Reviews

Just watching this film and writing a critique on it without having watched all the three films of 'Apu Trilogy' would be considered an impertinent move and a Himalayan mistake to boot. 'Apur Panchali' can be considered one of the best films in Bengali cinema and also the world over. It being not just a rehash of the reputed trilogy, the film explores quite a few precious moments of mainly the famous child actor (Subir Banerjee) of 'Pather Panchali' and how his life was meant to develop some 'uncanny' parallels with the story of the three films. Kaushik Ganguly has touched upon the very tender issues that have gone unheeded until now.

A child who had became famous and came to be known to the whole world as the child Apu, later on went into the unknown, cooped-up and covert depths of personal life, which, however, did not keep abreast with him till the very end. Almost like Apu, Subir Banerjee also lost the members of his family in a sequence and was left alone and aloof - just like a deliberate social outcast. He was living life on his own terms until when, quite abruptly, Arka searches Subir out and coaxes him to attend an honorary ceremony for one of the most celebrated child actors of all time. Here, Subir betrays his listless and short temper gradually engendered by the buffets of fortune and life drawn somewhat by The Almighty from the 'Apu Trilogy', it seems. But Arka makes Subir realize the latter's real worth. In the way, childless Subir gets beck a son, fatherless Arka gets back a father and we get back the child actor of 'Pather Panchali.'

The story of the film is told in a way that places the reel-and-the-real parallels very subtly. While the trilogy's scenes are shown we relieve the moments, but we turn very sympathetic when they are reverberated in the child actor's real life. Parambrata assays the character of younger Subir and Parno assays Ashima. They act like real people. There's one moment when Parno says ways to look after himself while Ashima would be staying away from Apu. The director keeps things very simple which raises the level of the film to great heights, seen in few directors in Bengal. Apart from the director, the writer Kaushik also stands firm and high above most of the playwrights in the celluloid arena.

Sirsha Roy's cinematography touched upon the softest parts of an artiste's life that tell upon our lachrymal glands. Bodhaditya Banerjee has also done no less commendable job. Art direction by Mridul Baidya and Saswati Karmakar stands par excellence. Without it the film would not have got it's archival look. The excellent music that wafts throughout the movie makes one feel nostalgic and catches up with the original films of the trilogy to not a less extent.

To sum up, it's a film not to be given a miss at any cost, whatsoever.

A married woman's hand writing, apparently, her last letter; an exhausted man returning home after a day's work, rather languidly, only to find his wife hanging from the ceiling of his house with his son looking at the lifeless frame ( all shot in the sepia tone ); two actors of the past era trying to come to terms with their differences and mouthing lines from Tagore's Ghare Baire only to widen the chasm between them all the more; the actors requesting a director to become producer and suggesting their friend as the director; the start of the shooting ( all shot in black and white ) - the film kicks off with moments ( scenes ) like these, which, along the warp and woof of the creative piece by Srijit, are strewn about as are dried-up and shrivelled-up leaves on an avenue to give the way its realism and magic realism. A viewer would find it hard to relate these scenes with the main plot along the progression of the movie till the unknotting.

The film tells, or rather, seems to tell the story of four film- makers who have been assigned the task of directing four short films for a single anthology of a film with the common theme of death. This venture brings together Trina ( Aparna Sen ), Shakyo ( Goutam Ghosh ), Dipta ( Chiranjeet ), Jayabrata ( Parambrata ). They all go out to the Henry's Island to discuss at length about the film where the idiosyncrasies of the characters ( directors themselves ) are brought to the fore. Their past lives catch up with them - their successes, their failures, their deeds, misdeeds, regrets and all that have made them what they are. The pinch of dark humour can be felt at times, in fact, with increasing frequency, near the end of the movie.

The overriding themes of love, betrayal, retribution, regret, repercussion and their interplay with inklings of several other undercurrents of themes of 'smoking and the sensor board', 'smoking and health injury', 'life likened to the game of cards', 'creator and the created', 'life and afterlife', 'reel and real' and so on appear at proper places to hammer sensibility into the minds of the audience and the people of the society thereof.

Use of colour has been a significant contribution to the film. Starting from sepia to black-white to colour with green, red, blue and the former two in between create a strange embroidery of insights relating directly or indirectly to the main plot of the film.

Astute cinematography by Sudeep Chatterjee captures a vengeful Jayabrata inching towards his goal, the reel-life characters unwittingly revealing, with their characteristic behaviour and style, their real-life dilemmas and situations. Anupam's lyrics at just places give rise to the progression towards the dénouement.

An erudite Srijit never misses a chance to allude to Ghare Baire, Mr and Mrs Iyer, Troyee, the Pandora's Box, Shakespeare, King-Queen- Jack-and-Joker, etc. to accentuate the effect at various moments in the film. Every moment, every incident seem to be connected to the main plot. When Shakyo and Dipta sit in a room and discuss about films, they both have the cards King-Queen-Jack without each of them knowing it. This indicates a rift of friendship between them despite their overtly good bonding. It also indicates that the unknown angle ('kone' or the Joker) would appear before them to complete the quadrangle or the fourth cards of the quartet. The Joker or Jayabrata leaves no stone unturned to let not a minute pinch of suspicion lay waste his platter-full plan of liquidating the three directors in a bungalow till the very fag end. The sudden realization of the whole story of four short films being a pretext makes the three captive directors nonchalant as a lull before the storm; and they do realize that a stormy death is what they each deserve for a family was laid waste long back only because of them. The Pandora's Box is opened very slowly and silently along the progression of the film, but Hope reigns at last when Dipta and Trina, together, take responsibility of the mad film producer essayed by Kaushik Ganguly and he does it beyond comparison.

To sum up, it can be said that the director makes the film socially acceptable by meting out justice when Jayabrata receives the shot meant for Trina and his song 'Chiro shokha hey...' stops abruptly. 'An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind' rings in everyone's ears long after the film has ended.

Shakespeare's famous line, "I have liv'd long enough. My way of life. Is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf" does not hold water here in this film. Vladimír Michálek pokes fun at, & at the same time offers a shoulder to rest heads on to, those who are counting their last days because, as the saying goes, their days are numbered.

Frantisek Hána (Fanda), who is just a few paces away from his grave, thumps his nose at old age and lives life king size; at one place he says, 'old men should be rich and respectable.' Being in the autumn of his life his spring does not fade; rather it's the spring that's mightier. If Fanda is the obverse of the coin called life, then Emílie Hánová is the reverse of it. She's all autumn: and she even tries to make her autumn (death) grand and peaceful. She stashes away money for their funerals; reads various dead person's epitaphs and even, rather hilariously, copies them; she also books a place where their graves would be; she desires herself and pesters Fanda to shift to an old-age home before death. Emilie, a woman rather obsessed than sad and afraid of death, through her small, almost blink-and-you-miss, acts in the film has painted a picture of the intensity of a soul to live every moment of one's life. it's just that her intensity to live has overgrown and surpassed towards death itself. Hence, she wants to die a peaceful death and even stay there peacefully.

For Fanda death may be the ultimate upshot, but why whine and pine for it? His gather-ye-rosebuds-while-ye-may attitude towards life jars Emilie's preordained plans. He plays pranks with unknown people and wines and dines in posh restaurants; squanders Emilie's hard-saved money in whimsical trifles; pretends to be a ticket collector or a well-off personality looking for a mansion and so on. The man may be a jumping light of happiness, yet he does not desert them who are not: he often helps people in need with money, though he has none. The way he looks at life becomes a dish to savour and hang on with till the last breath. Jiri Hubac has touched upon the pathos of old age and the outright resignation of such traditional pathos of a man when his last days can be counted on his fingers.

A subtly dark, but hilarious, humour plays upon the various strings that transform the film into a musical unison of life and its counterpart - death. The film celebrates and undoes before the viewers the various themes of marriage, friendship, life, death and how they work in consonance with everything that meets the eye. The carpe-diem motif signified by Fanda wins over Emilie's pessimism. She spends most of her savings in the end only to enjoy, and more precisely, to live a moment in her life with Fanda before the Reaper wields his sickle.

Ed (Stanislav Zindulka) remains as a living image of friendship and a perfect companion and a sweet accomplice of Fanda in good and mischievous deeds. Ed's death at last tells upon Fanda which signifies the approach of autumn, though spring never fades in this movie - only changes colours at times which seem like autumn.

Jara (Ondrej Vetchy), the prying and covetous vulture that he is, tries every opportunity to make his parents' life miserable. He spreads a shroud over the eyes of Emilie which she later clears off. He fails to do anything to Fanda - a master of and in his own terms.

The 'chhaya (shadow) chhobi' by Anik Dutta overshadows ghost films of both Tollywood and Bollywood taken together in recent times. The synthetic, eery and blood-curdling horror is not the mainstay here; instead, the ghosts - from several strata and time periods - try means of survival from their live counterparts who are overtaken by an inhuman changeover resulting in unwittingly chasing out ghosts from haunted mansions. How the real ghosts - an endangered species now - will drive away the real-estate sharks is not the attractant of the film. Though the film is not an unplumbed one as regards the delivery of message, yet messages run over almost all the delivered dialogues, mostly laced with puns, and make the piece a unique experience, heretofore unmatched by and large, presenting the changing face of the city of Kolkata gradually being taken over by promoters and reality agents; thus changing Kolkata's heritage into Hertfordshire.

Dutta borrows directly, bathing in the light of his own interpretation, from Ray - his Gupi Bagha trilogy, his style of dialogues, his range of humour and so on - and Dutta does this in a rather grandiloquent and rarefied manner heaping loads of honour and expressing allegiance to Ray along the way unflinchingly.

Story, screenplay, lyrics and direction amalgamate into a homogeneous mixture of great cinema. Aveek Mukhopadhyay's cinematography calls for praise though there are still vestiges of development. Arghyakamal Mitra has, as always, shown his craft here piecing together the various time- frames. Indranil Ghosh's work is flawless like in most other films, too. Kanan Devi's nasal voice from the by-gone era tones up the pathos of one of the messages the film seamlessly delivers - practice of clandestine concubinage by some spoilt upstarts and the well-off of the time. Coming down to the characters, their engaging idiosyncrasies and their pathos to boot make this seriocomedy a psychotherapeutic exercise giving the right directions and at the same time parodying the state of affairs in Kolkata and elsewhere. What we have to remember is that branches of development must not turn deadwood in the end.

The opening song – 'Nodi Jodi mod hoito…' – of the film against a backdrop awash with the last vestiges of the day's waning sunlight strikes a chord and so does the very last scene – an agape and cursing Radhika (played by Rituparna) watching her live-in partner, Sombhu (played by Rajesh Sharma), burn while she makes out with a supine Kesta (played by Indraneil Sengupta). Though the last scene veers a tad from the original story, yet the camera freezing on the arresting moment achieves even more acclaim which it should. But, the story otherwise is an enterprise taken up by the director, Anjan Das, but not quite deftly accomplished. The application of the local sounds while Radhika peeks through an aperture made by her in the tent to watch Kesta and Jhumri have sex is rather plausible. Yet again, at other places, this music appears too stilted. The cinematography also, is fitfully bungling in some cases – at places it is excellent, as when the night scenes are shot, and at places it is bland as when the charming landscapes of Purulia during the day appear rather unromantic and unembellished. The art direction is not in question for its flawless arrangement.

The protagonist – Radhika, a snake charmer with a husband with reduced sexual prowess – finds her trade to be no more a feasible way of earning livelihood, yet sticks, rather dotingly, to it earning Sombhu's wrath in turn. On another plane she is a serial cuckoldress, trying to satisfy her sexual urges in whichever way possible – be it by leaving one of her husbands or by burning to death another. Her carnal hunger wreaks more havoc than her stomachic hunger. She vends ayurvedic medicines when snake charming hits a low, but she does not seek easy recourse to the illegal business of selling country liquor and chastises Sombhu who is inclined to take the short cut to easy money. He, on the other hand, stealthily sells the liquor brewed by her and in this very way, at last, hatches a plot to malign Kesta who is making passes at Radhika and is also eating away into Sombhu's business of snake charming. But, quite unexpectedly, his plan boomerangs as she is drawn closer to Kesta as a consequence. The performance by Kesta appears wooden. Jhumri is okay with her role. The sexual subtext, though touched upon, is justifiably dealt with restraint. That the traditional ways of earning a livelihood lose out to the modern and attractive ways impinge on our minds with a revelatory light on existentialism, alienation, desire and appetite for satisfaction. The most telling scene will always be, again, the last one with the camera freezing on the stunned face of Radhika who, with visible lines of sadomasochism, watches her husband die while engaged in a sexual act with another man. For the director the snake charmer's wife ('bedeni') is the springboard whence spring the subtexts into existence.

The movie, by and large, leaves an impression on the spectator that lingers with instances of epiphanic insights, and the last scene clubs our very inactive propensity and questions our self-satisfied morality.

'Herbert', the eponymous film, trails in a slow, but minute, flight the life of the protagonist along with the city (Calcutta) he lives in touching down at several sensitively socio-cultural and socio-political spots on the body of both the city and autistic Herbert's mind. The city, too, along with the protagonist, becomes a character as its transformation from Calcutta to Kolkata, so to speak, is drawn with the eyelashes-brush of the savant-dimwit. Being orphaned at an early age, mistreated by his abusive cousin since then, being made to run errands for all and sundry, and consequently alienated, his chatter may be incoherent and chaotic, but, that too is the plight of the city of the 1970's when the Naxalite movement gathers momentum sucking many students into its fold. He, too, becomes an advocate, though passive, of Maoist Communism that he learns by rote from his nephew. In the mean time his chatter attains a reverential status with the impulsive support of his local boys and he starts a brisk business of communicating with the dead until a bureaucratic Rationalist Society intervenes with a threatening finger. Quite elusively, yet amazingly, as if in a daze, we feel the tone of the film change from the sepia of the past (60's) to the technicolour of the present (90's) and congruously morph the scenario of the city and the protagonist's restlessness – engendered by his misplaced intellect. Moving like a pendulum from past to present, the sequences from different time periods bring to the fore the eventful life of the city and its souls – both social and alienated.

The protagonist and his language cannot be understood with the aid of semiology. But his meaningless babble (for example 'Cat, bat, water, dog, fish') turns on the ignition of the lexicon-vehicle of meaninglessness that runs on every way of the city. In this mess the minuscule, but expanding, references to concrete defining meaningfulness that we find are 'Guerrilla Warfare', Carlos Marighella, Che Guevara, Karl Marx, Mao Zedong, Charu Mazundar, clips from 'Battleship Potemkin' and several other references. They tell upon the city and also give its accurate picture. The only thing that comes out as the pure essence of freedom and expression out of the debris of the decomposed city is the love interlude – Herbert's ephemeral relation with the next-door girl who casts a mesh of fascination on Herbert. After his death, the film gains a sudden velocity. The blast inside the incineration chamber is posthumously attributed to him for his supposed Maoist links. This changes all a priori held beliefs regarding Herbert Sarkar. He is no more a nincompoop; no more an alienated person; no more a neglected fellow growing up on the mercy of his relatives: but rather a man with hidden Maoist links; with innovative anti-establishment techniques; with wit extraordinaire who can blow up a crematorium even posthumously. Thus, the prediction of a disaster foretold, in Herbert's terms, follows from Chaplinesque idiosyncrasies to a dreaded and intelligent Naxalite doyen.

Quite magnificently, and staggeringly of course, the ghosts of the 1970's Naxalite Movement, quelled to extinction by the 'establishment', are resurrected with the aid of the man (Herbert) who communicates with the dead.

Directed by Suman Mukhopadhyay and adapted from Nabarun Bhattacharya's novella of the same name (winner of Sahitya Academy in 1997) the film 'Herbert' (too, winner of the Lankesh Debut Director Award) is a period piece of exquisite and classical proportions, in a nut-shell.

Adapted form Sunil Ganguly's story, the film zooms in on the vagaries and vicissitudes of the then bourgeoisie and their disillusionment with their state of affairs. A motley quartet ventures into the woods of Palamau to spend some days in order to extricate themselves from the trammels of their ordered social and city life. Culled from the various strata in the middle class the four characters reflect completely different attitudes bound by a thread of friendship. 'Breaking the rules', they drop anchor at a government forest bungalow without the required permission, consequently browbeating, and finally bribing the chowkidar, putting his job at stake. They remain unshaven, exchange diatribes at a local arrack shop and indulge in a drunken twist causing problem to vehicles. Their behaviour with and indifference (frequently found among the bourgeois people) of the lower orders of the society and their suffering, quite often verging on brutality, may make them, for the time being, unlikeable; but their innocent and ignorant self-esteem doing them in at last draws back our sympathy once again. Ashim (as Soumitra Chatterji) loses his self-confidence finally after the memory game; Sanjoy (as Subhendu Chatterji) finds himself hollow as a man in front of a seductive Jaya; Hari himself mislays his wallet but beats the local boy Lakhai which rebounds on him at last; Shekhar (as Rabi Ghosh) is only the man who escapes much of the humiliation because of his hilarious nature.

Their unexpected spotting, one morning, of two ladies of their social stratum within the tribal village brings them back, somewhat, to their superficial selves and they try to meet them in person and try their own hands at flirting. Though a forging of relationships is on the way under the hammer-blows of a set of consecutive meetings between the opposite sexes, yet each of the conceited quartet is blown to bits as the women come up trumps. Each of the quartet is chastened in his own way near the end of the film, and the women, winners in the beginning, appear to be pale, gloomy and their voices plangent beneath their jocund exterior and mellifluous chatter and pithy elicitation.

Like in most of Ray's films, here also, the characters smile, but they find it rather painful to laugh. Though it is a matter of pity that a film of this momentousness received a lukewarm response form the native audience and critics when it was screened, yet it, then, was, and still is, a surefire narration of epic dimensions and the film's aura doesn't seem to dim even though it is watched over and over again. Unfortunately, they, who search for a single and simple theme in a film like this, will not be able to comprehend herein the interplay of various themes. Ray once said regretfully in a Sight & Sound interview, "The film is about so many things, that's the trouble. People want just one theme, which they can hold in their hands." He likened the structure of the film to a fugue, where disparate elements appear, develop interwoven, transformed pitted in a balanced way against each other.

Lastly, the memory game sequence in the forest is as much psychological as it is appealing. Ray's astute handling of the mise-en-scene surpasses every character study heretofore attempted. Aparna pulls out when only Aparna and Ashim are left in the fray. Sexual undercurrents and each one's mental preferences are reflected during the game. With the forest as the setting the visitors engage in a primitive game of dethroning the other with one's mental might. The mysterious forest exudes revelations of the highest order at once perceivable and profound to be taken into, absorbed and preserved for perennial use by the unfortunate and innocent souls, who often get consumed with the fire of self-esteem and self-satisfaction thereby closing doors to experience and knowledge that's omniscience in it's vastness and immanence.

Yet once again, Aparna Sen's 'Iti 'Mrinalini': An Unfinished Letter...' has created poetry on screen. Though some criticisms - by the famous 'The Hollywood Reporter' and the like - have wrongly assessed the film without even minutely watching it, yet a wrong critique cannot, in any way, mar the film's extensive appeal to the true movie buffs and cineastes. The film has been wrongly called 'melodramatic' and even some self-proclaimed critics have blunderingly named some characters. After all this is not expected in relation to such films as of Sen's.

Now, leaving behind my correctional and cautionary discussion above directed to some self-proclaimed film critics, I shall come down to the real and unbiased critique of the film. After having watched Sen's quite a few films with rapt attention one can easily find a familiar colour and superficial calmness pitted against an inner turmoil in the film. The characters think and move just as we do - naturally. There is even no over-emphasis on unnatural music and unnatural gestures. The backdrop of each character in every emotional condition seems to complement the unknown and known thoughts of the viewer finding himself/herself easily identifiable with the characters at several moments in life. Instances of Pathetic Fallacy abound in the film, though with artistic restraint so that some even go unheeded. The best moment of love in most films taken together is the scene where Chintan Nair (Kaushik Sen) and young Mrinalini Mitra (Konkona Sen Sharma) discuss the aspects of love that frees oneself and is without expectations. The meteoric rise of an actress and her gradual, but desperate, search for satisfying love in the actually lonely and mercenary world of glamour are what the film shows in a glaring light, though various other themes overrun the film's expanse. References to Shakti Chattopadhyay's, Vladimir Mayakovsky's and W.B. Yeats's poems can be found. Passing references to François Truffaut, Ingmar Bergman and Jean-Luc Godard are also there. Art direction, as in Sen's other films, has been very well carried out. Only one song - sung by the younger Mrinalini at a party - seemed incongruous in the whole movie, coupled with some minor anachronisms.

A letter - a suicide note bearing exculpatory indication on the part of others with whom Mrinalini was, has been and is linked - being written along the entire film gives the older Mrinalni flashbacks by dint of which the whole story gets told and seen. But, ironically the letter remains unfinished and finally discarded by Mrinalini when touched by a ray of hope form Chintan's message. Yet, the first rays of the morning sun has something in it's store. She dies a silent death. And the way the camera moves vertically up keeping the focus on her dead body bears parallels with a scene in 'Inglourious Basterds' where the twin murder takes place inside the room from where a film is projected on screen. To sum up, Sen's movie is a product of curious toil and astute storytelling that is characteristic of all her films. And lastly, one must watch the film observingly before commenting pedantically on it for just the sake of commenting.

"Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon 'em," William Shakespeare once said. We find the second category in work in this movie. But, we also find, if noted carefully, the other two categories having passing references at several points of the film. Caught in this mesh of the warp and woof of various threads of 'greatness' is a man, a putative 'Hero', searching for rhymes in a life riddled with blank verse. Shuttling between illusion and reality, he finds some rhyming notes, as it were, in Aditi - a journalist - who at first disregards him for she thinks actors are over-worshipped and unreal. Being in such a high position he has none to confide in as doing that may play havoc with his films and fan-base. Timely flashbacks, which concrete the base of his character and adds to the film a surreal tinge, tell upon his persona as a 'Hero' and he hits the bottle. An often-worshipped and ever-lauded 'Hero' becomes a flesh-and-blood layman to be cared for and sympathised with. Though the train journey has brought the 'Hero' close to a small part of his 'public', yet the journey has its end; and with it ends the contact with reality, ends the friend to be confided in, ends the haunting retrospection. What lies ahead is a sea of fans at the gate with their unquestioning acceptance of and devotion to their unreal 'Hero' and for him again a life of illusion and hero-worship. Parallelly moving with this main plot are some subtly woven sub-plots which show the idiosyncrasies of the characters on board the train along with the 'Hero.' The characters contained in the microcosm of life, reflective of the macrocosm, on the train act as Ray's mouthpieces to drive home some wrongly-held notions, regarding life and films, by the 'public' and the 'Hero.'

The malleability of the plausible emotions of the lead characters of the film under the director's realistic hammer blows is one of the features which makes 'The Japanese Wife' a treat to watch. The slow pace touches upon the various chords of a sensible heart. The two star-crossed spouses residing in far-off places fall in love and eventually marry without actually meeting each other in person, yet their love is far more loyal and inextricable than those lovers or spouses who stay together. But, their simple lifestyle and righteousness do them in at last. Poetic justice is not meted out and this makes the plot all the more plausible. Given the profound dynamism and the many facets of human emotions that run crisscross along the length & breadth of the movie, one is sure to identify with the pristine humanity of the characters. Minimalism in music and natural, yet far from being a dime a dozen, musically lyrical words and sentences coupled with a haunting silence of death touch up the aggravating pathos of the characters till the very end.

The very inception of the film gives a feeling of it being ghost- directed by Rituparno Ghosh. But, the germs of it being the first film of a director under Rituparno's tutelage can be made out after one has gone through a considerable portion of the film. Excepting these discussions, what we glean from movie is a so-called aberrant sexuality which, it says, is not to be looked down upon by the fortunate heterosexuals of this world. Arati (Deepti Naval) - the mother, finding it hard to come to terms with and to switch her emotions between her son's sudden death and his homosexuality hitherto unknown to her - at first detests Ornub (Rituparno), but subsequently starts cherishing his company taking him to be her dead son's 'special' someone or her another alive son. Another relation, between Sahana (Raima Sen) and Arati, is also a very pleasant one founded on honesty and respect. Arati, during her short stay at her dead son's house, learns about certain grim truths about this world which, heretofore even her grey hair has not shown her. When she leaves, she leaves with a bagful of warm closeness she has unknowingly amassed within these few days from both Ornub and Sahana and leaves behind with them 'a bit of' herself and her dead son. The background melody and the nominal songs accentuate the situations. To draw the conclusion we can say that 'Memories in March' is a good attempt at narration, though with a profusion of Rituparnovian touches.

Having not yet watched the other two of the Colours Trilogy, I have set down to comment on the middle one as I can't let my agitated heart-rate settle down in any other way. Needless to say, 'white' denotes one colour, of the flag of France, that stands for equality; and this equality is arrived at in the end between Karol & Domininque by the most promising scene of the film where she makes certain intriguing movements of hands indicating her acceptance of his wedding ring. The first hint of doves making Karol's shirt dirty before he enters the court to be mentally decimated my his wife's remarks is the miry & dirty ground whereupon the reconstruction of their broken relation starts & which turns clean, or white, in the end. Those scenes which show how Karol stages his own death to get back his life, i.e. his wife, bear the mark of the creative hammer of Krzysztof Kieslowski; the hot anvil of his always-excellent lighting arrangement & camera-work also delineates the gusto of the Polish procreator of films; the never-before soothing music, too, seems to come from a far away place. In a nutshell, 'Three Colors: White' is a panorama of earthly images, though with some minor defects, providing corneal & aural bliss.

Tarun Majumder turns the famous Bibhutibhushan story into a good film ornamented mellifluously with Tagorean songs fitting perfectly to every occasion in the film. A slow & silent, but rapid & vigorous, attraction resulting in love binds Alo & Subha in the mesh of matrimony after they surmount the major challenge of Alo's staying at Subha's native village after marriage. And, hereafter unfolds the stunning idiosyncratic changes of the village people after they come in contact with Alo in whatever way possible, deliberately or unknowingly. Alo becomes their most prized possession; rather an idol of adoration. In the end of the film she seems to be an intangible entity that flows along with the breeze spreading crystallized melody & fellow-feeling among the villagers. She truly stands up to the meaning of her name: Alo. She bathes the village- denizens & us in a light bordering on a halo.

Tomek, a mere boy staying with an old woman, whiles away his time watching an artist, a woman, senior to him as regards her age, staying at the apartment just across the street. He tries to scale the wall of viewability & meet her in person in various ways. His success in this regard brings with it an array of emotionally charged-up incidents that leave both the lover & the loved chastened in several ways; even they transpose their positions unwittingly. What comes to the fore are several issues, not to be mistaken as messages, concerning love - both sensual & sensuous - & attraction & loneliness & rightness & wrong et al that are found while browsing though the pages of a heart that's in love. The reflection of the 'Decalogue' is clearly palpable in this long-lurking 'A Short Film About Love', though raised in height than the aforesaid. Precise use of light transfuses into the mood & the silently stealthy aura of the film.

At the very outset, we are greeted with the sublime radiance of Paroma: the way she keeps the clock at her in-laws ticking is a treat to watch. Little can we conjecture then that this ordered edifice would crumble, though it seems like a lull before a storm. The sprouting up of the clandestine amour & it's being watered at an increasing frequency does Paroma in at last. Aparna Sen's direction here, as in 'Mr & Mrs Iyer', is so true & exemplary. The film is a feast of moving ideas, so to speak, & remains long after you have watched the film. We must not forget Aparna's skill in forging up such a moving story & turning it into a plausible script.