Poster - Meghe Dhaka Tara (Courtesy- Wikipedia)
Critical and academic literature on Ritwik Ghatak’s films, especially what is commonly known as the ‘Partition Trilogy’ is already quite voluminous. On his birth centenary, a more analytical take on these immensely popular films would be eventually added for obvious reasons. While a major aspect of studying Ghatak’s films has been partition, the uses of excess in the melodramatic mode of address, and modernity in the broader sense, it is important to reflect on the historical aspects and the modernist form that becomes a vital aspect of Ghatak’s films.
The song ‘Ai Go Uma Kole Loi’’: Gauridaan, History and Modernity
In Ritwik Ghatak’s semiotics, the land is the mother goddess, for which the face of the woman plays a significant role - the woman’s face signifying the motherland, which gets reflected in ‘Meghe Dhaka Tara’. For reading ‘Meghe Dhaka Tara’ and understanding the construction of the ‘Great Mother’ (mother goddess / nurturer) archetype, one needs to critically delve into the recurrence of the song ‘Ai Go Uma Kole Loi’’ in the film, and thus engage with the broader history related to the song (Chakraborty, 2018). Ghatak, in the film, tries to construct Nita as ‘Jagaddhatri’ (the goddess who is the nurturer of the world - ‘Jagat’, meaning the world and ‘Dhatri’ is the nurturer). From stressing on Nita being born on the day of Jagaddhatri Pujo, she being the sole breadwinner of the family (and thus the nurturer, in a literal sense), to extending the significance to the formal levels, such as low angle shots, close-ups of Nita’s face, aural point of view shots, Ghatak forms the image of Nita as a deified entity. It is in this context, Ghatak brings in the history of ‘Gauridaan’, by looking critically at the politics of deification of women in Bengal. Poulomi Chakroborty correctly notes that the use of the traditional folk song in ‘Meghe Dhaka Tara’ itself reminds of the history of the violence that women had to go through, as it reminds the idea of ‘daan’ or ‘giving away’ the daughter after her marriage- the violence camouflaged by deification of the underaged girl (‘Uma’, literally meaning little Durga) (Chakraborty, 2018). The Bengali traditional songs of ‘Gauridaan’ retell the story of Uma or Durga (‘Gauri’, another name for goddess Durga) leaving her paternal home to join her marital household (Dass, 2010). The songs are therefore layered with lament for her departure and deep agony and resentment towards Shiva.
Still from Meghe Dhaka Tara (Courtesy - https://globalfilmbook.wordpress.com/)
These songs gained ample significance in Bengal during the ‘Sena’ rule and afterwards, when the daughter was being married off and there was a hysteric cry to prevent her from leaving, for there was fear that the parents might never see her again due to the hostilities that she might be facing and the uncertainties about her future at her in-laws’. ‘Ai Go Uma Kole Loi’ is one such song that Durga’s mother Menaka sings, as a plea for a final embrace before Uma leaves for her marital home. Throughout history, women in Bengal have been deified as the mother goddess (Durga) when the violence had been unleashed on them- the song highlighting the girl child's plight. Nita, being constructed and glorified as the mother goddess throughout the film (and deified by the characters and the audience) is the one who evokes the long history of violence on women and the use of ‘Gauridaan’ song when Nita is first shown to be afflicted with tuberculosis “underscores the pathos of Nita’s impending separation from her family” (Chakraborty, 2010). Ghatak will now pose an even larger question- Is the daughter of a post colonial Bengali household too not a refugee? This becomes evident when Nita’s father profoundly states, “Previously, people used to marry their daughter off to a dying man- they were barbaric, and now we’re educated, civilized. So, we educate her, so we wring her to the extent of destroying her future- this is the difference”. Moreover, the final scene of the film shows Shankar looking at a girl crossing the colony railroads, her slippers get tattered, just like Nita’s and he is reminded of Nita. While the later scene has the music ‘Ai Go Uma Kole Loi’ playing in background, the former scene has an overture of the music. This is enough to suggest that Ghatak tries to highlight a tragedy that has been repeatedly been the reality of women since the earlier times and would continue till the very last frame of the film, perhaps to eternity, as a woman would continue to bare the same fate, probably similar to that of Nita’s.
The voice of the (M)Other and the gaze in ‘Meghe Dhaka Tara’: Is a Lacanian Psychoanalytic reading possible?
In his renowned Seminar XI, Jacques Lacan mentions a famous painting by Hans Holbein, named ‘The Ambassadors’ in which there are two figures, painted in typical Renaissance perspective verisimilitude, with a distorted skull at the base of the painting. As Lacan puts it, the ‘Objet petit a’ in the field of vision is the ‘gaze’- a distorted look from the field of vision of the object, thrown back towards the subject, so that the subject feels ‘being looked-at’ (Biswas, 2002). The gaze exists at a point of blot or stain, at which the spectatorial position becomes contingent. In ‘Meghe Dhaka Tara’, rather than a gradual unfolding of the narrative, it seems that the story itself is already told. This somehow challenges the position of the spectator. Unlike the realist narrative structure, where the spectator is expected to, to experience the gradual unfolding of a narrative, Ghatak’s schema is a determinist one, in which the narrative of predestination seems to present a blot at the centre of a realism. The gaze here is projected as an entity, which already knows what is coming next. The gaze (in the Lacanian sense of the term) in ‘Meghe Dhaka Tara’, signifies the intrusion of the ‘other’ in the field of narration. The Gauridaan song seems to be layered, as Ghatak makes the song sound more haunting as it plays faintly with a reverberation, making the scene have an effect of the ominous. When the song starts playing as Nita discovers her tuberculosis, it is further intensified with a mechanical, screeching sound - the one that Ghatak uses for conveying the uncanny in ‘Jogoddol’ from ‘Ajantrik’ - it is as if the sound of the ‘other’ that intensifies the impending ominous that awaits Nita. The song highlights the fact, it is women who are the primary ‘displaced’ beings in the history of Bengal and the ruptures throughout the film thus uncannily erupts the feminine consciousness.
Bibliography/ References:
Biswas, M. (2002). Modernity and the Logic of the Logic of the Remnant in Film Narration. 17-27.
Chakraborty, P. (2018). The Refugee Woman: Partition of Bengal, Gender, and the Political. Oxford University Press.
Dass, M. (2010). The Cloud-Capped Star: Ritwik Ghatak on the Horizon of Global Art Cinema
https://www.academia.edu/26268087/The_Cloud_Capped_Star_Ritwik_Ghatak_on_the_Horizon_of_Global_Art_Cinema
