Bhuvan Shome (1969)
Director: Mrinal Sen; Writer: Mrinal Sen, Satyendra Sharat, Badrinath, Banaphool; Producer: Mrinal Sen; Cinematographer: K.K. Mahajan; Editor: Rajendra Naik, Gangadhar Naskar, Dinkar Shetye; Cast: Suhasini Mulay, Utpal Dutt, Sadhu Meher, Shekhar Chatterjee, Rochak Pandit, Punya Das, Amitabh Bachchan
Duration: 01:32:17; Aspect Ratio: 1.333:1; Hue: 100.124; Saturation: 0.011; Lightness: 0.470; Volume: 0.154; Cuts per Minute: 22.666; Words per Minute: 35.018
Summary: Sen’s breakthrough film, a low-budget, FFC- sponsored hit, is sometimes seen as the origin of New Indian Cinema. The story, set in the late 40s just after Independence, was sarcastically summarised by Satyajit Ray as ‘Big Bad Bureaucrat Reformed by Rustic Belle’. It is a satirical comedy about the upright Bengali railway officer Bhuvan Shome (Dutt). He sacks a corrupt ticket collector (Meher) before going off on a duck-shooting expedition in Gujarat. There, in the dunes of Saurashtra, he meets the village belle Gauri (Mulay) who turns out to be the wife of the man he sacked. He has a long, and unstated, sexual/cultural encounter with her, enjoying the attention she lavishes upon him even as he remains anxious about his sudden loss of authority. He returns determined to enjoy life to the full. Sen described his first Hindi feature as Tati-inspired nonsense and suggested that the ending, with the ‘humanised’ bureaucrat boisterously disrupting the office routine, is difficult to grasp ‘unless you grant Mr Shome a certain touch of insanity. As you examine the sequence, you will see that the same can be said about the editing pattern, all erratic and illogical.’ Mulay went on to become a noted maker of radical documentaries while occasionally acting in independent films.
Arguably, considered the first film of the Indian New Wave, 'Bhuvan Shome' remains one of the most important transitional films in Mrinal Sen's oeuvre, between the technical innovations glimpsed at in 'Akash Kusum' and which would actualize itself into a new cinematic idiom in the Calcutta Trilogy. K. K. Mahajan, who would go on to become synonymous with the New Cinema Movement, made his debut in the film, starting a long association with Sen which would span more than two decades.
Sen has repeatedly cited Charlie Chaplin, and above all, Jacques Tati (French actor, pantomimist, visual humorist, author, film producer) as the inspirations behind the film. Consequently, the framing, editing and composition of the film has often been referred to by Sen as frenzied and mad, a necessary idiom for countering the established notions of linear, coherent, narrative cinema. In fact, in a later interview with Samik Bandyopadhyay, Sen has remarked: "I believe there should be a release of madness on the Indian screen. And it was really a mad, mad time that we had, while making this film. We went completely beserk. Did every crazy thing that crossed our minds. We needed this. Especially because we were imprisoned within the suffocating walls of very rigid tradition." [Excerpts from an interview by Samik Bandyopadhyay at the Seagull Arts and Media Resource Centre, Calcutta, 7 November 2001. Transcribed and translated from Bengali by Sunandini Banerjee. (From, ‘Montage – Mrinal Sen: Life, Politics, Cinema’, Seagull Books, Calcutta, 2002)]
The staff at the station are awaiting the arrival of their supervising officer Mr. Bhuvan Shome, a news that has unsettled many, especially Jadav. This is especially because, as it is soon revealed, Mr. Shome has the reputation of being a strict disciplinarian who does not tolerate a single misdemeanor. The reference to 'golmal' (trouble) or 'lafra'(problem) alludes to the bribes that they regularly take from the passengers for providing extra travel facilities.
Jadav's admission of fear and anxiety is punctuated by a continuous tracking shot of the rail tracks mimicking the train approaching with Mr. Shome. It serves to heighten the anticipation of the man whose photographic still we see even before the title credits.
The conversation between the two men reveal further bits of information about Mr. Shome's visit - he is reputed to be an unforgiving person and one reason for his visit here is to inspect a complaint that has been made against Jadav.
'Gauna' is a custom associated with the consummation of marriage, generally seen in child marriages. The bride stays at her natal home till she is of age and the 'gauna' can be performed to mark the beginning of conjugal life. A complaint and any disciplinary action against him at such a point would ruin his chances of a happy conjugal life and this is one of the most pressing concerns for Jadav.
The first words of Mr. Shome that one hears, confirm everything one has learnt of him so far regarding his strict, unforgiving nature. He is heard, rather than seen, rebuking someone about attempting to flatter him; instead, the frame contains only Jadav, whose worst fears have been confirmed.
About the casting of Utpal Dutt in the film Sen has remarked: "I had no idea how he would actually respond to it. Although I was sure that he would understand my point. He had understood me. Recognized what I was all about. And he always claimed that that role had been his best. I would not have been able to achieve the same effect with Sekhar [Sekhar Chatterjee, who plays the bullock cart driver in the film]. He would have totally overdone things. Utpal had a tremendous sense of proportion. A profound sense. He would thereby deliver great performances even in the worst of films. He was a master of traversing the entire gamut, from the sublime to the ridiculous." [Excerpts from an interview by Samik Bandyopadhyay at the Seagull Arts and Media Resource Centre, Ca;cutta, 7 November 2001. Transcribed and translated from Bengali by Sunandini Banerjee. (From, ‘Montage – Mrinal Sen: Life, Politics, Cinema’, Seagull Books, Calcutta, 2002)]
A mask shot, used to depict Shome's internal monologues and aside; the device is used throughout the film to foreground Shome's disciplinarian and judgemental nature.
The voice-over in the film is by Amitabh Bachchan, in his first brush with Hindi cinema. He was working in Khwaja Ahmed Abbas's 'Saat Hindustani' at the time when he met Mrinal Sen through Abbas.
In his memoirs, Mrinal Sen has termed Shome's morality as 'Victorian'; so much so, that he did not even spare his son for a petty offense. It will be interesting to note that Shome's primary complaint against his son is the fact that the latter has violated his dictum of 'duty before self' to go and pay respects to his guru. For a man of Shome's disposition, such an expression of faith, be it religious or otherwise, would be a sign of a deeper moral flaw. Consequently, in Shome's worldview, his son's choice of a life in the ashram is a consequence of the fact that he is, for all practical purposes, a failure.
The voice-over further explains how Shome is a man of high moral principles, something which has alienated his only son, had caused his wife unending grief when she had been alive, and has also led to his subordinates developing a deep dislike for him. The sequence highlights the lonely, duty-bound life that Shome leads, strictly ordered and regimented.
In Bhuvan Shome there is a sequence in which Mrinal Sen gives a depiction (as against description) of this exciting as well as desperate moment. The sequence can well be divided into four sections. In the first we see Bhuvan Shome, a middle-aged high-ranking railway official clad in the usual western office-suit smoking a cigar and moving from the left to the right and from the right to the left in the corridor of a government bungalow. A voice-over – and the voice is that of Amitabh Bachhan, the actor who in the seventies would emerge as a matinee idol, and would represent the constituency of Angry Young Men on screen – informs the viewers that Bhuvan Shome is a man of high principles. We are told, so high are his principles, so obstinate is he in maintaining them that Shome is bereft of all (human) company. In the third section of the sequence comes a series of scenes which acts as a stark contrast to the lonely figure of Bhuvan Shome. The series is a collage of real-life footage of Calcutta street-demonstrations. Reverberating with slogans and speeches, resounding with the clash between the red festoon marked with the sign of the sickle and the wooden police-lathi, the section ends with a declaration of a strike by workers of Bengal’s film industry. In the fourth section, the viewers get to hear in the voice of Amitabh Bachchan that Bhuvan Shome is of ‘this same Bengal’, that he is a man who has never lost his ‘Bengaliness’ that ‘Bhuvan Shome is a pure, unadulterated Bengali’. In the second section of the sequence comes the clue that convincingly connects the upright but solitary Bengali exercising his limbs in the verandah of a government rest-house with the collective of agitated Bengalis out on the streets.
The narrator opens the section with just one word: ‘Bengal’. And the pronouncement is immediately followed by shots in quick succession of four eminent Bengalis at work. The first shot is a reproduction of a photograph that adorns the walls of almost all middle-class Bengali homes – a photograph of Swami Vivekananda. There, arms tightly folded across the chest, stands the ochre-robed saênyàsain who (in spite of being a professed Vaidàntik) taught the world the gospel of Karmayoga at the World Congress of Religion at Chicago in 1893. In the second shot appears Rabindranath Thakur – the viewers get to hear the words ‘golden Bengal’ and see a photograph of the Nobel-laureate doing a painting on a piece of paper with a fountain pen. In the fourth shot Ravi Shankar takes over the screen – we see the world-renowned sitarist, the ‘oriental’ guru of George Harrison of the Beatles, playing his instrument, and hear the narrator say, ‘peculiar Bengal’. In Mrinal Sen’s list, along with the preacher, the poet-cum-painter and the – informs the viewers that Bhuvan Shome is a man of high principles. We are told, so high are his principles, so obstinate is he in maintaining them that Shome is bereft of all (human) company. In the third section of the sequence comes a series of scenes which acts as a stark contrast to the lonely figure of Bhuvan Shome. The series is a collage of real-life footage of Calcutta street-demonstrations. Reverberating with slogans and speeches, resounding with the clash between the red festoon marked with the sign of the sickle and the wooden police-lathi, the section ends with a declaration of a strike by workers of Bengal’s film industry. In the fourth section, the viewers get to hear in the voice of Amitabh Bachhan that Bhuvan Shome is of ‘this same Bengal’, that he is a man who has never lost his ‘Bengaliness’ that ‘Bhuvan Shome is a pure, unadulterated Bengali’. In the second section of the sequence comes the clue that convincingly connects the upright but solitary Bengali exercising his limbs in the verandah of a government rest-house with the collective of agitated Bengalis out on the streets.
- Sibaji Bandyopadhyay, from 'Ray's Memory Game', in 'Sibaji Bandyopadhyay reader', Kolkata: Worldview Books, 2012, pgs 185-187
The audaciousness that marks the making and technical aspects of the film is reflected in the caustic humour that is effectively used throughout the film. Sen has admitted that their impulse had been to make fun of everything that one would consider improper. This is coupled with the political situation in Bengal at the time: the victory of the United Front against the Congress government that set the stage for the political turmoil of the early 1970s, and the early moments of the Bangladesh Liberation War. The evocation of 'Sonar Bangal' ('Golden Bengal') becomes especially relevant in this context. The images of Swami Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore, Satyajit Ray and Ravi Shankar give way to a collage of news footage of Calcutta street-demonstrations and a declaration of a strike by workers of Bengal’s film industry (where, incidentally, Basu Chatterjee and Bansi Chandragupta had participated) - foregrounding both the political turmoil of the time and the curiously stunted and restrictive nature of the Bengali middle-class and intelligentsia and the constant attempts to take refuge with cultural 'icons'.
In this context, Sibaji Bandyopadhyay remarks: "The suggestion in Bhuvan Shome was that despite their trendy (mental) habits, the members of the minority group called the 'Bengali middle class' were still engrossed with the essentially old-fashioned phenomenon known as the 'Bengal Renaissance'; and in tune with their investment in the conservation of that glorious past, the Bengalis had elevated (the much-decorated, internationally famous) Ray to the rank of the 'tutelary gods'. ('Ray's Memory Game', in 'Sibaji Bandyopadhyay Reader', Kolkata: Worldview Books, 2012)
Clip #1: Narrator introduces Bhuvan Shome, a 'true-blue Bengali'. Guest house, animation sequence, decision to go hunting.
Consequently, in the light of the previous sequence, the declaration that Shome is a pure unadulterated Bengali who has never forgotten his 'Bengali-ness' assumes deeply ironic proportions. In one fell sweep, Shome becomes part of the same Bengali middle class and its bhadralok predecessors that the film implicitly critiques. It will be interesting to note that the notion of physical well-being and exercise was one of the most defining aspects of the pre-War bhadralok, depicted wonderfully in P. C. Barua's 1939 comedy 'Rajat Jayanti'. Sen vigorously exercising his limbs, almost in tandem with the protesting hordes on the streets of Calcutta, highlights the legacies that went on to constitute the post-Independence Bengali middle class. The mocking question by the voice-over as to whether Shome has at all learnt anything from the numerous things he has seen or done in his life, underlines the inherently closed nature of his class identity.
The use of animation is one of the most significant technical innovations in 'Bhuvan Shome', hitherto unseen in Indian cinema. It delineates Shome's everyday life, set in the same routine for twenty-five long years, in an almost flippant cartoonish way, while at the same time asserting the sudden break in said pattern when he decides to take this trip.
Regarding the use of animation, Sen notes: "Bhuvan Shome had an element of fun which I believe was an extra advantage. Within its theme, a kind of social order emerged where nothing changeable. There were all kinds of characters and possibilities, anything could happen. But ultimately nothing did. Thus, with staccato movement or cuts, I designed the film in terms of attitude, in terms of situations, in terms of shot-division and in terms of editing. Moreover, there was the sheer delight of playing with the media. This was not meant to be a gimmick. This was a sort of deconstruction of forms. Rammohan, of Bombay, was an expert in animation and I enlisted his advice." ('To say something new', ‘Montage – Mrinal Sen: Life, Politics, Cinema’, Seagull Books, Calcutta, 2002)
The association of hunting with 'bhadralok' notions of leisure and as a form of hyper-masculine self-fashioning has been a long one. What makes it interesting is that the bureaucrat does not go for the traditional practices of hunting big game or even predators (as the montage of mounted animals would suggest) but for birds - his admission to himself of the dangers of hunting tigers, though not fully articulated, is nonetheless a scathing comment on the figure of the sophisticated, Bengali middle-class bureaucrat.
To emphasize the fact that he decided to become an ornithologist, animated birds are seen flying around his head.
About the sound recording of the scene, Sen recalls: "Vijay Raghav Rao, the music director,said, ‘Everyone, start laughing very loudly’. He recorded our laughter very slow speed. When we played it back, at normal speed, it sounded just like the chirping of a passing flight of birds!" [Interview by Samik Bandyopadhyay at the Seagull Arts and Media Resource Centre, Calcutta, 7 November 2001; transcribed and translated from Bengali by Sunandini Banerjee. (From, ‘Montage – Mrinal Sen: Life, Politics, Cinema’, Seagull Books, Calcutta, 2002)]
Shekhar Chatterjee plays the Gujarati bullock-cart driver. The sequence sets up a contrast between the rustic driver, a peripheral figure in the world Shome comes from, and the strict order and discipline of Shome's world. This is foregrounded by Shome's attempt to upstage the driver by asking whether he knows Bangla, after being told that he has learnt Hindi by himself out of necessity. The bureaucrat's attempts to emphasize his innate superiority is laced with irony, especially in the context of the entire next sequence and the cart race.
The plot, most of which comes to pass over the course of a single day, is about a series of transformative experiences that Shome goes through in his sojourn through the desert landscape. The bullock-cart race drives home the striking contrast between the suave authoritarian figure and the absolute upheaval and disorder that the event and the driver symbolizes. The first in a series, the scene highlights the slow degeneration that his high standards and codes are about to go through once faced with the elemental nature of the world at large, a world he has been far removed from.
'Katukutu' is the Bengali word for tickling. Sen is attempting to chastise the driver for the race, by asking why he had been tickling the bulls into running. The driver's initial inability to understand the Bengali world, and the consequent exchange which reveals the gap in languages, underscores the strange and alien nature of the world Shome has landed up in.
The local women with the stacks of metal pots on their heads is a recurrent image in the film. The music and the editing (especially Shome's reaction shots, wherein he wants to stare but keeps attempting to avert his eyes), foreground his fascination with them, perhaps something he had never thought he would encounter. At the same time, his fascination provides a erotic subtext which many had noted as one of the most defining aspects of the film at the time of its release. The strict disciplinarian, out of his comfort zone and in the wild, is entranced by the woman and quite glaringly so - the suggestive hints the cart-driver drops for having suddenly stopped foreground this.
The cart-driver's name is Seengdana, the local name for the peanut or groundnut, because he had been born in a peanut field where his mother had died at childbirth. Shome's caustic comments about the strange name further emphasizes the differences between his insulated world and the larger nation which he is quite unaware of. The driver's comment that he knows nothing drives home the fact that it is Bhuban Shome and not him who is the oddity in this space.
Ideology: Buffalo Sequence
The buffalo chase scene is the second transformative experience that Shome goes through, especially important because it underscores political dimensions of this transformation. In this context, M. Madhava Prasad explains: "The buffalo chase is one of the highlights of the film, where the comedy derives from the contrast between the bureaucrat's customary stiffness and the transforming power of fear, helplessness and speed. Sen has said that the details of the narrative were made up on the spot, and has even attributed some of the episodes to Utpal Dutt's imagination. The basic structure, however, consists of a relation between centre and margin, state and nation. Quite literally, here the bureaucrat encounters the nation in a remote corner of the state and is humanized by the experience. Set in the late forties, this basic structure can be described as a national allegory, enacting the realization of independence through a transformation of the relations between the state and nation. It is the narrative of a bureaucracy, previously serving the colonial project of domination, which must now establish a more intimate relation with the world over which it rules. It is the allegory of transition from colonial domination to independence, in which the object of transformation appears to be the bureaucracy, which represents the continuity between the colonial state and the independent one. This link with the past, which condemns it to a position of external domination, is broken by an immersion in the awkwardness of Indian everyday life. The film thus enacts the submission of the inherited and overarching power of the state to a reworking that must go through the people." [M. Madhava Prasad, 'Ideology of the Hindi Film: A Historical Construction', Oxford University Press, 1998 (2010)]
Suhasini Mulay, in her first film role, as Gauri; the village belle easily tames the wild buffalo that had frightened the wits out of Shome (the latter is seen on top of a tree, an incongruous image given what we have seen or learnt of him), foregrounding the strange, alien world he has set out to explore. His bafflement at the event is highlighted by his startled admission, at the sight of her riding the buffalo, that she appears as 'Mahishmardini', a moniker of Durga.
The film had extensive outdoor shoots in Saurashtra, Gujarat. Outdoor shots, an intrinsic part of the New Cinema codes, were majorly dictated by the often meager budget of the films. Bhuvan Shome reportedly had a production cost of two lakh rupees, an amount that would be a top star's fee at the time. However, one major factor that also influenced the making of 'Bhuvan Shome' was the involvement of the Film Finance Corporation, a state agency that entered film production in 1969. A state intervention into cultural production, the Film Finance was however guided by a mostly independent policy-making body (comprising of technicians and directors from the Film Institute), geared towards making realist, narrative cinema. This new policy of the earlier nascent corporation coincides with the making of 'Bhuvan Shome', and also produces a new realist aesthetic comprising technical experiments, location shooting, an active social and political realism, and actors who were not usually identified with star-driven popular cinema. Mrinal Sen's 'Bhuvan Shome' and Basi Chatterjee 'Sara Akash' are the first most notable examples of these developments.
One major aspect in the narrative is the conversations that Shome has with the various people he meets. As he talks to these various people, often foregrounding the inability to communicate, it also marks how he has to adopt various dialects in order to adapt. Madhava Prasad notes: "While developing the basic structure of the realist mode, Sen's politically radical move was to suggest that the consolidation of the nation-state's democratic structure could only come through a subjection of the metalanguage of the state to a process of 'corruption' by the languages of the indigenous population. The body's conventional, 'standardized' language is corrupted by the strange 'dialects' that it has never before spoken - running, twitching, jumping, etc." [M. Madhava Prasad, 'Ideology of the Hindi Film: A Historical Construction', Oxford University Press, 1998 (2010)]
At the same time, the narrative itself undercuts this realist representation by the often-comical nature of the conversation, the strange actions of the characters (here, for example, Shome's attempts to give money to the man, their ensuing walk through the crops in the manner of a game of hide-and-seek), and the framing and editing of the scenes.
Shome's interests in hunting have developed only recently and all the knowledge that he has acquired, as we have previously seen, have been from a retired hunter and from journals and magazines on hunting. The cigar-smoking hunter is a romanticized image that has internalized - as we have seen when he refuses to shoot big predators, his interest is in the fact that he is hunting and not on the hunt itself. Gauri is a local and knows more about the place than him and the narrative foregrounds how in an alien place, where he is entirely out of depth, their chance encounter would bring Shome's organised and regimented existence into crisis.
Gauri's father Damu Patel is a local farmer and has spotted the bureaucrat out hunting. Correctly assuming him to be an important officer, he has asked her to offer him hospitality for the day. Shome, gruff and implacable, is clearly reluctant and attempts to ignore the offer.
The mask shot reveals the reason for his reluctance in accepting their hospitality is the chance encounter with her buffalo previously.
Shome's attempt to justify hunting to Gauri hits a block when faced with her apparently innoccuous question: if he doesn't eat the meat then why does he hunt. His admission of defeat when faced with her questions signals the shift in the balance of power between between Shome and Gauri, a fact that will underscore their entire interaction, with Shome seemingly meeting his match in the girl.
This shift in the balance of power is underlined by the fact that it is Gauri who picks up the hunting rifle and leads the way ahead of Shome, imperiously telling him that he will get the gun back when (she feels) he needs it.
Damu is lamenting about Gauri's lack of practical and worldly knowledge. It is revealed that she is married and her 'gauna' ceremony is scheduled to happen soon, which would mean that she would have take up the responsibilities of a home and family once she goes to her in-law's.
The conversation unexpectedly reveals that Gauri's husband is Jadav, the man he is scheduled to punish because of charges of corruption. Ironically, Damu reveals that Jadav gets extra money from bribes and tips, something that can stand as testimony to all the charges against him. For a stickler to rules and decorum like Bhuvan Shome, the realization is undoubtedly a moment of crisis. It is quite evident that he has taken to Gauri, even accepting the hospitality of their home. The revelation brings these two worlds dangerously close, threatening to upset his carefully constructed notions of truth, morality and justice.
It is evident that Shome's has developed a fondness for Gauri. Consequently, he is still unsure about the discovery he has just made regarding her husband's identity, putting him in an intense moral dilemma regarding his course of action. While habit would dictate that he go ahead as planned, the encounter with Gauri and the alien space have left him unsure and doubtful. He urges Gauri to tell him her husband's name, perhaps to confirm or out of hope that what he has deduced is wrong.
Jadav's picture in the hut confirms Shome's suspicions about the identity of Gauri's husband. The series of freeze frames, of Shome and the picture, intercut with the shots of the moving train, foreground his dilemma regarding the situation he has landed up in.
The mention of his name, that too as a complaint, brings Shome face to face with a world he had hitherto been unfamiliar with, a world where his rules and regulations are entirely out of place, and where instead of a disciplinarian he is seen as a petulant bully.
At the same time, Gauri's unique take on bribes is central to the process of transformation that Shome has been subjected to - where all his rigidly held notions of corruption and morality are being simultaneously jeopardized. The difference between a bribe and money for 'chai-paani' (that is, a tip) foregrounds the difference between his vantage point - defined by his class and economic identity - and the lived realities of people who work under him. Gauri's vehement claim that he knows nothing and her belief that whatever 'Mr. Shome' does is borne out of jealously and envy is a symbolic denunciation of all his ideas of right and wrong.
The idea of changing and adopting dialects in order to map the limits of the nation is underlined by the change in clothes. In order to fit in as a hunter, in order to not stick out, Bhuvan Shome has to alter his appearance, change his garb and dress himself according to the place he has landed up in. Gauri's reasons for making him change are telling: she admits that he will look like an outsider/stranger ('ajnabi') to the birds who will never come near enough for him to take a proper shot.
Much like before, Gauri yet again takes the lead, carrying the gun while she gives him a stick to carry. The shift in the balance of power that we had discussed earlier has resulted in Gauri having completely outwitted Shome; the latter is left trailing at her wake. In fact, this is corroborated by their entire march through the salt desert in the successive scenes, with her leading the way as he struggles to keep up with her.
The 'bhoot bungalow' or 'haunted house' that Gauri has chosen as their vantage point to keep track of the birds. Ruins are a recurrent motif in Mrinal's Sen's films, right from 'Baishe Shraban' to 'Khandhar' - in a way they symbolise the inevitability of decay as well as foreground the immense import of memory and history. Sen recollects about the choice of the house: "We were passing the sand-dunes in order to follow the flight of the birds with our camera when Utpal pointed out a dilapidated house with a staircase going up to the first floor...The Raja of Bhabnagar used to come here with his queen in the summer. The chowkidar said that the king no longer visited, and so, he received no pay. The house was now referred to as a 'bhoot-bungalow'. A haunted house. I went up the stairs alone. The chowkidar pointed to a large window. He spoke of a swing which, once, hung before it and on which the king and the queen would sit together. The king would narrate the stories of tigers-lions-ghosts, and after some time, the queen would fall asleep. This was exactly how I arranged the shots with Utpal and Suhasini." ('To say something new', ‘Montage – Mrinal Sen: Life, Politics, Cinema’, Seagull Books, Calcutta, 2002)
At the same time, the ruins foreground the erotic subtext in 'Bhuvan Shome' that many have commented on. Sen has repeatedly noted how the film itself received multiple interpretations at the time of its release, a major strand of which noted how the film has a constant erotic undertone running through it. While Sen has mostly downplayed this aspect, the scene lends itself to multiple ways of viewing. It is obvious that Shome is entranced by Gauri. While she is moving and relating the story of the ruins, the camera mimics Shome's perusal of her (most notably, in the case of the shot where the camera simulates the swing), gazing at her in wonder.
"There was a shot where Suhasini was describing the story of the queen. Suddenly she exclaimed, 'Manik-da, look!' It was an unbelievable sight. Flocks of birds were descending over the sea. Mahajan said, 'The shot is ruined.' 'Nothing has happened,' I explained. 'She spoke while moving her face away.' I kept that shot aside. While dubbing I made her say 'Dekho! Dekho!' ['Look! Look!']" ('To say something new', ‘Montage – Mrinal Sen: Life, Politics, Cinema’, Seagull Books, Calcutta, 2002)
In the context of the film's erotic undertones, Sen notes: "There were some erotic undertones in the film but those were not my primary objective. There was a complexity in Bhuvan Shome's character and temperament and I tried to foreground that element. He was a widower and a moralist; he stared at women and yet, almost immediately, averted his gaze. In his office he aims his gun at a target but his attention is diverted by the women with their pots of water. Again, in the bird-hunting scene, when Suhasini puts her hand gently on Shome-saheb's shoulder, he shivers and steals aglance at her. While we were shooting, Suhasini inquired about the relationship being just a father-daughter one. Was there perhaps more to it than that? I would like to say that this element was only superficial and had no bearing on the real issues which I tried to address in the film." ('To say something new', ‘Montage – Mrinal Sen: Life, Politics, Cinema’, Seagull Books, Calcutta, 2002)
One must note the peculiar confluence of the aesthetics of folk performances of the Indian Peoples' Theatre Association (IPTA) with elements of Bertold Brecht's 'epic theatre' in 'Bhuvan Shome'. The technical innovations in the film particularly use elements from Brecht - breaking narrative conventions and using tools like the animation, the editing and the sound - to underline the constructed nature of the film text itself; which would become an important component within the ambit of New Cinema. At the same time elements of popular regional performance arts are used throughout, including in the soundtrack of the film (here, for instance, Shome approaching in the tree costume to the beat of drums, recalls a folk dance).
Ironically, all of Shome's efforts at changing, adapting and masquerading are in vain as he fails to shoot the bird. Instead, in a strange turn of events, the bird gets scared at the sound of the gun and falls to the ground on its own.
As mentioned before, the film, on its release, met with numerous interpretations from various quarters. One significant strand had been of the view that the narrative depicted the comeuppance of the bureaucrat at the hands of the simple village girl, especially after her pleas to him to request 'Mr. Shome' in his office to forgive her husband. That he turns back in the next scene to go and give back the bird to her signals a change of heart. Sen has mostly downplayed the multiple interpretations of the film, stating their chief aim had been to tell a simple story by de-emphasizing the plot and stressing on the technical and economic aspects of filming.
In this context, one must mention Satyajit Ray, who wrote a stringent critique of the idea of New Cinema as represented by 'Bhuvan Shome' in his essay, 'An Indian New Wave?' published in Filmfare (8 october, 1971) - "Among recent films, Bhuvan Shome is cited widely as an off-beat film, which has succeeded with a minority audience. My own opinion is that whatever success it has had has not been because of, but in spite of its new aspects. It worked because it used some of the most popular conventions of cinema, which helped soften the edges of its occasional spiky syntax. These conventions are: a delectable heroine, an ear-filling background score, and a simple, wholesome, wish –fulfilling screen story. Summary in seven words: Big Bad Bureaucrat Reformed by Rustic Belle."
Mrinal Sen's, in reaction to this episode, has remarked: "I refrain from unnecessarily writing a long rejoinder because it is rather inconsequential. I say just a few words on his summarization in seven words (Hollywood’s one-time criterion of a good screen story): Big Bad Bureaucrat Reformed by Rustic Belle. My business, to write in plain and simple language, was not to reform the bureaucrat because he belonged to an incorrigible tribe. Bhuvan Shome, as I saw him on the screen, was an arrogant man, lonely and sad, who finally came to a tragic realization, burlesque and inspired nonsense acting as faced. Who, then, got it wrong? Ray? Or me? Either of the two, could not be both. Or, it could as well be the usual conventional viewing when the viewer had grown a propensity for wishing a bad man turning good at the end. Responding to stock response! Wish-fulfilling screen story!" (‘Always Being Born: Mrinal Sen, A Memoir’, Stellar Publishers Pvt Ltd., 2004)
However, given how the realist aesthetics of the FFC that is evident in 'Bhuvan Shome' is constantly undercut by the absurdist and frenzied chain of events and the technical innovations, one must stress that such a reading would automatically tend to take away from the political charge in 'Bhuvan Shome'. While the state does loom large, both through the figure of the bureaucrat and presence of the FFC behind the scenes, rather than reformation the film brings to crisis the bureaucrat's very existence while asserting the incredible effects that the margin can have on the centre. This becomes clearer in two crucial sequences after this, both of which transpire after Shome's return to his home turf.
Shome's return to his home turf is signified by a return to the first shot of the film, the tracking shot along the railway tracks with the train.
One of the most striking sequences towards the end of the film is the scene where Shome finally meets Jadav to talk about the charges against the latter. He has not only repeals the suspension, but, as it is revealed in the very last scene, also transfers Jadav to a station where he can possibly take more bribes. Ray's simple explanation of the narrative of 'Bhuvan Shome' becomes problematic if one takes this episode simply as an instance of the reformation he has gone through; especially given the presence of the state-backed FFC in the production, the apparent condoning of Jadav's transgressions must be seen in the light of Sen's politics that repeatedly comes up against the notion of a 'wish-fulfilling screen story' (we have previously discussed the change of dialects and the transformative powers of the margins on the centre).
The penultimate sequence is one of the most talked about moments from the film. With the bureaucrat back in his den, his sudden lapse into madness and burlesque only serves to heighten the underlying loneliness and anguish in his life. This is also one of the most defining scenes in the film that foreground Sen's use of Tati's "inspired nonsense".
Sen recalls in his memoirs how he came to conceptualize the scene: "We came to a sequence – the tough bureaucrat back to his own world! Frankly, I did not quite understand how to get to grips with the scene. Back to his own world, he would be an unhappy figure of ridicule, not a figure of fun...all that happened to Bhuvan Shome in the film was his tragic realization that he would remain the same as he had been all these years – a duty-bound tough bureaucrat, a lonely prisoner trapped within four walls of his office with heaps of files to come and go – and with his telephone ringing unceasingly. What we did at the end, Dutta and I, was to grant the man a touch of insanity and allow him to temporarily escape into a kind of burlesque and ‘inspired nonsense’." (‘Always Being Born: Mrinal Sen, A Memoir’, Stellar Publishers Pvt Ltd., 2004)
The voice-over returns, revealing Jadav's transfer and his expectation of more bribes. On this particular sequence, M. Madhava Prasad has remarked: "The celebration of the 'simple, charming and authentic' story by commentators misses the complexity of Sen's political vision. If the bureaucrat's body represents the metalanguage of realism, Sen's narrative undermines its position of eminence in relation to the 'object language' of the nation's regional extremities and makes it go through a reconstruction from below. The congealed definition of corruption in the language of the bureaucracy is subjected to change. It is not a question here of 'condoning' corruption but of making visible the gap between the language of the state and the realities of everyday life, the contradictions arising from the formulation of legal codes without the participation of the people in the process. A film made under the aegis of an institution serving the project of passive revolution, Bhuvan Shome inverts the relations between state and nation assumed in that project and submits the state to a trans formative process. The result of this process of subversion of the realist hierarchy of discourses is a conclusion in which the bureaucrat's craziness is matched by an editing pattern that sen himself described as 'all erratic and illogical', disrupting the realist conventions and leaving the spectator with a sense of a worlds devoid of rationality. Sen's own commentary on the film seems to suggest his embarrassment at how it concludes, as it dwells too much on the 'mad kick' of the final sequence and detracts from its critical force by tracing it to his own and Utpal Dutt's 'private experiences'.Perhaps sen is putting in an 'insanity plea' to escape charges of abetting corruption! The corruption episode, however ,is a critical challenge to those who regard a top-down enforcement of the constitution as the way to achieve a socialist democracy." [M. Madhava Prasad, 'Ideology of the Hindi Film: A Historical Construction', Oxford University Press, 1998 (2010)]
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