Synopsis
The last testament of Krishnakanta, an
affluent zamindar that gets stolen by the young
and beautiful Rohini, a widow, whose hand is forced
by Krishnakanta’s older son, the avaricious
Harilal. She is caught red-handed when she tries
to correct the wrong. This leads to a romantic
involvement between Rohini and Krishnakanta’s
nephew Gobindalal, till then happily married to
the very young and dusky Bhramar. Gobindalal and
Rohini begin living together in a distant land.
Unable to bear this sudden turnabout by her loving
husband, Bhramar falls seriously ill. Planning
to reveal Rohini’s true colours, Bhramar’s
father plants a handsome young man at the place
where Gobindalal and Rohini have built their love-nest.
Gobindalal catches Rohini with this stranger and
shocked, shoots her to death. Repentant, he returns
to his village only to encounter the tragic reality
of the innocent and ill-fated Bhramar dying on
his lap. Gobindalal leaves home and hearth to
embrace the life of a wanderer.
Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s creations,
it is widely felt, lend themselves fluidly to
the medium and language of cinema. Bankim Chandra
began his literary career as a writer of verse.
He soon realized that poetry was not his forte
and he switched over to fiction. Interestingly,
his first fiction to appear in print, Rajmohan’s
Wife (published serially in Indian Field
in 1864) was in English. Durgesh Nandini (1865)
was his first historical romance. This was followed
by Kapal Kundala (1866) and these two
are known to be his best romances. He was a brilliant
storyteller and a master of romance. He was a
pathfinder and a pathmaker. Bankim Chandra represented
the English-educated Bengali as a people with
a tolerably peaceful home life, sufficient wherewithal
and some prestige, as the bearer of the torch
of Western enlightenment. No Bengali writer before
or since has enjoyed such spontaneous and universal
popularity as Bankim Chandra has. His novels have
been translated in almost all the major Indian
languages and have helped inspire creative fiction
in those languages.
In Krishnakanter Will (1878), he added
some amount of feeling to imagination and as a
result, it comes quite close to the Western novel.
The moral structured into the story is that the
tolerance of a loyal but betrayed wife can really
save the soul of the husband who had wronged her
by engaging in a relationship that was based purely
on lust. Nearly 130 years after the novel was
published, three-time National Award winner Raja
Sen has made a celluloid translation of Krishnakanter
Will. He has made bold to choose Jeet, one
among the three top male stars of the mainstream
Bengali marquee, to play Gobindalal, stripping
the star of much of his starry image. The film
moves at a grindingly slow pace, perhaps in keeping
with the period it represents. The colours are
beautiful, soaking in the sunlight here, or focussing
on the full moon at night as Rohini takes a dip
in the framed pond outside the zamindar’s
lush gardens. As Gobindalal, Jeet tries to
mould himself into the character, and succeeds,
but not without the effort showing through at
times. He invests the character with the quiet
dignity that characterizes the scion of a zamindar
family way back in the 19th century. Monali Thakur
as the naïve and sweet Bhromor madly in love
with her much older husband is a natural while
Swastika as Rohini looks beautiful even in widow’s
weeds. Sen and his noted screenplay writer Mohit
Chattopadhyay have remained almost totally loyal
to the literary source except for their interpretation
of Rohini’s character. This had strongly
negative shades in the Bankim Chandra novel but
Sen whitewashes her completely and points out
that she is not only a victim of circumstance
and destiny, but has also to die because Gobindalal
misreads her encounter with the young stranger.
They have also cut out the closure of the novel
where Gobindalal returns after several years to
discover that his younger cousin has immortalized
Bhramar in the form of a sculptured idol in the
mansion. Soumitra
Chatterjee’s Krishnakanta is just the
right mix of wisdom, charity and moral rectitude
but his terrible wig tends to spoil the show.
Papiya Sen as Gobindalal’s widowed mother
has too brief a role to be noticed. Bhaswar Chatterjee
as the ‘planted’ new interest in Rohini’s
life is okay and Dulal Lahiri as Bhramar’s
father Madhabnath is as good as he always is.
Arghya Kamal Mitra's editing needed to be a bit
tighter with some clipping of the longer-than-necessary
footage. Two hours and 25 minutes are just a bit
too much considering that it is a period film.
The slow pace and rhythm with a melodious background
score by Partha Sengupta add to the poetic but
volatile moods of the film. Tanmoy Chakrabarty’s
production design is beautiful while Arghya Kamal
Mitra’s sound design sustains the changing
moods the narrative portrays. Having said all
this in favour of the product, the sole element
that tends to spoil the beauty of such a carefully
built up edifice is the very whitewashing of Rohini’s
character from a seductive and beautiful young
widow into a victim of destiny. It cuts out the
essence of the basic conflict the original story
contains. It does away with the electric drama
thrown up by the very polarities of Bhramar and
Rohini, the wife and the mistress, that makes
the original novel so timeless and universal.
There is considerable whitewashing of Gobindalal’s
character too. But at least his human frailties
are not taken away from him, making him a credible
celluloid depiction of the literary Gobindalal.
One has to grant it to Raja Sen for having given
the Bengali audience a meaningful celluloid revival
of classical Bengali literature after that ‘manufactured’
agenda for women’s oppression through Debipaksha
a couple of years ago. At the same time,
one must also point out that his celluloid interpretation
of the Bankim Chandra classic contains the spirit
of the original but lacks the fire within the
novel.
Shoma A Chatterji is a freelance journalist
who specialises in cinema and gender. She has
won the National Award for Best Writing on Cinema
twice.
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