? Probably not. But somehow, I couldn’t be all that stern. And if I can vaguely trace back the reasons for it, it’s because of the ‘moments’ in the film that surfaced from beneath the ruffled and confused exterior.
“You never know when ‘the moment’ will come”
This is what Harish said to Siddharth with reference to the point when a stage actor reaches the zenith of his performance. Who are they? Harish is a stage actor, who left the stage some thirty years ago and leads a reclusive and at times eccentric life with a ‘companion’ Vandana. Siddharth is a young and aspiring film director, who wants Harish to act in his film – the first one for Harish. The entire film reality is that of one night: the night when the film in which Harish acted is premiered. Harish, after insisting that he will do the dummy shots, is fatally injured and in a coma. He is visited by the film’s heroine Shabnam (Later, we come to know of her battered relationship with her boyfriend/husband and that she just wanted a place to hide for the night). So there are two parallel narratives, one at the premiere where a stern and stubborn Siddharth makes everyone around him unhappy with his cold veneer, and the other at Harish’s place where Shabnam slowly befriends an irritated and exasperated Vandana. In the same house, we find the nurse Ivy, who with her rustic arrogance is comical in the beginning. As the film progresses, we find how these three women share a common thread, which is their position in a patriarchal society as servers of the sexual needs of men. But that is what Rituparno Ghosh’s favourite theme, the deprivation of middle-class women in general. In some of the most fleeting moments, as Vandana and Shabnam share their experiences mainly revolving around Harish, in the latter’s Victorian living room, Abhik Mukherjee’s soft and delicate lighting creates so many deft shadows, which whispermore than many of the dialogues that the actresses haveto offer. In a film which is surprisingly devoid of a healthy support from the script (‘surprising’ because since Ritu is particular about his detailed and otherwise brilliant scripts), Shefali Shah as Vandana comes out as a strong woman who withstands the insanities of Harish with lovable candor; so much so, that she never ever objects to anything apart from her willingness to speak out to someone in that huge antique house. Preity Zinta’s Shabnam is outwardly smart though the inadequate script ensured that we don’t know much about her (as is the case with Vandana and Ivy). But along with Vandana, they share the spirit of Cordelia to Harish’s Lear.
As mentioned earlier, the reason the film shows only the sparks and never reaches anything is its one-eyed dependence on Harish and Amitabh Bachchan. No other characters. Siddharth (Edmund ?) or Gautam (Edgar ?) are given hardly any space as the light falls only on Amitabh Bachchan in a ridiculously funny makeup (no pun intended Mr. Muzzafer Ali, but Harish Mishra’s eccentricity cannot be heightened by the flocks of untidy hair covering his entire face). However, apart from some touching moments, when the three women sit down to discuss their respective fates, the other most riveting aspect of the film is the interaction between Harish and Siddharth. In a sense, it’s reminiscent of the subtle level of understanding between the Urdu poet Nur and Deven in Ismail Merchant’s In Custody. However, though there is the similarity in putting Nur and Harish as the custodians of lost art – Urdu poetry and Shakespearean theatre respectively -- the sublime stilt of their relationship lies in love for a dying art in the first case; whereas for Harish and Siddharth it’s their polar opposite positioning in treating cinema as an art form.
Just like the title of this section and in my opening justification of this article, there are some moments in the film which I felt close to my heart, which is – the reason why I find it difficult to dismiss the film entirely. At this point of my cinema-viewing experience, I find that it’s the miniscule moments that matter to me, Like life in that sense, cinema comes closer to life. As a spectator in both cases,, I am unsure of the ‘final take’. Take, for example, the scene whereSiddharth reads aloud from his script about the circus party and the clown Maqbool and how the group of clowns recoils to its world of existence.Suddenly, the fore-screen blacks out into a silhouette and in the backdrop, we see a stage where the clowns enact. Yet again, the light and shade mesmerizes us (even if the concept of the other world of deprived artistry seems so similar to Malay Bhattacharjee’s Kahini or Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s Uttara), much like Harish’s first enactment of Shakespeare in front of Siddharth. Suddenly, the room seems to move back and by the juxtaposition of soft lights beaming up to the towering Harish, we feel we are presented with a stage. And like Siddharth in the film, we as spectators relish the magic that unfolds, very crafty, so tp speak. However, in that same scene or in those where Amitabh Bachchan plays Shakespeare, it’s unpleasant as he has a baritone voice and his diction is impeccable for a corporate, but that’s not sufficient for enacting Shakespeare, I am afraid. In most of those scenes, Amitabh Bachchan shoutsat the top of his voice.Where are those deft melancholic drops that make Lear an affectionate father and the velvety voice which is not only used against his enemies and his daughter Cordelia, but also to rock her in his hands. Unfortunately, Amitabh Bachchan couldn’t understand the delicate tenderness of acting on stage, so ironical since he is a film actor who has seldom worked on stage is made to play the part of a stage actor who never stood in front of the camera. Would Nasiruddin have been a better choice? Maybe, maybe not. But surely, Amitabh Bachchan time and again had gone overboard ruining the possibility of creating certain delicate memories about Harish, whose possibilities appeared but never bloomed.
During the phase when Siddharth builds up the trust of Harish, there are three breath-taking montages for me. They used to play a game while looking through the CCTV (which was installed to figure out if anyone is pissing on the walls of Harish’s house!) – the game of identification, of building up a character on the street who is seen in te CCTV monitor:What is his probable occupation, his family background, is he married and so on. It immediately strikes me, since this is exactly what we did when we were in our graduation days – filled up our notebooks with characters from the busy College Street in Kolkata. That book was supposed to be used for the script of a film on the city. It was never made, but that is a different story. The placement of the CCTV and Harish and Siddharth’s peeking at the outside world through it cannot help but reminds me of Charu in Satyajit Ray’s classic Charulata, who used to look out from her windows at the busy street below. Like Charu, Harish also is a recluse, though for completely different reasons, and the window to their outside world (though the medium to the outside changed over time) makes them grow with the film. And the final coy montage is one where Siddharth persuades Harish to walk down the stairs of his own house without his glasses (he is almost blind without them).The uncertainty in Harish’s face looms large. This acts as a metaphor, the stage-actor without glasses has been confined to the world of his own, and though the CCTV gives him a ripple or two in his otherwise somber existence, it is his unsure ‘stepping out’ to the world of films. It was a powerful image and yet again the magical light of Abhik Mukherjee casting its lengthy spell on the drooping eyes of Harish.
In the outdoor sequences, there was a scene when Harish teaches Shabnam to relax, to vent out her anger by shouting from one hill to another. That is an effective exercise for a stage actor, who in earlier on had to rely on his voice alone to ensure that both the first and last row audiences had the same acoustic effects. Then, is it a lesson of life? I’m not really sure. But the simple equation of Shabnam’s breaking down to read her character’s lines, which also has a messed up conjugal relationship, is appalling. Can’t she feel her character, even if she doesn’t have such a shady personal life? But this is again the same flaw;the drawing of secondary characters is weak. It’s not Shabnam’s fault, after all. A much more moving scene is Harish’s persuasion of Siddharth to allow him to do the dummy shot of falling from the mountains Amitabh Bachchan as an actor excels in the poignant rendition, where he begs the director for his last chance to walk into posterity.
What is Art?
In his book What is Art? (Trans. Aylmer Maude, Oxford (World’s Classics), 1930, p123), Leo Tolstoy proclaims: "Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them.” As I ponder over this definition of art, I feel confused. Have I been infected by the feelings shared by Rituparno Ghosh. Yes, to a small extent that may be in some of the fleeting moments, as mentioned above, some which I experienced as well. But on the whole, where does it leave me? It leaves me confused about the purpose of the entire exercise: the same question I had after seeing Rituparno’s previous film Khela (interestingly, in both these films as well as in Bariwali, the plot revolves around the shooting of a film within the actual film, a boring repetition of Ritu’s film form) Somewhere, someone said: "Eyes are the mirror of soul” I have in so many cases successfully extended to: ”Cinema is the mirror of life.” It remains as such to me today There are reflections of The Last Lear on my mirror, but unfortunately, most of it is blurred like the image of a sunset taken by a photographer with shaking hands.
So probably we need to wait for a film worthy of an experience. Rituparno had provided glimpses of such creative heights in a few of his earlier films. But to reach up to that level he needs to come out of his last lair.
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