Magic Reality in Buddhadeb Dasgupta Films
Buddhadeb Dasgupta focuses his narrative films on dreamers who hope for a brighter tomorrow. The film’s free-spirited protagonists inspired cinematographer Dasgupta to use lengthy takes and tracking shots, which progress slowly while the tale takes unexpected turns.
Dasgupta has been nominated for and won awards at a number of prestigious film festivals over the course of four decades, including Venice, Berlin, and Locarno. In addition, he has taken home many National Film Awards. In addition, he has written a great deal of poetry in Bengali.
Decision to Tell Stories
At the age of 32, Buddhadeb Dasgupta, a professor of economics, decided to abandon his job and pursue a career in filmmaking at a period when Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen were becoming cultural icons in Bengali cinema and beyond. This choice came at a period when Mrinal Sen and Satyajit Ray were establishing themselves as cinematic titans in Bengali and beyond.
His father was a doctor for the Indian Railways, but like the heroes in the films he directed, he was deciding to go out on his own. Dooratwa, his first book, was out in 1978, and it was an analysis of the Naxalite movement in Kolkata from the perspective of a liberal political science professor. Dasgupta’s legacy was taking shape, despite the fact that it was occurring in a “world beyond reality,” distant from the spectres of Sen and Ray.
Dasgupta, one of the few filmmakers active in Bengali cinema over the last several decades, has always placed more stock on the imagery on screen than in the’story’ it tells. He valued the ability to visualise concepts above the ability to articulate narratives. There were images that veered more to surrealism than realism, characters that seemed more symbolic than real, and snippets of stories that were often allegorical.
Reviewing Mondo Meyer Upakhyan in 2005, the New York Times said, “Ultimately, the film feels like one long countdown with little promise of a new frontier.” I think you could say that about a lot of his films. His works were characterised by themes and characters that seemingly went “nowhere.”
Maybe his experience as a poet accounts for their chemistry. Like the bulk of other notable Bengali directors, he was heavily inspired by literature. But Dasgupta wasn’t only a scholar; he wrote works in his own right. Years before he became famous for his film work, he was already well-known for his poetry. The famous quote attributed to Dasgupta from the 1980s reads, “My cinema has no conflict with poetry.”
Painting had a significant effect on him as well, and it is surprising that his films, and especially his use of scenery, props, and frames in them, continue to bear testimony to the influence of these mediums.
The Years that Shaped the Director
In 1944, Dasgupta made his debut into the world in the Purulia region of West Bengal. His father disapproved of his son’s plan to attend the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune after he graduated from high school. So, he majored in economics and eventually became a college professor. One of his professors at the time, Tarun Sanyal, sparked his interest in Western classical music when he was a student at the Scottish Church College in Kolkata. In the years that followed, he would use this kind of music in both his poetic and cinematic expressions.
Dasgupta explained his background with Western classical music and its link to images in an interview he gave in 2017 to a Bengali publication named Parabas. He stated, “It’s unthinkable the insane fixation that used to grab me,” at one point in the talk. In subsequent years, I focused my efforts on image construction. It dawned to me while I was building them that the images used should be ones I had taken myself rather than ones I had altered. Edited photos cannot be trusted as authentic. Since all of the pictures were shot of me when I was young, there was no way to change anything. Together, myself and them, we grew up. The poetry also needed accompanying visuals, which was requested. All of my poetry rely heavily on visual imagery. It’s a relatively small percentage of the whole, yet it’s still a significant chunk. This is mostly due to the images I’ve taken. Even today, music is an integral part of my life.
As a young man, he became interested in writing poetry thanks to his maternal uncle, the poet Samarendra Sengupta. In addition, he was able to meet and talk with some of the most influential poets of the 1950s Bengali literary scene, including Sunil Gangopadhyay, Shakti Chattopadhyay, and Utpal Kumar Basu. An uncle of his mother’s was a poet. When Dasgupta was at college and the years immediately after his graduation, he was close with three of Bengal’s most notable poets of the 1960s: Bhaskar Chakraborty, Subrata Chakraborty, and Shamser Anwar.
Simultaneously, he developed a deep love for films and began forming strong ties to the people who made up the Calcutta Film Society. Satyajit Ray, Harisadhan Dasgupta, and Banshi Chandra Gupta were among the pioneers of the Indian film society movement, which was started by the Calcutta Film Society.
Dasgupta released his first book of poems in 1963, at the tender age of 19. Five more years passed before he made a documentary with the same title. However, it wasn’t until 1978 that his debut feature-length film, Dooratwa (distance), was released to the public. His debut film was deemed the best in Bengali and won him an award at the national level. There was no turning back for him now. The man was dedicated.
The Filmmaking Language of Buddhadeb Dasgupta
His compositions, captured on celluloid, were frequently more concerned with the passage of time than the immediate happening of any thing, yet he was able to create moments of enchantment. He brought to life characters mostly from rural backgrounds living on the margins of the society — Ghunuram in Bagh Bahadur (1989) plays tiger for living, Lakhinder in Charachar is a bird-hunter (1993), Shibnath in Tahader Katha (1992) is a revered freedom fighter who fails to cope with the reality of his post-independence homeland and moves towards insanity, Nimai and Balaram in Uttara (2000) are amateur wrestlers, and the postman in Tope (2017) lives in a tree.
Poetry On Screen
Once he mentioned in an interview, “The world beyond reality, which is another aspect of the reality, attracts me even more,” and he said it in Bengali.
Furthermore, he understood the critical function that dreams and magic served in his imaginative world. However, he did not want any clear lines to be drawn in his scenes between reality, expanded reality, dream, and magic. Instead, he planned to merge these divergent components of reality until no distinction remained. He handled space and time in a manner very similar to my own. This meant that some of his characters lived in a world that was neither real nor made up.
The work of French poet Jacques Prevert and Chilean poet Nicanor Parra had a profound effect on Dasgupta and the other poets in his group. Dasgupta also cites the effect of poetry on two of his favourite foreign films, Luis Bunuel of Spain and Andrei Tarkovsky of Russia. Dasgupta spoke on the importance of “language” to human communication in several interviews.
He had said something to the effect of “I am immensely grateful to cinema, painting, and poetry.” in one of these interviews. This conversation was recorded for the Bengali publication Kali O Kolom. Although I had some success with poetry, I could only appreciate the visual arts via reading and writing. On the other hand, I owe a great deal of my own distinctive voice to these two distinct modes of communication. While writing poetry, he realised the need of developing an own voice. I first tried it with poetry, and immediately received feedback that Buddhadeb’s verse was unlike anything else out there. Directors like Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak were there when I initially started out in the business. Ray created a whole new lexicon that had never been utilised before in Indian cinema. While I was there, the thought occurred to me that I needed to tell my experiences in a way that mirrored their language and culture.
His enthusiasm for painting was evident in the 1998 documentary he made on the famous artist Ganesh Pyne, A Painter of Eloquent Silence: Ganesh Pyne.
After everything was said and done, Dasgupta became known as a filmmaker with a “signature style,” or a language of his own. A professional film critic would be able to identify a Dasgupta film inside its initial few frames almost immediately.
At the national level, the best films are Bagh Bahadur (1989), Charachar (1993), Lal Darja (1997), Mondo Meyer Upakhyan (2002), and Kaalpurush (2008). He won the national award for best director twice, for the films Uttara (2000) and Swapner Din (2005).
In 1982, his film Grihajuddha won the FIPRESCI award at the Venice Film Festival, and in 2000, his film Uttara won the Venice Film Festival’s Silver Lion for outstanding director. Charachar (1993) and Phera (1988) were both nominated for the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. However, beginning about the year 200, his stature started to fall among international peers. In addition, he has participated in the judging of several film festivals across the world.
Creation of Stories or Misfits
Dasgupta’s heroes are misfits and outsiders who reject their families and careers in favour of their illogical interests. They feel uneasy about their responsibilities and often daydream of escaping to a utopia where things are more equitable.
Uttara, for which Dasgupta won a Special Director’s Prize at the 2000 Venice Film Festival, features a newlywed wife, a dwarf, and a preacher who all endure severe trials. They are rejected and misunderstood by members of their own family, as well as by friends and neighbours.
Some may see the presence of a complaining spouse or a careless one as a call to take a stand or pass judgement. However, Dasgupta’s ability for empathy was really remarkable. He begged with the audience to have empathy for those who were dealt a bad hand.
Dasgupta’s films are unmistakably political in character, since they centre on people who are struggling to satisfy the needs of their families, communities, and economies. His main characters are helpless yet ultimately unstoppable even if they have no idea how to protect themselves. They know they won’t succeed, but it doesn’t stop them from hoping.
I am greatly in debt to the book Films of Buddhadeb Dasgupta by John W Hood.
