(From left) Anjan Dutt, Sharmila Biswas, Jisshu Sengupta, Rituparno Ghosh, Dipankar De, Anasua Majumdar, Sanjoy Nag and Debojyoti Mishra at HHI on Thursday. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya

Nobody has acted in Chitrangada. The film has an indeterminate space, there’s a constant fluidity, there are self-conflicting ideas, so nobody has acted in a definite way. In fact, there’s no acting in the film!” said director-actor Rituparno Ghosh at HHI on Thursday afternoon, where the cast and crew of his August 31 release Chitrangada: The Crowning Wish had gathered to talk about the film.

Produced by Shree Venkatesh Films, Chitrangada revolves around Rituparno, who plays a choreographer, Rudra, staging the dance drama Chitrangada to mark Tagore’s 150th birth anniversary. Jisshu Sengupta plays a drummer in Rudra’s troupe, Anjan Dutt a psychiatrist and Sanjoy Nag a photographer and Rudra’s ex-boyfriend. Anasua Majumdar and Dipankar De play Rudra’s parents.

“I couldn’t have become Rudra without Sharmiladi (Biswas) because I not only had to come on the sets and walk, talk and act, I also had to learn the expressions of a dancer from her,” added Rituparno.

Chitrangada is special for him as it brought back the Chokher Bali team of Avik Mukhopadhyay (DoP), Arghyakamal Mitra (editor), Indranil Ghosh (art director) and Debojyoti Mishra (composer).

“I have always been very proud of Chokher Bali as I feel that of all my films, it had the best teamwork. And I was so glad to get my team back for Chitrangada,” said Rituparno.

Jisshu, who plays a drummer on drugs, had everyone in splits with his honest confession: “This is perhaps my first film with Rituda where I didn’t get beaten up after a wrong shot. In every other film, he has slapped me more than once for not following his instructions properly!”

Song and dance

For Debojyoti Mishra, composing for Chitrangada was a totally different experience though he has set quite a few of Rituparno’s films to music. “When Ritu told me he was making this film, I didn’t even feel like re-reading Chitrangada. I just followed his instructions. I could see him breaking himself down to not just play Rudra but for the film as a whole. I think after Chokher Bali, Chitrangada is his best directorial work,” said Debojyoti, who has scored music for eight songs.

Odissi dancer Sharmila Biswas had the challenging task of choreographing for Rituparno. “Ritu’s ideas and Debu’s (Debojyoti) music helped me greatly to create a very intense and difficult dance sequence. Ritu performs to the song Guruguru guruguru ghano megha garoje, which he had explained to me so beautifully.... It was very inspiring and I didn’t have any problem teaching him the steps. I just added different levels,” recounted Sharmila.