Doshor…

Hinging on something very normal and common in our society, marital infidelity, this movie scales new heights of glory, both by way of direction and in the sense of performance. Rituparno’s sensitive handling of the issue, complimented with the performances, both of which I missed in Chokher Bali, showed that Bengali movies are ready to once again take the film world by storm.

The movie is set on a monochrome canvas on which marital infidelity across various couples is explored. In this sense the movie does not essentially have a protagonist…but going by screen space, the lead pair is undoubtedly the rich urban couple played convincingly by Konkona and Prosenjeet. Theirs is the first troubled story. Linked to their story, where the man is the betrayer, is the story of Shankar Chakraborty’s family, whose wife shares a clandestine relationship with Prosenjeet. On a completely different level, is the story of Pallavi Chatterjee, Konkona’s friend, who is having an affair with Parambroto. Incidentally the latter three belong to the same theatre group and are good friends.

What strikes the viewer is the non-judgmental manner in which the movie has been filmed. If on the one hand Konkona is shown as the victim of her husband’s infidelity, it is again her who finds reason to support her friend who is cheating her husband. But subtlety is Rituparno’s forte. For the discerning moviegoer there is a very potent message. For instance the car accident, in which Prosenjeet’s mistress dies and which is also the movie’s precipitating factor, that at the very beginning subtlely establishes the social codes and norms and kills aberration. From here on there is only realization, revelation and reconciliation ~ coming to terms with the past and with what is legal as per cultural moral constructs. So Konkona curls up in her husband’s arms sobbing on the shoulder that had not very long back given her the emotional shrug, while Pallavi Chatterjee gets pregnant and decides to go back to her husband. Here Parombroto raises an important question when he asks Pallavi that if the problem, to escape which she had come to him, was so easy to solve then why hadn’t she done it before ~ a reminder from the director himself that solving interpersonal relationship issues is after all not that difficult.

For the strict disciplinarian, this is the ideal end… the reinstatement of normalcy. For the deep thinker it is something more… the emotional victory of the woman but at the same time it is the darkness of patriarchy reinforced. If Konkona’s husband has cheated, so has Shankar Chakraborty’s wife. Whereas Konkona deals with it in a battle she wages with herself, Shankar gets a whore home. The force with which he drives into her shows that he desperately needs to prove his manhood. What an irony, the ego that took a battering from a woman, seeks to find it through another woman. Konkona forgives her man, but leaves us with a really dark message, as she slowly recites the poem her husband’s mistress would say. The words ring in with finality the fact that the woman must shrivel for the prince has to win… the question ‘why’ looms ahead. Maybe the director wants us to find the answer....