He had the ability to challenge the conventional documentaries. It was because he could manage to show a beautiful co-existence between slices of time through his films, says Shohini Ghosh, essayist and documentary filmmaker as she explains the versatility of late film personality Rituparno Ghosh.
In a two-day long event ‘Rituparno Ghosh: A Retrospective’ organised by the Directorate of Film Festivals recently, every aspect related to the ace director, actor and screenplay writer was revealed by the kind of films he made.
“His experimentation with the language of cinema and foregrounding sexuality was reflected in the kind of the work he has done,” said Sohini, during a panel discussion on day one of the two-day event. “He was the only actor who was willing to portray the female protagonist, despite being a male. In Kaushik Ganguly’s Just Another Love Story (Arekti Premer Golpo), he plays the character of two feminine men belonging to different times. Through this film he has shown how people are still struggling to accept sexuality,” she says.
What Sohini said was proved correct when the film was screened after the discussion. Acting as a transgender documentary filmmaker, Rituparno explores the life of the real-life legendary jatra actor Chapal Bhaduri, who in his heyday was known as ‘Chapal Rani’. He highlights the complexities of emotions when he projects the life of Chapal Rani and realises that they run parallel to his own life.
“I once asked Rituparno why he emphasises on sexuality,” reminisces Sohini. “He cited Sigmund Freud: ‘Can you cure homosexuality? No, But you can control the expansion of heterosexual world,’” she says. The auditorium echoed with laughter.
“Besides exploring sexuality, Rituparno’s talent lay in the way he framed narrative,” explained film critic Shubhra Gupta, another panelist. “He was one director who used to make films which despite dealing with some unusual emotions were presented in a subtle manner,” she says.
Films like Raincoat starring Aishwarya Rai and The Last Lear where he cast Amitabh Bachchan, Preity Zinta and Arjun Rampal, gave these mainstream actors an edge.
On the other hand, Rituparno has touched social issues through Bengali films Bariwali and Noukadubi which were also screened in the festival. Other films like Memories in March, Dahan and Unishe April were also shown during the festival.