Contribution Of Mrinal Sen In Indian Socio - Political .

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International Journal of Multidisciplinary and Current ResearchResearch ArticleISSN: 2321-3124Available at: http://ijmcr.comContribution of Mrinal Sen in Indian Socio - Political Cinema; A Study of Sen’s MajorSocio- Political Films1Satyajeet Shobha Shriram and Dr. Sumedh21Faculty, MGM College of Journalism & Mass Communication, Aurangabad (M.S.), IndiaResearch fellow & Programme Coordinator, Mumbai (M.S), India2Accepted 10 Jan 2015, Available online 01 Feb 2015, Vol.3 (Jan/Feb 2015 issue)AbstractFilm is a device that gives platform for reflecting contemporary social issues and it also works as watchdog for politicalsystem. Indian cinema has been, since long, a strong medium to portray and comment on social issues of its respectivetimes. Although politics and social issues go hand in hand, Indian Cinema has been, though not as a rule, seen to ignorethe politics largely. History of Indian politics has always been dramatic in nature and it seems to be following the samepath in present too. In spite of this, there’s a strong disconnect between the filmmakers and the continuously ongoingpolitical drama. Mrinal Sen was one filmmaker among very few others, who has fearlessly addressed social issues andtheir entanglement with the contemporary politics. This paper, mainly, will study the socio-political approach of MrinalSen’s filmmaking with some of his films like Calcutta Trilogy (1970 to 1973), Chorus (1974), Ek Din Pratidin (1979) andtheir relation with contemporary socio-political situations in Bengal. This study will not be limited for his subjects but itwill go in deep for his characterization and situations chosen to comment on contemporary socio political issues. It alsoexplains the connections of Mrinal Sen’s social and political ideologies with his cinema. Indian Cinema has seen anumber of renowned filmmakers who have addressed social issues in their films under the tag of ‘art cinema’ but theyrarely seem to make any comment on the political aspect. Mrinal Sen stands out in the league of his contemporaries asfar as his approach towards the concept and style of film making is concerned and therefore, it becomes important tostudy his contribution to what we can call-‘Indian socio-political cinema’.Keywords: Indian Socio - Political Cinema, Mrinal Sen, Indian Cinema etc.IntroductionHuman being can be considered as a definite connectinglink between cinema, society and politics. Cinema is anart, which reflects human being and his life in thecontemporary society; it is recreation of reality or anabsolutely new creation of imagination. Evidently, cinemahas its roots in the events or situations happening inreality. Politics is one of the important foundations of thissociety and hence it is inseparable from cinema. Whensuch kind of a cinema, having stories about social issuesand their political facets that may be shown in realistic orimaginary manner, is called socio political cinema.Globally, this genre of socio-political has been used as adevice for educating, communicating and informingpeople about realities. Across the globe, cinema has beena means to social reforms, Russian new wave, Italian neorealism, and French New Wave are some of the examples.In India, such revolutions have not seen to be headedby cinema but it has definitely played a role in givingvoices to people who can’t speak. If we look at the historyof Indian cinema, after independence, many directorstook this opportunity to communicate with people aboutreal and hard facts about India. All these films are termedas ‘Indian Art / Parallel Cinema’, which started around1953 with ‘Do Bigha Zamin’. Filmmakers like Bimal Roy,Satyajit Ray, Ritwik ghatak, Mrinal Sen, Mani Kaul, AdoorGopalkrishnan, Shyam Benegal, and others did not makefilms just to establish cinema as business but cinema as amedium to communicate.Instead of talking about film stars who joined politicsand vice versa, this paper will try to search the films thathad contemporary social and political relevance.Unfortunately, this type of filmmaking was not given astage in mainstream cinema, eventually; all the majorsocio-political films were made in regional languages.Owing to the fact that West Bengal had a lot ofhappenings on its political stage, the contemporaryBengali films took the lead in this type of filmmaking.These political and social upheavals were taken up bysome of the filmmakers like Satyajit ray, Ritwik Ghatakand Mrinal Sen as the subjects of their films. This paper,among the three filmmakers mentioned above, willmainly highlight the works of Minal Sen. Sen was32 Int. J. of Multidisciplinary and Current research, Vol.3 (Jan/Feb 2015)

Satyajeet Shobha Shriram et alContribution of Mrinal Sen in Indian Socio - Political Cinema; A Study of Sen’s Major Socio- Political Filmscompletely different in his style of filmmaking. He was adirector with different sensibilities, which generatedrealism in fiction and reduced the distance between actorand viewer. It is important to observe the contemporarysituations, which Sen used beautifully to comment on itsdark side and its political reasoning.Indian socio-political film scenario and Mrinal Sen’scontributionIndian society is made up of different religions, casts andsocial classes. These differences also generate hugeamount of social and political issues. Therefore, politicscannot be considered as a separate field or section inIndian society. There are different categories of sociopolitical cinema as per its structure and way ofpresentation. Some films use politics as the subject andfor some the subtext is political, or is derived frompolitical ideologies. The last decade of Indian cinema wasaltogether different from the earlier one. Afterliberalization of Indian economy and effects ofglobalization, the Indian social structure and behavior hadchanged completely. These changes could be seen incinema too. Films like Satyagrah, Aarakshan,Gangajal,Apaharan had political characters, which were eithercorrupt or had mafia connections. Prakash Jha is one ofnew directors who made films on contemporary socialissues with its political aspect. Characters in his films wereovertly political and his film depicted the limits of socialstagnancy against exploitation. Films like Sarkar, Satyaportrayed the mafia connections of the politics andexposed the dark side of Indian politics, especially inmetro cities like Mumbai. Films like Maqbool, Omkaraand Gangs of Wasseypur uncovered the fact that this typeof mafia culture did not only exist in metros; but also wasdeeply rooted in all the parts of our country.Earlier, Gulzar’s films like Andhi, Hu Tu Tu and Machisdid choose contemporary socio-political subjects.Filmmakers like Ghatak and MS Satthu tried to explorethe political backgrounds of Indo-Pak partition. Films likeGandhi, Sardar Patel and Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkarportrayed the historical-political events. Many regionalfilmmakers attempted to comment on the social issuesand their political facets, like Jabbar Patel with Samna,Sinhasan in Marathi and also some of the South Indiandirectors and Bengali artists.India has, by long and by no means, remote history offeudal, imperialist and capitalist exploitation of the weakmany and by the strong few. Despite every good intentioncorruption, collusion, self-aggrandizement and nepotism1are still the part of system (John W. Hood, 1993,p.20). This situation was there in all the parts of countrybut Bengal was in a bigger mess. After independence,communist ideology was taking over the minds to protestagainst government, especially in West Bengal. This gaverise to naxaliste movement in naxalbari region of Bengal.All these situations brought the artists of Bengal togetherto start a cinematic movement to express their angeragainst the contemporary situation. With thesecomplications, Satyajit Ray started his film Pratidwandiwhich was based on naxelite movement. Immediatelyafter some days Mrinal Sen also started his film Interview,which was based on the issue of unemployment. The styleof Sen’s filmmaking was very much influenced bycommunist ideology. This was a very dynamic period forthe film industry when Sen started his trilogy, which wasopenly supporting communism.Mrinal Sen largely followed a pattern, not cinematicbut ideological, of getting characters influenced by thedirector’s ideology and asking questions that representthe questions raised by the contemporary society. Thismade him different from Ray and Ghatak. Ray’s politicalfilms were limited to the cinematic experience to a greatextent and he chose to refrain from making any politicalcomment as a director. Whereas, Mrinal Sen, to quoteDerek Malcolm, "traced the social and political ferment ofIndia with greater audacity than any other Indiandirector." He showed unrest, Naxalite movement in hiscity and throughout India. He mirrored class conflict asmuch as middle-class angst. He sang of tribal exploitationand global collapse of the Communist dream. Yet, Senestablished the fact that an iconoclast needs to demolish2only the illogical, not every value that's prevalent.Ratnottama Sengupta, 2013) When we look into thehistory of Indian Cinema, certainly there are number ofdirectors who have made their mark and presentedIndian Cinema across the globe. It was Mrinal Sen, whowas probably the first filmmaker to break the image ofIndian Cinema.Shyam Benegal, veteran director of Indian cinemasaid, "Mrinal's form was never static, he didn't followconventions and he took risks and created his own,making restlessness his metier." Girish Kasarwalli, agraduate from FTII and one of the leading South Indiandirectors said, “Ek din Pratidin, Khandahar and Kharijstarted questioning middle-class morality, attitude andvalues. We, from this class, started looking at ourselves anew”. Mrinal Sen had inspired many film makers with hissubjects and style, a young director like Nandita Das also3admits that her film Firaaq has Mrinal Sen’s influence.(Priyanka Dasgupta, 2012)Mrinal Sen’s socio-political cinemaIf we discuss about the Mrinal Sen’s filmography, we cancertainly comment on his transitions as a filmmaker.Cinema of Mrinal Sen was always socially relevant but hisstyle of making and analyzing concepts changes withtime. Till ‘Bhuwan Shome’, Sen was commenting on socialissues, but never did so on political issues. Mrinal Sen’sCinema is clearly divided in three phases in his filmmakinglife, each change occurring after an intense phase of deepintrospection. Each of these transformations involveddistinct changes in the areas of film content, narrativepatterns, and filmmaking techniques of his cinema. After1970, in his second phase of film making, his characters33 Int. J. of Multidisciplinary and Current research, Vol.3 (Jan/Feb 2015)

Satyajeet Shobha Shriram et alContribution of Mrinal Sen in Indian Socio - Political Cinema; A Study of Sen’s Major Socio- Political Filmsare no more individuals; they are representatives of theirclass. This necessitated a shift from delving deeper intoindividual psychology to that of exploring class conflict,the classes themselves being products of history andantagonistic to each other. His characters now become‘types’ and his films more overt. Without a doubt, thiswas the most intense phase of political filmmaking of his4life. (Tuggingonmoust Aches, nd)Calcutta TrilogyA number of socio-political factors were affecting thefilms coming out of Bengal during this time. Towards theend of the colonial period, Bengal had progressively lostprominence in national politics. The glory days of thecultural ‘renaissance’ of the early nineteenth centurywere over and a gradual but steady phase ofdisillusionment was beginning to set in. Moreover, factorslike the refugee crisis and the debilitating man-madeBengal famine of 1943 made matters worse. Peoplestarted migrating to the cities in search of jobs andCalcutta became the place, which held the promise of anew life. Artworks of the period began to focus upon thecityscape as a space of disillusionment, growingunemployment, crushed ideals and unfulfilled dreams.The radical youth politics of the ‘60s also found5expression in this works. (Sucheta Chakraborty, 2013) Inthe starting of 70s’ under the leadership of CharuMujumdar, different parts of society started a war againstthe government, which was called peoples’ war. All thesepeople were supporting Communist Party of India(Marxist Leninist) and wanted to change the politicalscenario of state, which was dominated by Indian nationalCongress (I) since years. This war started tremendousunrest in Calcutta and a series of killings followed. Thisoverall unrest triggered Sen to comment on thesesituations through the medium of communication hehad—the cinema.“It was early 1970s that the very air in Calcuttaseemed to crackle with anger. That was period when Imade three films in three successive years – interview,Calcutta 71 and padatik. They were justifiably, angry andrestless . and in varying degrees, both passionate andblatant. That was when my team and I could not escapethe pressure of our times. That was when we affirmed ourcondition to rebellion. All this perhaps reads like apamphlet but that was our reality”6- Mrinal Sen. (Mrinal Sen, 2002, p. 100)Film ‘Interview’ (1971)This was the first film of Calcutta trilogy made by MrinalSen based on the issue of unemployment. It was one ofthe first attempts to make a comment on post-colonialpolitical psychology of the country. As far as the style offilmmaking is concerned, it was for the first time ever thata combination of newsreel and fiction was used in a film.The reason why we call these films political is that hischaracters were not individuals but they represented alarger section of the society. Ranjit Mallik, the protagonistof this film represented the middle class youth havingresponsibility of his family. He had sweet dreams to settlewith his fiancé Bulbul and live a happy married life. Thisfilm showed a real struggle of this protagonist for gettinga better job and it also highlighted the real facts aboutpeople’s mindsets, who were controllers or bosses ofthese middle class people.In the late sixties, Calcutta, all British remnants fromthe city architecture and sculpture are vanishing orvandalized, people were getting more British than ever, intheir fashion and tastes. Macaulay’s prophecy finallycame to fruition. ‘A class of persons, Indian in blood andcolour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and inintellect’ came to rule over the city. Englishmen left, but7their legacy stayed on. (Mrinal Sen’s Interview revisited,2007). This dilemma of Indian society had always been anissue for new generations who wanted to search its ownways. There is a situation in the film in which protagonist,Ranjit talks to his girlfriend about the condition of dresscode for interview. Ranjit doesn’t follow the dress codeand appears for the interview in a traditional Bengaliattaire, as a result of which, he gets rejected. Beginningthe personal protest like this, the protagonist throws astone at the glass showcase to destroy the mannequin inthe end. This action of throwing stone was a symbol ofphysical protest against the situation. In the last part ofInterview after breaking of this glass Sen attached thenews reel of Vietnam War and Negro movement in8America. (Dipankar Mukhopadyay, 2009, p. 92)Interview was appreciated in its subject as well as itsstyle. For this subject, Mrinal Sen never used a poeticform of presentation like Ray or Ghatak used in theirfilms. In any Indian cinema before this, protagonist hadnever talked to the audience directly. For the first timeever, this Brektian theory of breaking the wall and talkingto the audience directly, was used by Sen. This made itmore real breaking audiences’ imagination. K. K. Mahajanused handheld camera for making shaky images, whichsymbolized Ranjit’s struggle.Film Calcutta 71 (1971)This film is one of the most important films of Sen’sfilmmaking career. This film can be called a peak point inhis second phase of filmmaking, where he showed theanger in tremendous ruthless way. Calcutta 71 was asequel of Interview, but it was way too different fromInterview in many ways. Sen, in one of his interviews,argues that one should know how and why the angerreached that stage. The anger and turbulence thatgripped the city had a history, it just did not happen onefine morning. Hence, Mrinal Sen decided to go back9decade by decade, to find out the roots of anger.(Dipankar Mukhopadyay, 2009, p. 98)This film was divided in 5 parts—it starts with anarrator and a starting montage. Then there were 3different stories from notable Bengali writers, which were34 Int. J. of Multidisciplinary and Current research, Vol.3 (Jan/Feb 2015)

Satyajeet Shobha Shriram et alContribution of Mrinal Sen in Indian Socio - Political Cinema; A Study of Sen’s Major Socio- Political Filmsplaced in decade of 1933, 1943 and 1953. Sen, differentfrom his earlier films, used the voice of a young man, whois speaking about poverty, exploitation and death withoutany reference of time. Sen used this device to cut thesubject from time frame and made it universal. He againused the montage in the beginning, which was in the formof newsreel that gives a feeling of nonfiction to the film.Sen’s protagonist, though wasn’t a specific character, wasa 20 year old guy whose death is announcer on radionews. The last frame of Interview of breaking the glassbecame the starting point of this film. The first story ofthis film was about a rainy night and a poor family’sstruggle to save itself. In this part Sen showed a facet ofpoverty and helplessness. The Nilmani (father of thefamily) throws the dog out with in anger and frustration.Finally this family moves to another shelter as a refugee,where Nilmani sees that dog already taken a place butnow Nilmani has to adjust without any option. In thisstory, Sen portrayed the brutality and dehumanizationand the struggle of survival. Mrinal Sen’s approach topoverty is at first a human and a moral one, organicallyextending to one of outrage; sympathy evolves logically into class alliance, and in this sence the film becomes10political one. (John Hood, 1993, p. 21)Second story also depicted poverty but it focused onthe degradation of value system as a result of poverty. Inthis story Sen used a character, living in Delhi, separatedfrom Bengal since years. The protagonist comes to knowthe misery of life in Bengal when he visits his relativesback home. During this visit, he comes to know that thewomen in the house had to turn to prostitution forsurvival. He realises the brutal fact that poverty makeshuman dehumanize and helpless. To survive in such asituation, human being has no option but to lose his/hervalues.The third story of Calcutta 71 is of a smuggler boy,Gaurang, 15 years old, who runs his family. Contrary tofirst two characters, which surrender to the situation,Gauranag, in this story, when brutally bitten up by ahealthy passenger, does not accept the fact and takesrevenge in the end.After this story, Sen takes us in 1971 at a rich party,where an intoxicated political leader delivering a lectureon the effects of poverty to his sycophants whileattending a high society party, is also the most jarring anddisruptive segment of the film. The sequence is extremelyfragmented and disruptive – the speech of the politician,which is almost a monologue, is juxtaposed with collagesof still photographs of emaciated victims of hunger,newsreel shots of aggressive street demonstrations andconsequent police repression, documentary footage ofVietnam War and other revolutionary movements,political graffiti proclaiming the politics of annihilationand even a shot from the iconic mannequin breakingsequence from Interview! The collage of diverse materialsis an effort to force the viewer to identify the history ofIndia as proclaimed by the title-card which links-up the 4stories – "the history of poverty, the history of11deprivation and the histo

Bengali films took the lead in this type of filmmaking. These political and social upheavals were taken up by some of the filmmakers like Satyajit ray, Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen as the subjects of their films. This paper, among the three filmmakers mentioned above, will

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