Hindia and Superstitions. Review on Antarmahal Movie

“Raincoat” introduced me yet another master moviemaker called Rituparna Gosh from Bengal. He is the one who can make a story that could be written on the back of a post card into a 2 hour long feature film with multiple layers in it. He discovers and reveals the depth of some of the most sublime emotions between relation ships in such wafer thin plots. The setting and the premise of the movie would be very simple but the characters and their emotions are not, they are far more complicated than we would have imagined after hearing the one line of the story. He says and conveys a lot in his visuals without saying or conveying much, the so-called subtlety, even the subtlety is subtle in his movies. Enough rambling about the director and his style of his filmmaking let me come to “Antarmahal” (The views of Inner Chamber).

Set in 1878, this movie is all about how all people undergo various emotions as they get caught in a prison under the name of culture, tradition and superstitious beliefs. The movie has multiple layers in it. At one go, Gosh have tried to deal with many social issues of those times and some of them that prevails even now.

I will take one single scene where he has layered everything in it quite brilliantly. As Bhuvaneshwar madly needs a prodigy, he seeks the advice of a priest to tell him if there is any ritual, which would make it possible. The priest tells that it is possible if someone recites the Sanskrit hymns, which tells the story of a brave king while Bhuvaneshwar mates with Yashomati. Daily during the time of intercourse, if these hymns reach the ears of Yashomati, she will give birth to a brave child who will also become a powerful king one day. And he adds that if necessary he himself would come and recite the hymns for them. And Bhuvaneshwar agrees for this. (Don’t think that this is the extreme of superstition, things worse than this happens at a later point in the movie).

The very fact that Bhuvaneshwar agreed for such a thing clearly tells how idiotically superstitious men were and yet is. The scene shows Bhuvaneshwar compelling Yashomati to come to bed to have sex in front of the priest and somehow she agrees. While Bhuvaneshwar, the poison less snake (as Mahamaya calls him often in the movie) is busy trying to spit his venom onto Yashomati; the priest tries to eavesdrop the happenings over bed. Yashomati lies there on the bed with plain expressionless face when Bhuvaneshwar is busy with doing his regular exercise upon her. Watch the face of the helpless pity girl that reveals much about how badly and brutally women were treated in those days as just a sex machine.

There comes Mahamaya to disturb the priest’s concentration and to stop him from watching them having sex. And what she does for that is shocking and beyond anyone’s imagination, and I asked to myself “at those times would a woman go this far”. What the priest does is equally shocking, we seriously suspect his real intention and what he does in the later parts of the movie proves us right. We have heard of sex scandals by swamiji’s these days but Gosh reveals that it is there even before a century. It is kind of a strong slap that the director gives to the so-called Indian tradition and culture, which we have been following and using as mask to cheat the world. Zamindar trying to woo the English viceroy’s to get “Ray Bahadhur” title by conducting a Durga pooja with an idol of Durga having the face of Queen Victoria tells about the crazy Zamindar’s were and how far they can go to any to win pride and fame over their rivals.

No matter what the period or the place is, the human emotions are quite same. I mean the kind of carnal thirst Mahamaya and Yashomati gets when they meet the strong young sculptor Brojo (Abhishek Bachan). Mahamaya goes to the extent of advising Yashomati to have sex with Brojo to have a child so that Bhuvaneshwar will stop torturing her daily at night. More worse is that Mahamaya herself tries to woo Brojo to come to bed with her. But we can’t blame them. The circumstance makes everything possible? We feel such actions of Mahamaya convincing considering her pathetic situation.

There is a beautiful sublime love story that runs in the background. We know it and yet we don’t it, we see it and yet we don’t see it. I still wonder when and where did Brojo spent time with Yashomati. There is one single scene in which when Brojo is dreaming about his wife, Yashomati appears in his wife’s attire. Did anything happen there? This is exactly what I got after watching “Rain Coat”. Questions. I think Gosh’s movies always leave something for the viewer’s to chew and think for a long time after watching the movie. You kind of re-view (and review) the movie to understand it completely.

I am still thinking of the reason for using the idol making process of the goddess for some seductive scenes. The way it has been handled is quite sensuous but I couldn’t decipher the real intended meaning. I wonder how these scenes didn’t find any opposition from religious groups.

I like the way Gosh ends a scene no matter how less of more critical it is. We would expect something to happen as a final point or climax of the particular scene but the climax is not shown directly, instead he cuts the scene at the crucial point and shows what happened and its consequence through other means without showing it directly.

People talk about bollywood movies with international standards and quality, in which they list movies like “Krissh”, “Devdas” and movies like that. Truly speaking, regional cinema especially Bengali cinema is of international quality and standards in every aspect of filmmaking. From the script, screenplay, cinematography and editing every technicalities of ‘AntarMahal’ are of high quality. Casting is perfect. Performances are true to reality and convincing. Jackie Sheroff as Bhuvaneshwar, Rupa Ganguly as first wife Mahamaya, Soha Ali Khan as Yashomati and Abhishek Bachan as Brojo are perfectly cast. Rupa Ganguly as Mahamaya is the scene-stealer with her stellar performance. Background score by Debojyoti Mishra is effective. One cue that reveals his proficiency over background scoring is in the scene when four people carry a big painting of Queen Victoria. The music in this scene is a mix of western notes in trombone or horn with traditional Bengali percussions, perfectly sounding the weird mix of Queen’s Victoria’s face on body of the Durga’s idol.

A Myopic will call this movie as soft porn. Don’t listen to his words? The movie for sure has sensuous scenes but it is dealt without any vulgarity. It has to be that shown way to reveal some of the dark reality of our society. Watch the movie and judge it for yourself.