By Amitava Nag • Jul 23rd, 2008 • Filed under: Film Review, Indian Cinema, Movies, featured

Amitava Nag reviews Rituparno Ghosh’s Khela

Rituparno Ghosh’s just released film ‘Khela’ raises an interesting, rather pertinent question–why does a director make a film? Is it because of personal monetary gain or for artistic pleasure or just to be ‘different’ from his/her earlier creations? The question remains unanswered. After sitting through the film for around two hours I am baffled by the very purpose of it. At one level, I felt, its probably what has been so heavily publicized - Ritu’s first film where one of the central characters is a child. A string of national awards aside, Rituparno Ghosh has, in the nineties, brought back to the theatre, a section of the cine-going Bengali middleclass intelligent audience who were till that time, bred upon the classics of Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak. No wonder, Ritu was entrusted with carrying the Ray mantle. Though his first film was a children’s film, this is probably the first serious film where a child has such an interesting and intriguing part to play.

The film opens in a night shot where Raja (played by a surprisingly convincing Prasnejit Chatterjee) , the film director and his wife Sheela (Monisha Koirala) part their paths. As the story progresses we come to know that the central reason of their problem is in Raja’s indifference to father a child since he shields away from responsibilities. Sheela, on the other hand is driven by her motherly instincts since she feels, that will fill-up her loneliness. The film changes gear here and we understand that there is a film-within-film here, just like Ritu’s own ‘Bariwali’. Raja is set to make Abanindranath Tagore’s epic mythical ‘Nalak’ based on Goutama Buddha and he is on the lookout for a young boy who will play the lead. Unfortunately he doesn’t get one of his own satisfactions. Amidst a bizarre set of interactions, he comes across Abhirup eating panipuris while returning home. Raja tries to persuade his parents but considering six weeks of outdoor shoot, they got disinterested. Finally, making a secret pact, Raja and Abhirup plan for the latter’s staged kidnap as Raja whisked him to the outdoor location where the rest of crew waited for them - oblivious of this incident. In the remaining of the film, it is basically, the different situations that Raja encounters - his realizations about his estranged wife who went off to Kurseong to her mother’s place once Raja left Kolkata for the shooting. In the end, Raja gets united with his wife as Abhirup finds his parents who have come to take him home.

The film is about a journey. And to the director Rituparno, much like Raja probably, life is a game when someone wins and someone loses - that too probably in parts. In the entire context of it, probably, at the end of the game everyone emerges as winners as they get enriched in the meaning of life. The highpoint of this film is the colourful landscapes of the mountains, another drift from Ritu’s general indoor setup. However, the coincidence of the rendition of Rabindrasangeet by Sheela in her gorgeous Kurseong home with similar settings of so many characters in different Bengali art films befits the bankruptcy of ideas of the Bengali film makers in general. This bankruptcy is also reflected in the inconsistent costume design of the film. Whereas the colourful dresses add vibrancy to the milieu, it remains a mystery why during bed times or the minor indoor characters are always so well-dressed. In similar light Abhirup’s parents seemed quite relaxed in their hunt for their ‘kidnapped’ son - specifically the father whose nonchalant demeanor is surprising. The film through-out suffers from such severe logical misappropriations which are normally unexpected in Rituparno Ghosh’s films.

Ritu’s primal force in his earlier films is his depiction of interpersonal relationships and their conflicts. And in almost all of these, the central character is a woman. Thus, ‘Khela’ is a new viewing experience for many like us whose latent expectation was not fulfilled. Not because the theme was not based on human psychology in its gamut, but rather, because of the director’s unsure handling of it. I felt, he was torn between the two extremes - making a travelogue out of this story or to remain truthful to his forte in exploring the psychology of the male protagonist. As a result, the film in the end depicts the psychological journey of Raja - through thick and thin, his realization of his submerged love for his wife, and his decision against taking separation. In this regard, the film is similar to Ghosh’s earlier ‘Utsab’ (also featuring Prasenjit) in its tendency of bestowing faith in a closed circle in conjugal life.

In another definitive shot, when the film producer and Raja argue over the fate of production (since the secret that Abhirup is with the crew against his parent’s approval got public) - the mystic mountain, the mist and the taut, reverberating atmosphere reminds me of Satyajit Ray’s ‘The world of Apu’ (when his friend Pulu finds a dejected Apu in a coal mine). Raja’s breaking into tears opens a new meaning of him - here is a character who is unfazed by the grievances of his wife or the glowing love-admiration towards him by the costume designer Anjali, but his phenomenal dedication for the art he mastered made him a recluse. And immediately, Raja’s character fits the different, almost bizarre behavioral patterns. Rituparno Ghosh has surely spent some time in shaping up Raja’s character. However the same cannot be credited for many others. For example the role of Anjali (a brilliant cameo by Raima Sen) was not sure both in the film crew as well as Ritu’s film. Was she only to give a gender balance opposite of Raja and to utter towards the end - “Do you have the ability to love?” - all for the sake of building Raja’s character and hereby slipping down the chance of creating an independent character of the film. Her sudden fit of total breakdown is devoid of any correlation whatsoever and hence stands-out like an ugly wart.

To me, the problem of the film is more with its content rather than the form. The director is not clear what he wants to say and how much he can. And like so many ‘art’ films made by different Bengali directors, this also falls in the trap of the overt glorification of the ‘other’ - a self recluse film director in this case. The pretentious treatment left many glaring gaps and Ritu’s ‘Khela’ (meaning ‘Play’ in Bengali) in the end doesn’t ‘play’ the same human chords that many of his earlier films were capable of.

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