Meetup madness
As I arrived at Jana’s movie and began checking my texts, a fellow cinemaphile restrained me immediately. ‘I’ve been here since the beginning, I don’t want to be distracted,’ he complained. Tagore has a fan among the African-American community of New York City.
Chirosakha Hé is a traditional, arty Bengali movie about Rabindranath Tagore’s muse and sister-in-law Kadambari Devi. The film fest audience was small but quality, I’d like to think, and mostly non-desi. Thank you, everyone who came out yesterday despite the heavy rain.
Tagore is a Bengali icon, but I don’t see that anything would trigger a ban in India. The movie makes the relationship out to be mostly a case of artistic muse on one side and pining on the other, with little more than a suggest touch of the hand.
The actor who played Rabi’s brother was soldier-handsome: thin with a proud black moustache, sharp-jawed in stubble green. I later found out he’s as bald as Jean-Luc Picard in real life. Jana was as I’ve never seen her in real life — mopey, theatrically mishti-voiced and suicidal — but then I’ve never been around on deadline night. I’m still having a hard time reconciling arthouse-Jana with wisecracking-sheesha-smoking Jana, it was freaky.
A couple of us went out to Haveli afterwards where Nina Paley showed off her agni pariksha clip and a music video from Loins of Punjab Presents. The movie closes with a half-parody, half-serious bhangra track that rocks, voiced by Ajay Naidu and produced by Samrat Chakrabarti. It both name-checks and deflates second-gen icons.
Nina’s vid is animated with parts done JibJab-style. One scene with a rotoscoped dancer was startlingly easy to recognize. It was Aishwarya in ‘Nimbooda (Lemon)‘ (Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam / I’ve Given Away My Heart, Darling), the part where she chews her lip and swivels her badonkadonk in a semicircle.
Nina thought recognizing this was a bizarre talent 
A couple of other moves also came to mind: Malaika’s hip punch atop a train from ‘Chaiyya Chaiyya (Jingle Jingle)‘ (Dil Se / From the Heart), and Madhuri’s ground-humping in ‘Maar Dala (You Killed Me)‘ from Devdas. The choreographers came up with the moves, but the actresses own them — they’ve become cinematic signatures.
on Tuesday, July 24th, 2007, 8:29 am in Blog, Film, Music › 
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Caught the movie, sorry I couldn’t stay, had engagement all the way north in Harlem.
Was disappointed, I must admit, with the screenplay and the acting. Rabindranath didn’t look like Jesus in hs youth– he wore his hair chin length and was close shaven until late middle age — my mom has a signed photo. The post-Blighty hat was right, though. Also I thought they should have taken note of Sharmila Tagore’s looks when casting, as the entire family looks like that. Nice that it was shot in one of the Tagore houses, but the movie budget should have included painting the lower parts of the columns. And why was Rabi sitting at a dressing table? Men had those tall things to dress at. Also, back in the day, they had men sweeping and rinsing floors, not women. The blouses were correct in cut but way off in color, and someone told a servant to wash a silk sari. Th epoison subplot was silly, and the subtitles weren’t great either. Lotsa small stuff that was worrying, and really, what was the story? Why the love ‘n’ longing Hindi songs about the Jamuna river? They should have used Rabindra Sangeet in Bangla to make their point. Jana was very pretty but why did they have to comb her hair down across the top of her forehead like that? I predict there will be a lavish remake one day.
hey amrita, thanks for going and for feedback.
tagore, in my humble opinion, looked a bit like an elephant for most of the film but that’s a separate speculation altogether. =D i don’t think the likeness between sayan and tagore was way off, though.
as for the walls, forget movie budget, you’re not allowed to touch anything in jorasanko since only the rabindra bharati university is allowed to do anything to the building. painting anything was not an option.
if you read through writings about tagore’s childhood, there are references to him having spent an inordinate amount of time in notun bouthan’s room, which one can assume would have had a dressing room. he was also reasonably obsessed with his looks. aside from everything else, no one who wasn’t would have indulged in ringlets like he had otherwise! hence boy tagore at dressing table.
beg to differ about the colours. the colours were taken from poem and song references. (the point about the sari, by the way, was meant to be to take it off tagore’s hands. it wouldn’t look particularly proper to have brother in-law clutching sister in-law’s sari and looking mopey in public. though on a separate note, given she’s frothed all over it, some cleansing may not be out of order. i understand your point about “washing” a silk sari but as far as i remember, the dialogue was to put the sari in for a wash. faulty subtitling perhaps…)
the songs are by vidyapati (aside from the one song from bhanusinghar padabali which tagore wrote mimicking the same dialect) which was what tagore and his sister in-law were very much in love with at the time. at that age, he hadn’t written any rabindra sangeet which is why the only rabindra sangeet we could use was right at the end.
the hair, i’m sorry to report, is a direct replica of madam’s original hairstyle.
meanwhile, we lie in wait for that LOINS video to hit cyberspace. can’t wait!
vadhaiyan jee vadhaiyan. Ven ijh the big day? :-)
funnest comment
p.s. great review. Love the barbs and the detail.
Not that kind of engagement, trollerboi– I went to a Harlem for Obama meeting
Hi Jana, Great to hear from you! What a hard part to play– the being poisoned and sick part, I mean. Sayan was cute, and his eyes were a good match, as his manner seemed to be, but man, he was hairy. Here’s a middle-aged photo I found
– not so hairy. The youth photo I know is short haired too, and very minimally moustached. Here’s another Yong Rabi, this time with long hair– all curly whirly, but thoroughly tamed locks . They are not such a hairy family.
I thought I heard Boro Bouthan say, “Eta dhuye dey, tho!” when she passed the sari to the ayah or jhee . Now, tell me, if it had sick all over it, would Rabi still be fondling it? If so, that’s more than puppy love! But I reckon even if he spent years in her room, from when he was a tiny fellow through adolescence and onward, he wouldn’t be preening at her dressing table if he was crushing on her– think of it. He would probably be vain in his own room and any other rooms with mirrors, like my Ex. The great man came to my grandfather just before World War II for professional advice about his complexion and the rashes he got from shaving, so yeah, he was interested in his own looks.
The Vidyapati songs went straight over my head and through me– what’s wrong with after-the-fact songwriting as a soundtrack? It would have been familiar too.
“the hair, i’m sorry to report, is a direct replica of madam’s original hairstyle.” LOL!!! The blouse colors were harsh with modern dyes, I thought — you can’t guess exact colors from words, that’s the first thing you learn in Color Theory classes. Here’s Suniti Devi– Keshab Chandra Sen’s daughter Clothes not so bright.
Pity that Jorasanko is not better looked after by Rabindra Bharati University — were the other Tagore city houses, including the so-called Tagore Castle, which is still in family hands, afaik, and in great shape, not available?
hey amrita,
the second photo you found is close to the age at which tagore was supposed to be in the movie. and yes, sayan is hairy. and that’s him with a ton of “products” in his hair. i’m happy to let his adoring fans know he’s cut his hair since. on a mildly tangential point, imagine this - i have had to lower eyes, with shy coquettry, only to get an eyeful of his…erm, manly chest. =D follicular concerns aside, i don’t think there are too many men like tagore flitting around so hooray for him.
the dialogue for the sari is “eta dhuTey dey.” that i know for certain.
have you read kripalani’s biography of tagore? or “chhelebela”? there are references to him hanging around while she did, as the french said, her toilette. also, as a boy, tagore hung entirely with the chiquitas of the household to the extent that his brothers got a little worried about him hence him being yanked to bombay before going abroad for the first time.
as for the blouse colours, forget words you can’t trust what you see either. since i haven’t seen the film in its final avatar, i don’t know what the colours look like after the print was digitised. however this much i can say, i’ve seen a lot of the tagore ladies and none of them ever wore that much jewellery. =D which isn’t surprising since devendranath tagore had very strong ideas about the aesthetic his family would promote.
the point about using jorasanko and vidyapati is only authenticity. we just wanted to recreate that time as best as we could while making a film with absolutely no money. =D it would also not make any sense for tagore to be singing songs he would write about twenty years later. personally, i’m glad the vidyapati doesn’t sound familiar. the movie in its entirety is about an aspect of this much-publicised man’s life which is not familiar, which remains reasonably shrouded even today. so why go towards factual inaccuracy to give a false sense of familiarity?
I’m enjoying the Rabindracombat, but as I’m clearly deeply unqualified I’ll just say that yes, in the phillum he was looking like Brown Jesus. I don’t know if he was supposed to be ringleted or what. Thought the grooming habits of a national icon were the unique territory of Mohandas and Morarji.
Hi folks,
I’ve been reading about the film and waiting to hear about the first reviews ever since then. And do you know how many reviews have appeared after the NY premiere? Zilch, Nada. So thanks for providing some insight, and it’s simply unbelievable to have Jana herself answering questions here, but I would’ve liked at least a longer review - one with some positive points about the film? :-D
I’m praying that there are no problems releasing the film in India. Any ‘inside’ news on that front would be appreciated. Let’s hope for the best!