Aparna Sen's Paromitar Ek Din review
Only women understand women. Or, do they? Aparna Sen's Paromitar Ekdin (1996) opens with such a question, although implied. The story can't be simpler. Paramita (played by Rituparna Sengupta), an ambitious, sensitive young girl from South Calcutta, comes to a North Calcutta business family, after marriage. People who know Calcutta, its culture, its history through partition, can easily understand what happens next. Incompatibility everywhere -- value systems, relations, even her husband's approach in bed -- all lead to a final disaster. From the beginning of the story (told in flashback), we know this is a doomed marriage, and we expect either of the two possible outcomes -- a break-up, or a complete submission. The latter would have been plausible in mainstream Bengali cinema of two decades ago (few films such as Ajoy Kar's Saat Paake Bandha being brilliant exceptions). But, here we know the former is inevitable, because the director is Aparna Sen, who always takes a feminist stand.
Feminism, a very misused and misunderstood term. People who use the terms forget that the term has a recorded history. Feminism went through diverse movements, even counteracting to one another. The mainstream Anglo-American feminism is always described by three generations, or as they prefer the coinage, three waves. The first gen feminists created history by taking an active female-chauvinist stance. Although they can't be put in the same compartment, all major movements from women's right to vote to 60s bra-burning -- all categorically belong to this first generation feminism. With such movements, new courses in literature and sociology began too. And from such academic-activist dialectics came out the second wave of feminism.
In an eighties world, motherhood, femininity became things for celebration. Apparently, the movement returned to exactly from where the first feminists started. These new gen second wave feminists wanted special care from society for their femininity and motherhood. Patriarchs breathed a relief, because the pattern was restored, although it meant a few extra perks to the woman at home. At this point, the core academicians came. Women's Studies and Gender Studies started as part of Culture Studies and Sociology, in universities across the world. Philosophies and their receptions by common man have been attacked by this time by Derrida and his followers. All cultural codes and societies themselves were read in different ways. Psychoanalysts of female sexuality came to the market to sell their own theories. All such things influenced the third wave. All variations, differences in sex, sexuality and gender were to be recognized and given a equal right in every social phenomenon, in this third wave. Differences are to be celebrated -- this is why all serious third wave feminists are so much concerned about the gay and lesbian rights. They do not want to see the gender bias as an isolated event.
In Aparna Sen's cinema, we see all three feminist waves reflected. While finding the self through a celebration of female sexuality was the major issue in Parama, equality as a human being and faith in love becomes the cornerstone of Yuganta. Paramitar Ekdin is next on this row. It is very significant (and much talked about) that this film starts with a death (of Sanaka, Paramita's mother-in-Law), and ends with a birth (Paramita's own child in womb). It is as if the creation cycle rotates through the woman -- physically, in the most concrete sense. Paramita and Sanaka, the traditional rival duo in a Bengali family space (more so, when it happens between a South Calcuttan and a Northie) -- the necessary hiatus between a mother-son relationship, lose their traditional hierarchical positions by three common factors between them.
Lack of love and understanding in the family space, being mothers of abnormal children, and an almost common sensitivity to these issues -- these are the factors that bonded Paramita and Sanaka (played by Aparna Sen herself) for the first time. As an idle spectator, I ask myself, "Was it necessary that Paramita had to give birth to a spastic son so that she could be equated to her mother-in-law, put on the same footing?" Was it really necessary just because Sanaka has a schizophrenic daughter that Paramita too has to bear an abnormal child? Is it not too forced? Maybe. But, this is what started the bonding between the arch-rivals, mom-in-law and daughter-in-law. They start sharing, and this bond becomes stronger when Sanaka's husband dies in an accident, also when her failed romance to a Manida (her childhood friend, played by Soumitra Chatterjee) becomes clear to Paramita. Woman understands woman.
Critics have found traces of lesbianism in this film. I do not know. But, things have appreared normal to me. Maybe lesbianism is there. But, in that case, all our behaviours, all our positions are dictated by our sexuality, and the common dictum of our times is man is by nature bi-sexual (in behaviour). Of course, Aparna Sen was aware of this as a filmmaker. So, who knows?
Rest of the film is too predictable and boring at times. But, what if we do not see it just as a narrative film? It can equally be watched as an exploration, a journey into the woman's space. The woman? Too definitive? Maybe. But, this film tries to define womanhood like many other films too. At least that is why I felt. That motivating factor was so strong that we try to ignore some loose ends. We do not know what happens to Bablu, Paramita's spastic child, at the end. Is he dead? We do not know. We do not know if Biresh, Paramita's husband, marries the the same girl he was seen with, after divorcing Paramita. We of course know Khuku, Sanaka's schizophrenic daughter, is still there, in the same position. But, these are minor things. Either the narrative efficienacy of the film is not so strong, or it is not necessary. That is something for the individual spectator to decide.
One thing I can not but say here. Aparna Sen's obsession with Schizophrenia probably starts from here (at least by the way of direct mention). She sees the syndrome, the combinations of multiple symptoms called schizophrenia, in a too simplistic way. And her patients always are morons. Schizophrenia is a wide range of psychotic condition, and should not be portrayed in such grossly redundant manner. Perhaps her films will have qa better reception, if she keeps this in mind.
One of Abhik Mukhopadhyay's earliest works, this film has a really good cinematography, and an equally good editing by Arghyakamal Mitra. The film moves throuigh a classical editing style of long-mid-close and action-reaction shots, a respective choice of lensing and a very efficient source lighting. The craft is classical, the narration is classical -- but somehow the theme seems to have deserved a not so classical style. Paramita finds her own position in the society, and a new life, in the end. But, somewhere she bends more to the second wave feminists, than to the third wave ones. Somewhere, despite the promise of an equality, the social hierarchy is still kept, albeit in a new mask, to the end. This is upto the new spectator, the post-globalization specatator, to judge if that is really the case.
