Film Review
The economic and social upheaval experienced by India in the early
1970s provided Satyajit Ray with the inspiration for his Calcutta
Trilogy, in which he depicts young men struggling with the world of
work at a time of mass unemployment and growing social
unrest.
Pratidwandi
(a.k.a.
The Adversary) was
the first instalment in this trilogy and was followed by
Seemabaddha (
Company Limited) (1971) and
Jana Aranya (
The Middleman) (1976).
Although less well-known outside India than Ray's earlier films,
the Calcutta Trilogy represents some of his best and most experimental
work.
Pratidwandi marks a
significant stylistic shift from Ray's previous films, so much so that
it may have shocked and surprised contemporary audiences who had grown
accustomed to his poetic flavour of neo-realism during the previous
decade. The film begins with a bizarre negative
(photo-reversed) sequence which, as we subsequently learn, is an
hallucinatory experience of the main character in the story.
Subsequently, the film adopts a crude social realist style that owes
much to the French Wave tradition (particularly the work of Godard and
Rivette), with aggressive jump-cutting, shaky camerawork and extensive
location footage in the busy streets of the city.
The film's unpolished
cinéma
vérité style suits its subject perfectly, since
the story revolves around a confused young man who is torn between open
rebellion and submissive conformity. The conflict and unrest
which the film's hero sees in the world around him seem to mirror his
own inner turmoil, and he ends up being unable to decide what he wants,
freedom or servitude. It is only when he realises how loathsome
is the world he is expected to enter that Siddhartha feels able to make
his decision and choose for himself the life he wants.
Pratidwandi is not Satyajit
Ray's most comfortable film to watch. Its rough and ready feel
gives it an austerity and bleakness that distance the spectator from
the subject and, unusually for Ray, its harshness is not softened by
poetic irony. The frequent switching between the real world and
that of the imagination is just as unsettling, even if this allows Ray
to include some humourous surreal touches (such as the row of skeletons
waiting patiently for an interview). Although the film is
stylistically challenging, it is as compelling as anything else that
its director made. As the drama builds to its searing climax, the
plight of the young employed becomes tragically evident, although it
takes a spellbinding central performance from Dhritiman Chatterjee to
convey to us the harrowing reality of this predicament.
© James Travers 2010
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Next Satyajit Ray film:
The Chess Players (1977)
Film Synopsis
Siddhartha is a 25-year-old graduate whose inability to find a job is
slowly alienating him from the world around him. Since
he abandoned his training at medical school, he has
drifted along, not knowing what he wants from life. Siddhartha
now lives in a crowded Calcutta apartment with his mother and two
younger siblings. He disapproves of his sister, who flirts with
her boss to improve her career prospects, and is indifferent to his
brother's involvement with bomb-making revolutionaries. One
evening, he is called into a house by a young woman to help change a
fuse. The woman, Keya, shares Siddhartha's dislike for
middleclass conventionality and the two appear to be fated to fall in
love. But once again Siddhartha is unwilling to commit himself
and, after another disastrous job interview, he leaves Calcutta to
start a new life, in a poorer region of India.
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.