Director: Mrinal Sen; Writer: Mrinal Sen; Cinematographer: Carlo Varini; Cast: Shabana Azmi, Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, M.K. Raina
Duration: 01:36:17; Aspect Ratio: 1.222:1; Hue: 38.734; Saturation: 0.230; Lightness: 0.168; Volume: 0.170; Cuts per Minute: 4.850
Summary: Whereas Sen’s best work derived much
strength from being rooted in a specific time
and place, giving historical resonances to the
particular shapes of the conflicts he depicted,
this international co-production mostly
financed by European television channels is set
in a purely symbolic and timeless space: some
ruins in the middle of a desert. A farmer (Shah)
and a weaver (Puri) exchange their products
for goods provided by a regularly passing
trader (Raina). A woman (Azmi) arrives,
focusing the two men’s desires but also urging
them to obtain more recompense from the
trader. After a visit to a village fair (exuberantly
shot with telling details reminiscent of Sen’s
earlier work) the two men become more
acquisitive and jealousies break out over the
now pregnant woman who simply ups and
leaves. As the two men fight each other, the
trader’s men attack and enslave the workers
again. The film closes with shots of bulldozers
and modern machinery clearing the ground.
Sen’s timeless parable about the genesis of
capitalism, although acted with conviction by
the cast, suffers from its abstraction,
transforming the characters into stereotypes
and reducing the complexities of history to
simplified generalities. G. Chakravorty Spivak
(1993) provides a postcolonial reading of the
film.
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