Bengal’s matinee idol Soumitra Chatterjee agreed to play Shakespeare’s King Lear on stage (Raja Lear, 2010) only if Suman Mukhopadhyay were to direct him. Suman Mukhopadhyay, 58, who drives the Chetana theatre group, is a familiar name in Kolkata. Far more in the theatre circuit than in cinema, although his brilliant debut film is still watched with a studied passion. The National Award-winning surreal Herbert (2005), which Mukhopadhyay adapted from writer Mahasweta Devi’s son Nabarun Bhattacharya’s Sahitya Akademi Award-winning groundbreaking eponymous novella, completes 20 years this year. In it, magic realism met political film, theatre met cinema. Over the years, the tenor and subtext of his cinema has changed. But his proclivity to adapt from literature continues, for the stage, for the screen.
Mukhopadhyay’s Putulnacher Itikatha (The Puppet’s Tale), adapted from Manik Bandopadhyay’s novel of the same name, competes in the Big Screen Competition at International Film Fetsival Rotterdam (IFFR). Mukhopadhyay’s films previously have travelled to Europe, including the Munich Film Festival, but this is his first outing at the A-lister festival — a serious fest of films minus any red-carpet brouhaha. And to be in competition is a huge feat not just for the filmmaker but for Bengali cinema, which hasn’t seen much quality writing in recent time.
What’s more? At this edition, there are three Bengali films, two others in the non-competitive Harbour section: Pradipta Bhattacharyya’s The Slow Man and his Raft (Nadharer Bhela) and Ishaan Ghose’s Morichika.
ALSO READ: IFFR 2025: The resurrection of Bengali cinema, which Anurag Kashyap calls ‘ghatiya’
Days ahead of the premiere of Putulnacher Itikatha on February 6 at IFFR, where he had a fanboy moment when he bumped into filmmaker Costa-Gavras, Mukhopadhyay spoke at length about what ails and fails Bengali cinema. Edited excerpts from a freewheeling telephonic conversation:
You’ve said that you want to be more productive in terms of filmmaking. Between directing theatre and films, which one is more satisfying for you?
See, both have different energies. Their methodology is very different. One is a visual medium and the other is performing arts. In theatre, the actors perform differently and audiences respond differently every day. Every day, you can make things happen. Filmmaking is a very different kind of enjoyment. One is very technical but also emotional. At a deeper level, emotional engagement, the commitment is very important to whatever content you’re working with, whether cinema or theatre, you want to tell the story to the people in your vocabulary. I cannot differentiate cinema and theatre. Like [Ingmar] Bergman once said, that theatre was his wife and cinema is his mistress.
Tell us about Putulnacher Itikatha (The Puppet’s Tale). Why did you want to make this story in particular?
From the very beginning, I had been attracted to the character of Shashi (the urban doctor who returns to his village and feels trapped). I found the resonance of that character within me also. Shashi (essayed by Abir Chatterjee; Abir’s first film post-COVID) is a very different kind of character in terms of Bengali literature also. He is suffering from indecision. He has the potential to do many things but finally he couldn’t take decisions and be ruthless in certain areas. He wanted to leave the village and go to the city and then abroad. He has dreams, but he’s stuck. Everybody around him went away. He’s trapped in his own insularity. I have been following him for a long. [Set in the 1930s] Putulnacher Itikatha is a huge-canvas novel. I wanted to focus on one character, Shashi. There’s another character called Kumud (played by Parambrata Chattopadhyay). [Author] Manik Bandyopadhyay wrote an entire separate section on Kumud’s journey into urban life. But I didn’t want to focus on that. To me, cinema is very character-driven. Novels have this great opportunity to explore different worlds. But cinema kind of gets into one character’s mind and tries to follow that. There are three strong women characters in the story: Kusum (Jaya Ahsan), Sen didi (Ananya Chatterjee) and Moti (Surangana Bandyopadhyay). They are standing opposite Shashi. They are also part of that same regimented rural norms and restrictions, but from within those, they are trying to emancipate themselves, giving themselves agency. So, Shashi and the three women characters, those things I found more interesting. So, I focused on this psychological web of these three-four characters in my film. Cinematic domain is very different from the novels, of course, I took the characters from there. But when I am doing a cinematic adaptation, I want to focus more on the psychology of one character and the key characters around him, who are a contrast to him (Shashi) and his social dilemma.
Jaya Ahsan and Abir Chatterjee in stills from the film
Shashi is akin to a character out of Greek tragedy?
He is from the village, where he returns to after completing his medical degree from Kolkata, where he gets cultural exposure. He returns to his village home with liberalism. But gets stuck there, wanting to but unable to leave. And then he gets into melancholic brooding, talking to himself, he wants to create reforms, but those reforms aren’t easy to come by where another important character stands in opposition. Jadhab Pandit, who propounds ancient sun science, doesn’t think much of Shashi’s modern medical science, claims to predict his own death, attempts homicide and suicide together to prove his own point against modernity. The whole village comes to see it and celebrate him as a great saint. Shashi remains a helpless, silent spectator to this entire spectacle. This character is a huge contrast with Shashi, an agent of modernity, fighting against tradition. But he couldn’t protest this. He couldn’t take the right decision at the right time. It’s a kind of big failure for him, for his modernity. This is not fatalistic, this is not any preordained Greek tragedy where everything is pre-decided and human beings are only puppets of the gods. It’s not that. We are puppets of our own decisions. That is why many debated the title Putulnacher Itikatha as well, even the author has written: I’m not trying to say that we are puppets in the hands of some unknown providence, but we create our own pathway and we are responsible for our decisions and indecisions thereof.
Abir Chatterjee and Dhritiman Chatterjee in stills from The Puppet's Tale.
You adapt Putulnacher Itikatha (The Puppet’s Tale) from Manik Bandopadhyay’s 1936 novel and your fabulous debut Herbert (2005) was adapted from Nabarun Bhattacharya’s 1993 novella. Could you talk about the fixation of Bengali filmmakers on literary adaptations? Don’t we have original stories?
I have really pondered over this. I think it is a cultural routine. The kind of literature Bengal has produced for centuries, Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, all of them have adapted/worked with short stories. So, it is in our upbringing itself. Since childhood, we have nurtured that culture.
Indeed, but is it also a shadow we can’t walk out of?
No, I don’t think it’s a shadow. Whether or not audiences have read the novels from which said films are adapted, they are watching the film as a film.
Look at Satyajit Ray, in his phenomenal career, he’s written very few original films, a majority of his works have been literary adaptations. He first started writing his own stories with Kanchenjungha (1962). He has explored different writers, Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay, Sunil Gangopadhyay, Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyay, Sankar, etc., he has explored, but that doesn’t mean his cinematic content is any less. So, I think these are all typical and part of our cultural psyche, this isn’t found in many other cultures. I think even a film which is adapted from a novel is original in its content, because it’s a cinematical adaptation.
Look at The Godfather (1972), Mario Puzo’s novel which was adapted by Francis Ford Coppola. When you’re watching it, does it, at any point, feel like it is a novel? Whether it’s Satyajit Ray adapting Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay’s stories (Pather Panchali, Aparajito) or Mrinal Sen’s Bhuvan Shome (1969) from Banaphool’s story. These are cinematically independent. There’s a structure which is taken from the story, some elements but finally it is cinematic content which is what we are looking at. We have [the nobel laureate] Rabindranath Tagore, how many cultures can boast of that? Stories, novels are part of our cultural upbringing.
True. But the directors you mentioned were also adapting works of their contemporary writers. Do we, now, not have new/contemporary Bengali writers whose work can be adapted for screen?
Not really. It’s not that stories are not being written. Bengali stories and novels are being produced now too. But there is a disconnect between various art forms. Earlier they were not living on separate islands. There was a combined cultural practice. In theatre, cinema, literature, music — we have been kind of disassociated now and an insular exchange going on. Regional films will stand out when all art forms come together and have a dialogue, like it happened in the past for us, for instance, an amalgamation of literature, poetry, music. Satyajit Ray brought Pandit Ravi Shankar to compose for his films and got Kishore Kumar to sing, for instance. There was an exchange going on, which was reduced.
Commercial Bangla cinema has degenerated, and Bengali films have been near-absent from international festivals in a while, but this year three Bengali films are premiering at the top-tier festival. Would you call this the beginning of a resurgence for Bengali cinema?
Look, every year there has been some representation of Bengali cinema in the international circuit. Aditya Vikram Sengupta, after his film that went to Venice Film Festival (Once Upon A time in Calcutta/Mayanagar, 2021, releasing in theatres on February 7), is making a Hindi film next. Q’s film [Garbage, 2018] went to the Berlin International Film Festival, but it wasn’t in competition. But one thing is important, whether there will be any resurgence of Bengali cinema after this one festival is unlikely, what may happen is a return of an interest in Bengali cinema in the international festival circuit, which is very important. But I don’t know if it will have an impact on the Bengali film industry, it’s a difficult question to answer.
Last year, a small indie film, Manikbabur Megh, brought in some much-needed freshness, and ran for 100-plus days at Nandan. So, there are one-off small-time filmmakers trying to make good cinema in Bengal.
That is correct, definitely correct. There has been an attempt on and off, but unlike earlier, when there was a definite cultural interest, over the recent years, for various reasons, that interest and those films have dwindled. There is a very dedicated audience which regularly goes to these films. There are very many films that do well at the box office as well as are applauded by the critics. Manikbabur Megh and a few others were loved by the audiences.
Do you consider yourself as a fringe in the Bengali film industry or as an insider?
(Laughs.) Look, I think I am somewhere in the middle. I have made like 10 feature films. Never have my films been in circulation. I am an in-between.
For you, is a box office hit more important or going to festivals like these?
No, I think box office is very important. I want my people, my primary audience, for whom I make films…I have a Bengali audience for my theatre, recently I did a play to a packed auditorium at Lake Club, Kolkata. I want that energy also from my cinema. At festivals, of course, films make an international impact, but when I actually get love from my audience at the same time, I think all the filmmakers, even our cinema masters, from whom we’ve learnt filmmaking, even wanted to make films for the Bengali audiences.
Like Bollywood, the Bengali film industry is going through a crisis. But look at the southern film industries, where films get festival accolades as well as earn crores at the box office. Where can the Bengali film industry work differently?
I think that those who hold the cultural reins in Bengal, like big producers in the film arena, they mainly want to make money. As is the case in Bombay, let the big films get made, there is no issue with that. But continuously, OTTs are also only going for the big films. I was talking to Suman Ghosh, filmmakers like him are thinking of giving up making films. Small producers after their first films fail, they don’t invest in another. They need to continue supporting. Let there be big money-making films, but alongside let there also be the space for smaller films to exist and be seen. The attitude should change.
There aren’t any Bengalis among the big producers? How does one break into the SVF Films (Shree Venkatesh Films) monopoly?
Bengalis don’t have money. It’s difficult to find Bengali producers.
Of course, SVF Films have a monopoly. Monopoly is never good for any kind of thing but SVF has created a hoichoi OTT platform, which is very popular worldwide, so they can do a lot more. Give people content. But even after that they are not supporting other kinds of films, they are scared to do something like that, maybe they think it’s not viable, but they should think of that, too.
The producer of my film Putulnacher Itikatha (Samiran Das) produces one film in three years. Earlier satellites were very important, you could recover the money from satellites, but now it has become an uncertain terrain. You can’t to do business that way.
In comparison, there has been a resurgence in the south and Marathi films are getting good releases, too. They are doing good, this is what we need to bring back in Bengal.
How would you react when Anurag Kashyap calls current Bengali cinema ‘ghatiya’ (poor)?
Look, I don’t know what context he said that in. But anyway, without any context, what he said, as a Bengali, I would not like that. He is now himself saying that he wants to leave Mumbai. Then call Bollywood films as garbage, too. This is my city. This is my town. This is where I want to make my art.
Why do Bengalis get so defensive and offended easily?
Not offended. I won’t say what Anurag is saying, there isn’t any truth in that. I will never say that. But I don’t want somebody to be talking about Bengali cinema like that. The use of a word is very important. I, myself, have publicly said it so many times that Bengali cinema has become very insular. But you have to be regional to speak of stories of one’s soil, to a global audience. The festival director Vanja Kaludjercic said after watching my film, the world you have created through cinema, I hope it resonates with the audience. This attitude is important.
There was a cultural urge earlier to support this kind of cinema. That is what is lacking in Bengali society at present. Only we can recreate that. I think that Bengali cinema needs to think again. All the directors should think how to create. I know that there’s a big potential here, they know how to make films, but there is a section of filmmakers who are on the brink of giving up filmmaking, who say that they can’t survive if they don’t make three films a year.
But there are also camps within the industry that make it difficult for others to work.
Of course, there are camps within the industry. The Bengali film industry is quite small compared to Bollywood, which has many camps, here there are 1-2 camps, and there are political issues. But why just in Bengal, this is everywhere, across India, where various political camps are cropping up. The Bombay filmmakers have been able to avoid that because of a deep feeling of an industry among them; the Bangla industry is small (and, thus, the rivalries are more pronounced), even though I was a cynic at one point. But as a filmmaker you have to exist also. Today, that my film has been selected in competition at an international festival has boosted my confidence. This confidence is essential. People might want to work with me hereafter. I cannot sink into melancholic brooding and keep saying that something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
But unlike, say, in Malayalam or Tamil film industries, especially Malayalam which is also a small film industry, there’s a certain camaraderie and support for one another. That is missing in Bengal.
That’s what I was saying earlier. In Bengal, people are sitting in their own insular islands. In the Malayalam film industry, like you said, there’s a lot of help from different corners to keep their culture alive. We Bengalis have to keep ours alive, too. So, I think that we should study the other film industries’ models, like Malayalam and south Indian film industries and see what actually is happening. As you said, very rightly, that there is a combined effort to put together their cultural milieu, that is lacking here. We need to go beyond ego and petty jealousy and support and celebrate each other. We, the filmmakers, theatremakers, painters, writers, artists, musicians, have to concertedly think about how to better this situation. We have to be in dialogue with each other.
This is the 20th year of your debut film Herbert (2005), which was very different in form and content. Has that been your most political film till date?
No, I made Kangal Malsat (2013), too, which is highly political and anti-establishment. Of course, Herbert as my first film had a completely different energy. It was a fascinating experience. It took 45 days and I shot on 35 mm, with a new cast and new cameraman. Many film school students still study the film and/or remember it fondly. The other day, Sreemoyee Singh [whose documentary on Iran, And, Towards Happy Alleys, premiered at Berlinale 2023] told me that Herbert changed her perception of cinema.
So, after Herbert, in Kangal Malsat (2013) and also Mahanagar@Kolkata (2010), I attempted a different kind of filmmaking. I try to change my content again and again. There have been many films I couldn’t make because I didn’t get producers. I wanted to make Amitav Ghosh’s Hungry Tide, but I couldn’t raise the money for some films. A lot of scripts are just lying around. But I will definitely try to find political content again. But look around, everywhere there is difficulty in making a political film. If I were to make Herbert today, I would encounter a thousand obstacles. The experience I had with censorship on Kangal Malsat was terrible, they destroyed my film.
How many cuts did they ask for?
Like some 60-70 cuts and like 110 beeps. How can a film survive that way? When the film was released, Kangal Malsat was reduced to nothing, it was nothing of what I had originally made. That gave me such a bad experience. To get your film cleared by the Censor, you have to be now mindful of political correctness, you can’t say, do or comment on this or that…how can you actually make a film? And you are putting a producer in so much trouble. I don’t want to solely make films which I can only show at international festivals. It is getting more and more difficult to make politically critical films. You can’t seem to make a political film unless it is supporting/championing the authorities. I think that also is pushing the filmmakers back.
Is it true that a few within the Bengali film fraternity have been critical of Payal Kapadia’s Grand Prix-winning film All We Imagine as Light. What is your take on the film/filmmaker?
I’m completely supportive of Payal Kapadia’s film because I think this will bring some resurgence, of looking at Indian cinema in a different light. I do have some criticism regarding the film per se, one can question why everyone’s going gung-ho about it, but I see that this film has a very deep artistic content. And Payal, in her own way, has cinematically captured some great moments in her cinema, and that is taking the film to certain big areas where Indian film hasn’t been able to reach yet. It is a bit experimental film, with a different kind of pacing, it is a lot like [Chaitanya Tamhane’s] Court (2014), which is one of the best films made in the last 20-25 years in India. Or Aditya Vikram Sengupta’s films. When such films get a breakthrough at a big global festival, we feel proud that a different kind of Indian film, or a different pacing and style, is getting that place. It is very important to get that place. This will have a good repercussion here back home. People might criticise and say that she had French producers, but so what? I think that I will celebrate Payal and what she is doing.
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