Director: Aparna Sen; Writer: Aparna Sen; Cinematographer: A. Shashikant, Dilip Verma; Editor: Moloy Banerjee, Ratan Sarkar; Cast: Anjan Dutta, Rupa Ganguly, Pallavi Chatterjee, Kunal Mitra, Subrata Nandi, Anil Lenka, Neema Rehman, Pallabi Chatterjee, Poushali Mukherjee, Akash Gupta
Summary: Mapping political and environmental concerns
upon a domestic melodrama, Sen’s most recent
film occasionally borders on the surreal. An
estranged couple, advertising executive
Deepak (Dutta) and classical dancer Anusuya
(Ganguly), return to a fishing village where
they had spent their honeymoon. Their past life
is told through a series of flashbacks, while the
sea, polluted by rampant consumerism,
appears to symbolise their present condition. A
flashback reveals that Anusuya had fought a
major industrial house on behalf of
environmental activists, but later capitulated
when that institution funded her dance school.
‘Global’ issues such as the gulf war and the rise
of market capitalism are presented as
impacting local and even personal problems.
This relationship is graphically realised in the
film’s end when a blazing sea, into which
Deepak disappears, is connected to the gulf
war oil slick. The apocalyptic end had been
foretold by an old fisherman earlier in the
story. Among those who publicly praised the
film included major Bengali poet Shankho
Ghosh, who commended its poetic sensibility,
and novelist Debesh Roy who noted its
independence from storytelling and Satyajit
Ray-school filmmaking.
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