Bengali director Agnidev Chatterjee spoke to Shana Maria Verghis about a sequel to Charulata 2011, the two-part A Political Murder and a film based on the story of the only Indian to have his name cleared of all criminal charges
In 2011, Agnidev Chatterjee faced flack for daring to remake Ray’s classic, Charulata.
But Charulata 2011 was well received, prompting him to make what he says is the sequel, Mrs Sen. It will release this week. Chatterjee explained, “The film is about a man with two wives. One in Thailand (Rituparna Sengupta). Another in Thailand (Hrishita Bhatt). The elder wife, Rituparna, gets a call saying her husband had an accident in Thailand. She flies down and finds him in coma. Then she gets a shock, meeting the other wife, who has a son.”
However, said Chatterjee who made Teen Kanya, about Kolkata’s Park Avenue rape case, instead of the two women fighting, they develop a bond.
“The premise of the film is ‘What if you fall in love with your husband’s wifeIJ’ This is not to suggest any element of lesbianism,” he clarified. “They just become good friends. We shot in Thailand and India, at Kupup, near the Indo-China border in Sikkim, which is army area. You have an unrestricted view of Kanchenchunga from there.”
He said, “There is a market for this genre in Bengal. That’s probably why my two earlier films were successful.” What there hasn’t been in West Bengal for sometime, he informed, “is a political film.”
He plan to fill the gap with A Political Murder, a two-part project loosely based on the 1,000 crore education scam in Maharashtra, (though relocated to Bengal), with elements from Nirbhaya protests.
“The latter triggered the movie, once again with Rituparna Sengupta.” The director has, “a tuning with the actress. She supported me when no one wanted to do Charulata 2011.”
About A Political Murder he remarked, “I had attended the rally in Kolkata for Nirbhaya and was asked to give my take. I said it was futile to light candles. Tomorrow you could light another one for a new issue, then everyone would forget this one. And that’s what happened. My film is about standing for a cause and sticking to it. You don’t stop lighting candles until you get what you have to.”
He said, “The first of this two-part film, in which Rituparna plays a college professor, has no solution. I guess that reflects the current darkness. We’re waiting to see the response after the July 6 release. As far as I’m concerned, change will only happen in the hands of people. If we want to get things working, its upto us. No one else can do anything.The film is about corruption at different levels of society. And how each of us is complicit.”
The Truth Behind Act 161 is based on the case of a man, Mallik, wrongly imprisoned. And how he fought to clear his name for over 30 years.
“I got the story from Rituparna who knew Mallik’s son, Karron, (who plays his father in the film). The story sounded like something out of a Hindi film.”
It’s going to be shot in Hindi from July. The script is incomplete. Agnidev narrated, “Mallik went to jail in 1978, when he was a student because of violence involving students and villagers. One person was killed. Being a prominent figure, he got singled out.” Mallik spent the rest of his years between Nahar prison in Himachal Pradesh and a sub-jail in Shimla.
“It was the only case of someone being completely pardoned of all crimes. When he left jail finally, he had no record, as he was absolved of all crime.”
What fascinated the filmmaker, was that Mallik had been in and out of poverty and faced bad luck, “but was always positive.”
And, “although people offered him chances to succeed through crime, he never fell in their trap and did lots of social work.” What kept him throughIJ
“Probably the woman he married. She stood by him and became his beacon of strength. In prison he was tortured in various ways. People put mud in his food. And he was placed in a hole for a long duration. The tale he narrated sounded exactly like a film script. And there’s also a love-story.”