KHANDAHAR (Hindi, 1984)

Recently I watched KHANDAHAR based on a story by Premendra Mitra. The film marks another significant high in the illustrious career of the famed director Mrinal Sen. This film came on the heels of EK DIN PRATIDIN & KHARIJ, two of his other masterpieces all made within a span of three-four years. These three films have a marginal storyline and the director’s vision enriched them and turned them into remarkable cinema.

The power of KHANDAHAR reverberates throughout the 90-minute odd film. On a visit to unwind for a couple of days to his palatial like countryside mansion (now in ruins) of his extended family Dipu (Pankaj Kapoor), along with his two friends Subhash (Naseeruddin Shah) & Annu Kapoor meet an elderly bed-ridden lady (Gita Sen) and her unmarried daughter Jamini (Shabana Azmi). Subhash is a photographer and is mistakenly identified as a suitor for her daughter by the elderly lady. To know what transpires, watch the film and it is likely to leave a lasting impact.
The film deservedly won plaudits for the sensitive handling of the story tugging at our heart strings about the predicament of a dying woman and her spinster daughter and the brilliant framing and photography capturing the ruins of a dilaphidated mansion evocatively. The film was shot in Burdhman and Birbhum mostly.
The male protagonist in most of the films of Mrinal Sen is insensitive towards the woman (Baisey Shravan, Akash Kusum, Oka Orie Katha). In KHANDAHAR the photographer Subhash seem bereft of any kind of empathy for his subject Jamini whom he captures on his frames on numerous occasions without her consent.
At one level, one may construe this as a dig by the director for people who work in the media. Media seems to have lost all empathy for their subjects who are just ‘objects to be used.’ In today’s context we can draw an analogy with the exploitation of the media on the Sushant Singh Rajput case just for their TRP rating.
Rating; 4.4 out of 5

Kapurush (1965)

There is a striking similarity in Ray’s KAPURUSH (a 1965 film) with the debut film APOROOPA (1982) directed by the renowned Assamese filmmaker Jahnu Barua. The Ray film featured Soumitro Chattopadhyay and Madhabi Mukherjee, while the Barua film had Biju Phukan and Suhasini Mulay in the lead roles. In both the films the lead player plays ex-lovers where the female lead is married to a tea estate manager.
The ex-lovers meet after a long hiatus via the tea estate manager who initially befriends the male lead. The similarity ends here. While the Barua film had a courageous lover, the one in the Ray film was a Kapurush (weakling). The Ray film was based on a story by Premendra Mitra.

Rating: 3 out of 5