Dosar
Director: Rituparno Ghosh
Cast: Prosenjit, Konkona Sensharma, Shankar Chakraborty, Pallavi Chatterjee, Parambrata Chatterjee, Chandreyee Ghosh, Moumita Gupta, Sourav, Kasturi, Mithu Chakraborty, Saswata Chatterjee, Tota Roy Chowdhury
8/10
For most of us, movies are not just stories unfolding. And cinema is a romantic notion beyond films. This romance is a confluence of history and memory. It’s our past and our visual orientation. Like scenes from silver screen’s golden ages that inspired in our formative years, ideas about love, life?. And nothing epitomises our nostalgia better than black-and-white cinematic images.
After his colour-saturated period piece, Antarmahal, Rituparno Ghosh in his new film, Dosar (The Companion), goes completely self-indulgently black-and-white ? something most post-technicolour era filmmakers probably imagine doing at some point or the other ? but a luxury few can afford. (B/W positive film stock is expensive, not easily available and can hike a regular film’s budget up to three times.) So Dosar, like many trendy ‘retro’ fads, is a kind of simulated classic telling a contemporary tale of marital infidelity and its effect on spousal relationships. And in that sense the director’s experiment does succeed because the film’s B/W image creates semblance of neo-olden feel which ultimately becomes the USP of an otherwise average story.
A man survives near-fatal car accident in which his mistress dies. But can his marriage, shattered by its impact survive? Prosenjit portrays with subtlety and dignity a character caught ‘red-handed’, caught off-guard and caught between grief (other woman) and guilt (wife) and unable to express either.
Konkona plays his wife. Much has been said about this young actress’ natural talent and powerful performances. But what’s more instinctive is her gift for total ‘un-acting’. And in moments she displays almost ambivalence for her own craft, unwilling unlike most trained method actors to project unnecessarily. And instead deliberately switches off while still in character playing her part with equal amount of detached ennui and commitment. As in a scene where she acutely humiliates her husband who’s destroyed her trust ? by simply intoning in monotone: ‘Here, the police found your stuff in her bag.’ And with deadpan expression, hands him a box of condoms.
Abhik Mukhopadhyay’s multicolour palette-camera (Bunty Aur Babli) adapts pretty evocatively to Dosar’s stark minimal frames, with striking contrast and some dramatic play of light and shade. Only more tonal variation would’ve surely ensured today’s colour film camera’s perfect dwelling in yesterday’s gray area of black-and-white cinematography.
Mandira Mitra
