May 17, 1999
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PROFILE: APARNA SEN Sen and Sensibility Pragmatism, patience and perspiration mark the Paroma director's new venture. By Avirook Sen
What could be bothering you if you look 40 when you are really a decade older? If you are affluent enough to be able to complain about your occasional exposure to Calcutta's sticky heat? If you've already made 36 Chowringhee Lane and Paroma? This sounds wild, but could it possibly be a recalcitrant priest who suspends his disbelief a tad prematurely? For now, bingo. In the courtyard of 102, Hari Ghosh Street (the crumbling north Calcutta home of the once-prosperous Pal family -- some of the stained glass has survived), Aparna Sen is trying to convince the venerable brahmin Haripadababu that he doesn't "really" have to conduct someone's last rites. That she won't "really" be dead by tomorrow. That this is only a scene in her new film. And it's a helluva bother getting this accomplished. "The moonphase is going to change by noon, the mantras will be different," says Haripadababu, raising a religio-technical point. Perspiration ruins Sen's light, stylish make-up. Her patience holds out better. With practised pragmatism, she starts (yet) again: "This is a film, the moonphase is not relevant ..." Shooting begins the next day. Haripadababu is the only priest Sen has. And the only producer she has wants the film completed in exactly 33 days. An Aparna Sen film in 33 days? Alas, yes. "This is the age of cheap films," says Sen, referring to prevailing economic trends in Bengali cinema. It bothers her, but it is in this age that Aparna Sen, her laurels somewhat crushed (she's been resting on them for over a decade -- if Paroma, 1986, was par, what's followed is well below), is making Paromitar Ek Din (A Day in the Life of Paromita). Her producer, a gentleman called Rajesh Agarwal, whose primary business interests are in advertisement hoardings, has put up Rs 30 lakh for the project. In film terms this means that there can be just one retake per shot. Take three is unaffordable. Running his blue plastic comb alternately through his hair and his beard, Agarwal says: "I'm confident of box-office success." The star cast -- Sen herself, Soumitra Chatterjee and Rituparna Sengupta -- should ensure that the sacks of coins come in from the districts. Literally -- this is how Bengali commercial cinema makes money these days: from the (metallic) disposable income of Bengal's villages. Is change what Sen is chasing? Was it necessary for her to make this film? In a word, yes, because filmmaking is her life. "There are some films in my head that nobody's going to give me the money to make. So I might as well make the ones that I can." And then, look at the positive side, if this film makes money, financiers for the next one will be that much easier to find. That is why Paromitar Ek Din is so important. Not because it'll complete a triumphant trio to go with Paroma and 36. It doesn't intend to. Sen has attempted this incredibly difficult follow-up act before -- and failed. Sati, the film with the bizarre story of a woman married to a tree, failed because its script couldn't exploit the dramatic possibilities available. And Juganta, a dour film about the dangers to the environment was, by Sen's own admission, "too cerebral". What all this hasn't affected is her box-office rating in Bengali cinema. For one, she still looks pretty darn good -- even when she plays the mother-in-law, as in Paromita. There's something so dark and proud about her, it makes what she wears irrelevant. Besides, says Rituparna Ghosh, director of Unishe April, in which Sen put up a high-class performance: "There's a level of involvement that she brings to anything she does that is just staggering. It's there even when she's laying the table at home, or folding a napkin." This is something palpable in her work -- and in the preparation for it. The terraces surrounding the Pals' were jampacked after someone spotted her trying to learn to fly a kite in mid-afternoon. (She had to do it because she's written a kite-flying scene in Paromita). Public interest in Sen hasn't waned since her very first film, Satyajit Ray's Teen Kanya (1961), when she made her debut as a girl barely into her teens. Two decades later, she made her grand entry as director, with 36 and also put on the hat of editor of Sananda, the lonely Bengali woman's best friend. "I don't admire loneliness, but I feel the need to explore it" says Sen. The aged Anglo-Indian widow in 36, the unfulfilled housewife in Paroma, both women in her latest venture, all know the feeling. The new film still doesn't complete the trio. For there is at least one crucial aspect about it, which Sen would have liked to explore, but doesn't want to. Or can't. It would come too close on the heels of Fire. There's an unmistakable, though subtle, element of sensuality in the relationship between Paromita and her mother-in-law. Had it been in any way explicit (and had Sen found a financier earlier) she would have beaten Deepa Mehta to the drawing-room debates. But now Sen says: "Even I don't know if there's a sexual aspect in the relationship. If one always knows, the magic is gone." That's Aparna Sen, film director. Aparna Sen, editor of Sananda, is very different. "She likes to know what's going on editorially, no matter where she is," says Aniruddha Dhar, associate editor with the publication, laying to rest rumours that all Sen lends to the magazine is her name and her mug in the letter from the editor. That letter sometimes comes from overseas these days. For the last five years, Sen has been married to a Bengali academic teaching in the USA and travels there frequently. "Marriage brings with it the crippling burden of intimacy," she says. Sen herself has been "crippled" twice before. But "When I looked around and saw a few happy marriages, my faith in the institution was renewed. Even if it remains full of compromise". A little like the movies that she will get to do in the age of cheap films. Is that what bothers Aparna Sen? That she doesn't live in a compromise-free world? Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't. If we get to know, the magic is gone. |
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