Sumit Dey, PhD scholar, Cinema Studies, JNU, describes Rituparno Ghosh as an inheritor of the cinematic tradition exemplified by Satyajit Ray in terms of characterisation. He writes how Ghosh brought to the fore the general anxieties and uneasiness the middle class has with sexual issues

Messages from Rituparno Ghosh have been the most treasured data on my mobile phone. His last message was on Wednesday that read, “Aami bhalo re. TuiIJ” (I am good. How are youIJ). The following morning I got the news of his demise due to heart attack. The long-followed tradition of messages and telephonic conversations has come to an end. But the reminisces of time spent with Ritu da will form an essential part of my memory.

It was in May 2011, I was told to work on cinema for my M Phil. A friend gave me Rituparno Ghosh’s number, saying, “You may need it if you seriously want to do this project.” The number was saved and kept aside until I watched his then released film Noukadubi in Kolkata. The film had a strong impact on my mind. I sent a text message, congratulating him for the film, and saying that I will be working on a research project on his cinema and on him as a performer. Next morning I received a call “Sumit aami Rituparno bolchhi…” (This is Rituparno Ghosh calling).

later I met him at his Indrani Park residence in South Kolkata. He said we could speak for half-an-hour. But it was a four-hour-long conversation. He spoke about his cinema, acting, role as the editor of a popular film journal.

He made me feel at home and spoke like we knew each other since long. His gentle ways, conviction about his art of filmmaking, sensitivity and knowledge of films and literature enamoured me. I was convinced to do the project. I returned to Delhi and began my research.

I was literally living in the world of Ritu da. I read reviews of his films, interviews and watched his films and video interviews online. Within three months I watched  all his films. And whenever I had queries I would immediately call or text him. He patiently answered my questions even at odd hour. I wrote to him every Sunday after reading his Sunday columns, which were full of cultural nostalgia, comments. For two years we remained in constant touch. He was kind enough to contact me when he was in Delhi last year in July, during Osian’s Cinefan Film Festival. When met him I looked tired for having spent sleepless nights finalising my dissertation. The first thing he said was, “How have you been. So sad you look sick, take care babu (dear).” That day too, we spoke for hours on Bengali cinema in general and his films in particular.

Ritu da was a genius director, a real star-performer, a thought-provoking writer, a prolific speaker and a cogitative director. I fell in love with contemporary Bengali cinema as shown through Ritu da’s lens.

The early 1990s is remarkable in the history of Bengali cinema as it saw the demise of Satyajit Ray. With Ray’s death in 1992 a tradition of realist, ‘art’ cinema practiced by him received a major setback. It was in the same year that Rituparno Ghosh, fresh from the world of advertisement made his first film Hirer Angti under the aegis of the Children’s Film Society of India. The film was at its post production stage when Ray passed away. The film was never commercially released. In the mean time the New Wave in Bengali cinema had meandered into a new post-liberalisation phase as veterans like Mrinal Sen (whose cinematic idiom kept changing in terms of thematic concerns and moods), Goutam Ghose, Buddhadev Dasgupta and Aparna Sen kept on making films. While Sen was experimenting with his form by searching the ‘inner enemy’ amidst old relics and modern urban interiors (for example Antareen, 1993), Goutam Ghose and Buddhadev Dasgupta were concerned with the lives of others vis-à-vis the panoramic vastness of nature (for example Goutam Ghose’s Padma Nadir Majhi, 1992 and Buddhadev Dasgupta’s Charachar, 1993).

Aparna Sen too was situating her films on women against the backdrop of history and larger political changes in the world (for example Yuganta, 1995). These directors earned their repute both at home and abroad. The National and other international awards at different festivals recognised their cinematic idiom charged with their own views about politics their and sense of history. While ‘artistic’ Bengali cinema was being praised beyond Bengal, within the industry it was split between two extreme categories — popular and parallel. It was at the same time that satellite television made an entry into the Bengali cultural sphere drawing film audiences from the theatres back to their homes.

Amidst these developments Rituparno emerged with his second film Unishe April (1996), a film about filial relationships set within the confines of a house and made with constricted and rationed budget. Since the film won the National Critics award, middle class audience started paying attention to this new director. Reviews of this film praised the filmmaker for his ‘maturity as an artist with rationality and sensibility’ (Palit 2002) and for explicating recognisable signs of his ‘knowledge of the cinematic’. By the time he went on to make his third film Dahan (1997) Ghosh was identified as a true inheritor of the cinematic tradition exemplified by Satyajit Ray in terms of characterisation, cinematic space, mise-en-scene and the tradition of realist narration. Ghosh admitted that he was inspired by Ray when he thought of becoming a filmmaker and he considered Rabindranath Tagore as his cultural mentor. Both these figures, according to Ghosh helped him develop a strong penchant for aestheticism. Thus in a way, the cinema of Rituparno Ghosh can be seen as an epitome of a certain ‘cultural capital’ flowing from a given tradition.

Press and academic discourses pointed out certain virtues Ghosh’s work. Critics note that his cinematic talent lies in his art of delineating the life style of the middle rung of society in a realistic manner. They are of the opinion that Ghosh’s way of depicting middle class life is restricted to familial relationships which give the class an opportunity to look at their intimate relationships, intrinsic complexities and hesitations while the larger political and historical responsibilities and struggles are set aside. Ghosh’s films are about various relationships of the middle class world with conflicts and resolutions lying within the scope of the narrative. Film journalists see the virtue of Ghosh’s films in their ability to bring to the fore the emotional undercurrents and complex patterns in relationships. They feel that the films (especially the early ones) depict middle class interior spaces, charged with the everydayness of the protagonists’ lives and their relationships. Academics describe him as the ‘woman’s filmmaker of Bangla cinema.’ They note how Rituparno Ghosh delved deep into the inner psyche of his female characters and etched their mindscape in films in a sensible way. According to them, Ghosh did not try to portray women’s condition in a given society; he was rather interested in showing the psychologised nature of such characters.

Ghosh’s cinema needs to be seen in the context of a cinematic and cultural tradition. His talent has to be understood in context of past tradition (1982) and as something completely distinct or arising out of the blue. By harkening back to the cinematic sensibilities of Ray and the cultural sensibilities of Tagore, Ghosh developed his own style.

He ‘procured the consciousness of the past’ and ‘continued to develop this consciousness throughout his career.’ Ghosh imbibed the cinematic influence of Ray in his own frames and banked on Tagore’s music for his narratives.

The emergence of big corporate production companies like Shree Venkatesh Films and their recent interest in ‘art house’ cinema marked a major change in Ghosh’s own career as a filmmaker as well as in the power dynamics of the industry. For example with Ghosh’s film Chokher Bali, Shree Venkatesh Films started producing ‘parallel’ Bengali films besides their staple popular films. They chose to produce Ghosh’s film because he was already a well-known, national award-winning director who earned fame both at home and abroad and had the ability to rope in Bollywood super stars like Aishwarya Rai. After more than a decade of filmmaking, Rituparno Ghosh is now considered the ‘most powerful director’ of Tollywood .

While it is certainly true that Ghosh can be placed in the “tradition” of Tagore and Ray, one persistent component of his oeuvre that makes him different from either Ray or Tagore is his approach to sexuality in cinema. While Tagore’s and Ray’s responses to sexuality were characterised by a puritan economy of expression meant to suggest its presence and identity indirectly, Ghosh’s way of dealing with it is more direct, vivid and explicit. Tagore and Ray present sexuality minimalistically, but Ghosh’s cinematic aesthetic almost blatantly underscores sexualities in myriad forms.

Sexuality can be identified as a recurring motif in Ghosh’s films. Sexuality is not manifested in his oeuvre in a homogeneous way, and there are several ways in which sexuality and its power are articulated in his films. If in one film, sexuality takes the form of incest-desire, powerful enough to undo the family, then in another, it becomes the destructive desire of a woman capable of making a family fall apart. In other films, a representation of decadent and exploitative sexual drives question the degenerate sexual practices of the feudal world, and critique the sanctity of marriage plagued by an extra marital affair. The power of sexuality, especially in the extra-marital relationship is strong enough to jeopardise the couple space in Ghosh’s films. At the same time, and strangely so, the sexual charge and energy of the illegitimate relationship can also become instrumental in bringing together the married couple in a state of emotional status-quo, so much that even a dead husband becomes desirable to a woman in one of his films. The questions of homosexuality, gender ambiguity and discourses around them have also come into prime focus in one of his recent films. It is thus clear that sexuality animates the film narratives of Ghosh that do not deal with sexuality in a romantic way. Rather, sexuality is foregrounded in a discomforting manner in his films that bring to the fore the general anxieties and uneasiness that the middle class has with issues relating to sexuality. 

Ghosh on one hand is celebrated as an award-winning filmmaker and a legitimate torchbearer of the glorious tradition of Bengali ‘art’ cinema exemplified by Ray; on the other hand, he is censured for his non-normative modishness with impulses of transgression, non hegemonic masculinity and alternative sexual preferences and identity. Middle class sensibilities that Ghosh’s cinema aspires to articulate has a contrapuntal relationship with his unconventional sartorial statements, sexuality and the process of becoming and presenting himself as queer. If one half of Rituparno’s persona comprises his image as a successful director pursuing ‘good taste,’ the other half is formed by a discomforting image of a non-normative queer person epitomising what is theoretically called ‘gender trouble.’

For Ghosh, however, different roles that he played in different walks of life did not conflict with each other. He loved to call himself a performer. For him performance included direction, acting, fashion, commenting on culture, reacting to a given situation and so on. He reviewed films in newspapers; he became the editor of a leading Bengali film magazine Anandalok. He invaded the drawing rooms of Bengali middle class households via his television chat shows Ebong Rituparno (And Rituparno) and later Ghosh and Company in which he would indulge in a semi informal adda (chitchat) with the who’s who from film, culture and the entertainment industries with his inimitable intellectual panache, idiosyncrasies and sartorial extravaganza.

His claim to fame also happened with other preoccupations like elocution, appearing in TV reality shows as a special guest, participating in heated political discussions on news channels, walking the ramp for a well-known designer and hosting coveted cultural programs etc. He forayed into acting as well. Three films, two made by other directors and one by him saw him in the roles of a female impersonator of yesteryear, a transvestite documentary filmmaker, a gay advertisement professional and a dance choreographer coming to terms with his gender identity.

The concept of performativity becomes an important tool for understanding the persona of Rituparno Ghosh as he consciously and nonchalantly performed, but also redefined his gender both on and off screen. The style of being Rituparno Ghosh, the star performer, formed the other half of the ‘Rituparnoesque’ which came from his other creative roles beyond the director’s chair.

Acting for Rituparno Ghosh was an extension of his work as director. He generally demonstrated the nuances of a character by enacting it for his actor. He expressed his indebtedness to his actors who taught him acting through their strengths, weaknesses and above all through their dependence on the director. He considered acting to be ‘activism through art.’

He acted after directed 17 films. He debuted as an actor in Kaushik Ganguly’s Arekti Premer Galpo. His performance in the role of the noted male-actress (female impersonator) of yesteryear’s Chapal Bhaduri received critical attention. Ghosh reappeared in Sanjoy Nag’s Memories in March. He played the role of Arnab, an advertisement professional.

The narrative of the film is about a mother coming to terms with her son’s sexuality after his death. In Arekti Premer Galpo Ghosh as Arnab earned much praise.

The last film in which he acted is Chitrangada (2012). It is about gender, identity and performance. The film is about society’s wish to see a person in his normative gender and a person’s wish to choose his gender.

It is because of Ghosh’s successful explication of interior-based, relationship oriented films that new directors can think of venturing into making similar kind of films.

This applies to his emblazoned gender performativity as well. It is because of him that some of the closeted queer people can come out by establishing their rights to perform their gender as per the choice.

Grief on Twitter

I am shocked and deeply sadden by this news. I just can't believe it. May his soul rest in peace. — Aishwarya Rai Bachchan

Just realised that Ritu da was the only director that my family have all worked with individually. Pa (Amitabh) — The last lear, Ma (Jaya) — Sunglass… Aishwarya — Chokher Bali and Raincoat and me — Antarmahal. —Abhishek Bachchan

Shocked to hear about Ritu da! Not sinking in! Fondest memories of working with him in The last lear! RIP. — Divya Dutta

Shocked by passing of Rituparno Ghosh. He was dreaming of getting into what he called his ‘next phase'. Hugely creative explorer on film. — Shekhar Kapur

Shocked and saddened to hear of Rituparno Ghosh. It was great working with him in Raincoat and his way of looking at things was so different and unique. — Ajay Devgn

Rituparno always with such energy and life, can’t believe won’t see him again. Will miss him too much. Absolutely numbed by the saddest news of Rituparno Ghosh not being with us anymore. loss of a dear friend, adventurous filmmaker. Who taught me so much. A bit too premature departure, will always feel your void my friend. RIP. — Arjun Rampal

RIP Ritu da!It’s not an age to go away! Death baffles me!It just makes you realise you can go anytime.— Bipasha Basu

Sad to hear about the passing off a very dynamic talented rituparno ghosh.RIP will miss you my friend! — Manoj Bajpayee

Oh God... Saddened to hear of the untimely demise of a very learned man and one of my directors Rituparno Ghosh. RIP my friend.— R Madhavan

I had met Ritu a couple of time, he was a very warm & humorous person. He most definitely will be missed. I m speechless & shocked to know that talented filmmaker Rituparna Ghosh has expired. —Madhur Bhandarkar

Rituparno Ghosh is not only Bengal’s loss, India has lost a most sensitive and courageous filmmaker. I cherish having worked with him in Memories in March — can’t believe he is gone. —Deepti Naval

He has been the vanguard for good cinema in Bengal, the link between Ray and a new school and he had just started to make his newer alternative cinema more acceptable in the mainstream. I will always cherish my experience of working with him in Antarmahal and had hoped to work with him again. He was passionate and sensitive and really knew how to bring out the best in his actors. I will miss him. — Soha Ali Khan

I can’t believe that he is no more. His demise will be a great loss to the Indian cinema. — Kirron Kher

I will remember him and his works forever. He was like a father to me. — Konkana Sen Sharma

His passing away will be a big loss not only to lovers of cinema and art, but a huge loss to the lGBT community. — Onir