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Reviews4
sourish-chanda's rating
Even after 63 years of independence India is still in the strong grip of religious superstition and many medieval prejudices. The caste system runs deep in the society and often determines person's identity. Daily newspapers run a dedicated section on astrology, alternate medicines like Homeopathy gets millions of dollars in government funding, the Nation is more opinionated on religious issues than on real issue like poverty and education and all these happens under the active support and promotion from the educated urban middle class contrary to what many would like to believe, the illiterate rural masses. The movie is a slap on the face of such so-called educated and a stark warning what could happen if religious sentiments of the people is misused or abused to achieve personal goals, a fact India would so painfully be facing within just 2 years after the release of the movie. Ray could see what is coming, and like all true artist for whom his work is more than just art and in reality a medium of communication has tried to fulfill his duties to make the people aware of what he saw was coming.
It is not one of "those" art films, in fact there is very little art into it. Ray was very fragile while shooting his last 3 films, so most of the shots are indoor and very archaic and to the point. Despite his illness he attempted this movie to tell his fellow citizen what grave danger the Nation is facing, there one can see the other side of Ray almost as a social reformer.
Unlike many others however, Ray delivered the message in a way that should hurt nobody, even though Ray himself was an atheist. The movie brings forth the eternal conflict between hard scientific fact and the opposing religious doctrine. In the movie the young generation ultimately favors science and this optimism about India that Ray has envisioned is the best part of the movie, indeed the most touching part.
The screenplay is very simple and banal yet appropriate and I can't imagine it can be made any better without tipping off the scale. Dhritiman excels Soumitra but that's my opinion. The advantage of working with known and trusted crew of such stalwarts is that it takes away a lot of hardship from an exhausted director without compromising any on the quality!
It is not one of "those" art films, in fact there is very little art into it. Ray was very fragile while shooting his last 3 films, so most of the shots are indoor and very archaic and to the point. Despite his illness he attempted this movie to tell his fellow citizen what grave danger the Nation is facing, there one can see the other side of Ray almost as a social reformer.
Unlike many others however, Ray delivered the message in a way that should hurt nobody, even though Ray himself was an atheist. The movie brings forth the eternal conflict between hard scientific fact and the opposing religious doctrine. In the movie the young generation ultimately favors science and this optimism about India that Ray has envisioned is the best part of the movie, indeed the most touching part.
The screenplay is very simple and banal yet appropriate and I can't imagine it can be made any better without tipping off the scale. Dhritiman excels Soumitra but that's my opinion. The advantage of working with known and trusted crew of such stalwarts is that it takes away a lot of hardship from an exhausted director without compromising any on the quality!
"Cut!, Cut!, Cut!, Cut!" One of the remarkable scenes of the movie is a group of village boys running after the film crew bus shouting and mocking the way the director officially ends a shot. It is apparently, not much and only a 5 sec shot. However, 5 sec is long enough for people like Mrinal Sen to turn an innocent childish errant into much more purposeful. The word symbolically sharply demarcates between what is it in the movie and what is in the reality. The film crew was shooting famine which should have ended with the utterance of "cut" yet it leaks into the other side of the camera even though half century has passed since then and India supposedly progressed a lot. It is a slap and a mockery on the failure of the system done in the most subtle way. If a 5 sec shot can communicate all these, then think of what the full movie can do?
Famine is not about lack of food but it also about lack of morality rather the breakdown of values. Famine unleashes the dormant opportunist in the most corrupt and bigot way. Yet amongst such devastation there could be island, there could be people who despite of the hardship can still be empathetic, can still be humane. The movie is reap with many such examples. That's the reason it is a humanistic movie as Mrinal Sen himself is humanistic intellectual.
Unlike his contemporaries, his movies often end without a definite answer and leave the audience guessing. It is a bold experimentation to deliver a scratching message. The striking characteristic of "Akaler Sandhaney" is also that the making of the movie itself and the process of story telling is done in the most informal way. To the audience it it is more a like documentary capturing a set of unrelated events that happened to a film crew than a a feature film itself. His movies is mainly a feast for the mind, appealing and engrossing to your intellect and less so to your senses.
It has an additional value that it is only handful of movies that reminds us of the 1943 Bengal famine where 5 million people just perished due to lack of food (as mentioned in this movie itself)
Dhirtiman, Smita Patil and Rajen Torofdar (Himself a great director) all deserve special mention without which this review will be incomplete.
A must for the film school
Famine is not about lack of food but it also about lack of morality rather the breakdown of values. Famine unleashes the dormant opportunist in the most corrupt and bigot way. Yet amongst such devastation there could be island, there could be people who despite of the hardship can still be empathetic, can still be humane. The movie is reap with many such examples. That's the reason it is a humanistic movie as Mrinal Sen himself is humanistic intellectual.
Unlike his contemporaries, his movies often end without a definite answer and leave the audience guessing. It is a bold experimentation to deliver a scratching message. The striking characteristic of "Akaler Sandhaney" is also that the making of the movie itself and the process of story telling is done in the most informal way. To the audience it it is more a like documentary capturing a set of unrelated events that happened to a film crew than a a feature film itself. His movies is mainly a feast for the mind, appealing and engrossing to your intellect and less so to your senses.
It has an additional value that it is only handful of movies that reminds us of the 1943 Bengal famine where 5 million people just perished due to lack of food (as mentioned in this movie itself)
Dhirtiman, Smita Patil and Rajen Torofdar (Himself a great director) all deserve special mention without which this review will be incomplete.
A must for the film school
"They call me a machine, they don't understand that Jaggadal is also a human". The complex interaction between nature, mankind and the machine in the backdrop of an harsh and rocky wasteland of Bihar comes the unique story of Jaggadal. Though the name is masculine but the car is definitely feminine as illuminated in the movie. This is the masterstroke of Ritwik and could well be his defining work. No other movie captured this relationship between a man and his machine as have been done here. All later movies based on such theme will be pale including the most recent AI. Only a vagabond and an insane be so ungrateful and unemotional to something which have been making a living for him for so many years. A point proved in Ajantrik. Machines are not just numbers like 571 on the rope-way bucket moving in an orchestrated fashion along a guided track doing a very mechanical thing. Machines, like humans also have the ability to grow affinity with their owner and show all the emotions even jealousy. Jaggdal for example, never gave up carrying impossible tasks one after another.
There were people in the movie who never believed in this extra-ordinary connection and ultimately they were proved right but only superficially. That's one of the reason Bimal laughed at the end.
If the true measure of all art is to evoke emotion and to create a lasting impression in the mind of the audience, then Ajantrik has indeed succeeded, in-spite of how awkward and outrageous the story could be. This would not have been possible without the brilliance of Kali Bannerjee and the supporting caste. Ajantrik would have been a great movie if it had just stopped there.
However, the movies doesn't stop there and it went on exploring many other things and there lies the greatness of Ritwik. Taking a subject which is almost impossible to render on screen e.g. to make he audience feel emotional to an inanimate object; something never attempted before in cinema and not only brilliantly executing it but ultimately delivering much more than that. His movie has many threads as it tells a multi-dimensional story where the actors and the surrounding often overlap and Ajantrik is no exception to this and yet it doesn't bore the audience, rather it keep the viewing much more intriguing with the seemingly discorded but ultimately very coherent perplexity of the sights and sounds.
The movie also has brilliant photography ever captured of a car in motion pictures. The ending is one of the finest and the looming close up says it all. The sound track as always impregnable.
A must watch for any true connoisseur of movie. Something is definitively wrong with the rating system in IMDb. Also disheartening to see so few reviews.
There were people in the movie who never believed in this extra-ordinary connection and ultimately they were proved right but only superficially. That's one of the reason Bimal laughed at the end.
If the true measure of all art is to evoke emotion and to create a lasting impression in the mind of the audience, then Ajantrik has indeed succeeded, in-spite of how awkward and outrageous the story could be. This would not have been possible without the brilliance of Kali Bannerjee and the supporting caste. Ajantrik would have been a great movie if it had just stopped there.
However, the movies doesn't stop there and it went on exploring many other things and there lies the greatness of Ritwik. Taking a subject which is almost impossible to render on screen e.g. to make he audience feel emotional to an inanimate object; something never attempted before in cinema and not only brilliantly executing it but ultimately delivering much more than that. His movie has many threads as it tells a multi-dimensional story where the actors and the surrounding often overlap and Ajantrik is no exception to this and yet it doesn't bore the audience, rather it keep the viewing much more intriguing with the seemingly discorded but ultimately very coherent perplexity of the sights and sounds.
The movie also has brilliant photography ever captured of a car in motion pictures. The ending is one of the finest and the looming close up says it all. The sound track as always impregnable.
A must watch for any true connoisseur of movie. Something is definitively wrong with the rating system in IMDb. Also disheartening to see so few reviews.