Art cinema's unasked questions

Art Cinema and India’s Forgotten Futures – Film and History in the Post Colony

Author: Rochona Majumdar

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Price: Rs 699

Most of us who grew up watching films on Doordarshan in the eighties had no discretion or choice. As a kid I remember there were films that traumatised, like Billy Wilder’s Fedora or Datta Dharmadhikari’s Thamb Lakshmi Kunku Lavte. Ones that made you feel good, like Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Chupke Chupke or Shyam Benegal’s Manthan . Then, there was an entire category that I simply didn’t understand — like Mrinal Sen’s Khandhar. In that pre-internet, pre-satellite TV era there were no child locks or studies on the impact of media on children. So one watched every film screened in every language. Much later one heard the term art cinema. It meant, as I understood it, the intellectually superior but materially poorer cousin of commercial cinema. In the current multiplexed and streaming world, the category (probably) makes no sense. Some of the best cinema — Omkara, Masaan or Joji  — travels and is commercially viable. But for many decades the term created some of the most interesting discussions around cinema.

That is the first reason any cinema lover should pick up Rochona Majumdar’s book. It is like an adda on a topic you cannot help but enjoy. It takes you, with some well-researched detail, into the origins of the term “art cinema” and what it has meant over the years. Much to my delight, Ms Majumdar uses comments from the S K Patil (film) Committee report of 1951 to kick off the discussion. It is, along with the Press Commission reports from the 1950s, among the best sources of reference for that period. Soon after independence and under the heavy influence of British film experts such as Marie Seton, there was talk of a cinema that was not commercially driven, that balanced the need to educate and entertain and helped in the cause of nation-building. 

Ms Majumdar dwells, rather excessively, on Seton’s (not always positive) influence on how India, Indians and the powers-that-be framed their reference for film appreciation and the state’s role in facilitating the growth of cinema. She is critical of Seton’s limited points of reference for good Indian films — Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali, K A Abbas’s Munna and Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zameen, among others.

Ms Majumdar is clearly partial to Ritwik Ghatak’s work. The book is peppered with pictures and anecdotes from his work — particularly Meghe Dhaka Taara. And that is the second reason the book is a fine read. It references some of the best in Indian cinema and you end up learning about so many films that you probably just heard about. But, it would seem that some of the best cinema has come, largely, out of Bengal. This, then, is the first of my two points of debate with the book. Bengal has produced some great writers, filmmakers and actors, but so has Kerala, Maharashtra, Assam, Tamil Nadu. While Ms Majumdar does talk about Bimal Roy or M S Sathyu’s masterpiece Garam Hawa, the affectionate analyses and the illustrations come largely from Bengali cinema. The second issue is that some of the questions it provokes remain unanswered. If art cinema was meant to explore, discuss, our post-colonial history then why are those big issues missing from our filmi palette —the biggest being Partition? There is very little in the Indian film anthology that explores an event that has become a permanent scar on our collective psyche. There are just a handful of films that explored Partition in Hindi. The two examples that come to mind are Garam Hawa and Yash Chopra’s Dharamputra. 

Garam Hawa is a soul-nourishing story about a Muslim family trying very hard to stay put in India soon after Partition with some brilliant performances from Balraj Sahni, Farooq Shaikh and others.  Dharamputra, however, sank. It recounts the story of an illegitimate Muslim boy brought by a Hindu family. Against the background of Partition and riots, he falls prey to Hindu fundamentalism.

You could argue that Meghe Dhaka Tara is set against the backdrop of the Partition of Bengal. This, however, is not about the plot of a film, but the fact that a crucial part of our post-colonial history is missing not just in cinema but in most of the cultural produce of that time. The outpouring of guilt and grief that the Holocaust in Europe triggered in film, books, music or documentaries continues to this day. If the “art cinema movement was like a rambunctious colloquium in which films, cinephilia, criticism and activism become the grounds for debates about the present and future of Indian democracy,” then why is Partition so missing from it? What about the economic mismanagement of India, the lack of awareness and ideas on what could help the country get out of its quagmire? It would have been interesting to know why art cinema did not take a shot at any of these debates.  

And lastly, a minor quibble. Do we need to know about every research report, book or paper read and how that helped form Ms Majumdar’s opinion? Her research is excellent; that is evident from the first page. But there is too much detailing on how she reached a particular conclusion.