Ma Durga and Cinema

Premankur Biswas Posted: Oct 07, 2008 at 1707 hrs IST

From Titas Ekti Nadir Naam to Devipaksha, Durga Puja has emerged as a dominant motif in a number of Bengali classics.

It’s Ashtami and Bhagabati’s children and grandchildren have gathered at the thakurdalan of her crumbling old mansion. The ‘ekchala’ Durga pratima (deity) presides benignly over the gathering while Bhagabati’s family set aside all their differences for a few moments of peace and harmony. At that very moment a man walks in …

Durga Puja in the life of Bhagabati, the aging matriarch in Rituparno Ghosh’s 2000 film ‘Utsab’, may be a metaphor for the life and its complexities but in Bengali cinema, the festival of the “soul” has found equally poignant resonance.

Be it the sensitive iconography of Bengali women to depict Durga in all her glory in Ritwik Ghatak’s ‘Titas Ekti Nadir Naam’ or the kitschy depiction of the goddess in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s ‘Devdas’, Maa Durga prevails on our screens.

In Satyajit Ray’ ‘Pather Panchali’, Durga Puja is a covert motif that is always referred to by the players. Durga and Apu eagerly look forward to the festival even when the family spirals towards penury. After Durga’s death, an unknowing Harihar (Durga’s father) returns home with a new sari for Durga to wear during the festival.

Equally poignant is the use of the motif the Uttam Kumar starrer ‘Anthony Firangi’. The festival is used by religious fanatics (read orthodox Brahmins) to attack the Christian man who dares to organize the Puja in his home. His house is burnt down and his wife, a nautch girl played by Tanuja, is grievously injured in that fire.

It was Ray again who used the Durga Puja motif in an off- beat manner. In ‘Joi Baba Felunath’, the idol of the goddess holds the key to the mystery that puzzles Feluda. The scenes of the film where Ruku is following the idol maker around asking him about the Durga mythology is pure cinema.

In the Amitabh Bachchan-Rakhee starrer ‘Anushandhan’ (which was also made in Hindi as ‘Barsaat Ki Ek Raat’) Durga emerges as the metaphor of the triumph of good over evil. The song, ‘Phete gelo phete gelo Kali Ramer dhol’, where a high-on-Puja-spirit Amitabh confronts Amjad Khan’s character, is still a favourite when in it comes to bhashan songs.

Another Rakhee starrer, ‘Paroma’, uses the festival in all its aesthetic glory. A red borderd saree clad Rakhee is offering prayers to the goddess when the young foreign-returned photographer spots her for the first time. In the ethnic attire, she looks her sensual best. Eventually the two have a tumultuous affair.

The recent Raja Sen film ‘Devipaksha’ uses the Durga metaphor a bit too literally. In the films’ climax, the protagonist of the film, Rituparna Sengupta, actually drives a trishul down the chest of the villain, Biplab Chatterjee.

Which brings us back to Rituparno Ghosh’s homage to Bengal’s biggest festival, ‘Utsob’.

While the film, through its characters and their problems, explores the complexities of urban Bengali middle-class life, it also is a metaphor for the cycle of life. As Prosenjit’s character tells Rituparna Sengupta’s character about what he saw when the Durga idols were being immersed in the river. Boys with the idol to take them out for recycling. Idol loses the plaster coating, but the frame remains which will be used to construct a new idol. Construction and deconstruction will keep happening but the structure will remain the same. Similarly, the goddess finds new roles to play in our cinema, but her essence remains the same. source: http://www.screenindia.com/

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