Trouble in Paradise

Buddhadev Dasgupta's new release 'Swapner Din' is subtitled 'Chased by Dreams'. I am not very sure about this. Literally speaking, one would have to say something like, Days of dreams- which doesn't mean anything I'm afraid. No doubt it's a poetic re-creation of the original title, but I distinctly had the feeling that Swapner Din was more about characters travelling with their dreams.

Thankfully, after Uttara, Buddhadev Dasgupta's films are generally blessed with excellent cinematography. May Jhamu Sughand's soul rest in peace. Gone are the days of trying to make out if Mithun is wearing yellow, or buff or even saffron(they all mean something) while reminiscing about his revolutionary days in 'Tahader Katha' (1992) or if it is Rajit Kapoor indeed in 'Charachar' (1993). Saved also are futile discussions if he meant it to be a violent, noisy cut to dissociate the viewer suddenly from the murder of a blue-collar in 'Grihajuddha' (1982). In the new Century, his frames are painted with the same poetic intensity of his narratives. If 'Uttara' (2000) was wrapped in an earthy and dusty frame to situate the film in the loneliness of rural Bengal, 'Mondo Meyer Upakhyan' (2002) was saturated with lurid red colours and the same dusty loneliness to portray the lives of queans in suburban Bengal.

Swapner Din begins with a slow shot of a wide sky. As the camera moves back slowly, as if enjoying a sedentary outing into paradise, we hear the noise of gunshot. The camera then reveals a jeep of dead poilcemen. As a crowd of protestors against terrorism begin to gather, the camera is distracted by a squirrel that scurries up the bonnet and stares at the dead policeman.

Seceral motifs are opened up by Dasgupta in the first scene- a sort of prologue to the actual narrative. The sky and the squirrel suggest among other things, a point of origin and a mode of continuity. The film opens with the camera already moving slowly. The sudden gunshot is, especially for those who've read Pamuk's Snow, the equivalent of something sordid being uttered during a beautiful performance- something that is not wanted, but impossible to ignore, like a gunshot, in fact. The squirrel, carried through the film, situates everything into the consuming tyranny of time.

The narrative brings together various characters looking to live in worlds that, unfortunately, exist only in their imaginations. Their pursuit of these worlds are constantly undercut by violence, politics and despair- not that they are exclusive from each other. Paresh is a lonely projectionist who lives in Kolkata and earns his money by showing educational films from the government. As his permanent driver goes on leave, he is replaced by Chapal- another everyman trying to escape his drudgery by applying for a job at Dubai, except that his agent forces him to accept the identity of another man. On their film trail- they are constantly barraged with important questions- sometimes pertinent, sometimes embarassing- about the role of films during times of terror and the more naked enquiry- if films serve any useful purpose at all. They are met on their journeys by a pregnant Muslim woman, Amina, who is escaping from a shattered world in Gujarat after the riots- to which she lost her husband. She hopes to go back to her native land Bangladesh- where, she is confident, the grass is greener. She conjures a beautiful image of Bangladesh- one that is devoid of any definition in terms of time- and her tragedy is brought head-on as she discovers that while our imaginations may revolve around fixed points on the map of the past, time, once again, tyrannizes everything into the hegemony of change- change, in this film, being a repository of uncertainty and terror.

Swapner Din is not as pretentious or dull as Kaalpurush. I remember liking 'Kaalpurush' (2007-2008) somewhat, but it's own agenda of inter-weaving dreams and reality into the narrative was, I felt, more forced and somewhat exclusive than in any of his other films. Swapner Din, however, achieves this difficult narrative strategy. Paresh's dream is to find the woman he sees weeping copiously in one of his films. He wonders if he's in love. He does not quite know what love is. His hallucinatory dreams of the woman making constant, small appearances in his daily life are showed without any comment- like someone would stare temporarily at a passing ornate tea cosy.

At one point, his car stops for a moment- covered in a shower of dust- when he imagines that the actress is standing in front of him-however, after a beat- he continues on his journey- leaving the actress stranded on the road. Dreams don't collide with reality in Swapner Din, they run parallel to reality, teasing the characters- leading them on, suffocating them in the very lurid lure of their charm, yet unyielding until the very end.

I thought the co-incidental (I don't know how to appropriate the word 'prophetic') references to Singur and the role of the Government through the educational films extremely timely. This film was in production at least two years ago.

The film, ultimately, cannot or, I would say at least, should not, be seen without conjunction to Uttara. If the dwarfs in Uttara present the idea of a Utopia- lying across the mountains, it must be asked why one of them dares to steal the projector from Paresh. Is it a throwaway reference to insulate the film against questions of who (what construct of a character) could steal the projector, or is there trouble in paradise?

On a different note, in the season of portmanteau films, 'New York Stories' was not as good as I had hoped. Martin Scorsese's film 'Life Lessons' on a kind-of Jackson Pollock artist in Manhattan champagne-circles is stylish and rich, showing us a world that is stereotypical in the New York art scene- by which I mean they use professional phrases like 'performance artists' and pick-up lines that border on: I'm an artist and am looking for an assistant to share my studio-apartment with. Woody Allen's psychological take on the city with the figure of his mother hanging over a building in Manhattan, wrecking his life, is almost as good as it gets from Allen's best. Following a magic trick that manages to vanish his mother from a chinese box, he is consoled ludicrously by the magician and the attendant, to which Allen replies: "You put a little Jewish lady into a magic box, she disappears and now she (the attendant) is telling me molecules!" However, Francis Ford Coppola's film was a pain. I cannot say anything else about this travesty.

Here's hoping 'New York, I love you' churns up some little gems.