Producer : Dreamz Movies and Entertainment Pvt. Ltd.
Director : Bappaditya Bandopadhyay
Writer : Rabindranath Tagore
Director Goutam Ghose - on why he liked Elar char adhyay despite its drawbacks :
Tagore’s Char Adhyay is a very complex novel and the dialogues sometimes get slightly discursive, so it’s not so easy to interpret in cinema. But he (Bappaditya Bandopadhyay) did it very intelligently. He didn’t want to tell a complex story in a linear form, rather he has put Ela (Paoli Dam) in different situations so that’s why, though the film begins from the end (in the text), you don’t feel uncomfortable. It is not pronounced, it’s quite cinematic. It’s like a rondo in a music piece where you come back to the tonic.
I don’t know if people would be able to understand the dialogues now. Bengali language-er charcha toh komey gachhey. But I am sure there is an audience. When I made Moner Manush, a lot of people had told me that the audience wouldn’t understand the philosophical dialogues, but that didn’t happen. People understood and they connect if they want to.
There’s riddle, irony and metaphor in Tagore’s dialogues that are sometimes difficult to transcreate in spoken words but Bappaditya has tried to keep the original dialogues, the original lines from the text. That’s why I liked it.
A lot of people may question what had happened to Ela’s parents (played by Dipankar De and Srilekha Mukherjee) suddenly because after a point they are not there in the film. I don’t think a director should always follow the typical style of storytelling where you have to show everything. That’s why I thought that the film is like a musical movement.
Another thing which I really liked is that the film had a very limited budget but within that, art director Goutam Basu has done a very, very good job. It’s minimalist. They selected a few spots, like the bank of the Ganges and only one or two other spots that have been recreated. I liked that minimalism. There’s a small party sequence — now party sequences are never very good in Bengali films, I am sorry to say this — that is very well done.
I also liked the scenes where Ela is drenched in the rain. It’s like a leitmotif; it appears many times in the film. What I am trying to say is that the film has a style.
Paoli as Ela is quite convincing, but I’ve told her that her make-up is a little inconsistent. Her skin tone changes in a couple of scenes. Otherwise her Ela is very good, and so are the other actors. The young guy who plays Atin (Vikram) is good. He has suited the role very well. Indraneil’s is a very complex character (Indranath) and he is good in it. Actually, through this character, Tagore wanted to say rebel-der moddhey real thirst-ta kotota chhilo and romanticism kotota chhilo, so that aspect has come out in Indraneil’s character.
The background score (by Gaurab Chatterjee) is also quite good. But I told the director (Bappaditya) that there are too many songs in the film. He could have given just the mukhra, the antara wasn’t required. Because of the songs, the film drags a bit. Today people prefer fast-paced films, a few scenes are a bit repetitive. See, the concept of slow and fast in cinema is very relative. The whole mindset of the audience has changed because of television and the MTV culture, so people want something to happen all the time. So people may find the film slow. But the Tagorean world didn’t have a pace like ours, so how could he make it fast? I didn’t find it slow, frankly speaking.
It’s a good effort, a good attempt. Visually, Elar Char Adhyay is good.
Film Critic Shoma.A.Chatterjee -
Elar Char Adhyay,based on a Tagore novel, captures the ideals of the Bengal Renaissance of the 1930s and ’40s. A group of young revolutionaries, led by Indranath (Indraneel Sengupta) is fighting for Independence. Ela (Paoli Dam), the group’s emancipated muse feels disturbed by her love for Atin (Vikram Chatterjee), who is drawn into the movement because he loves her deeply. His involvement slowly gets critical as he begins to questions Indranath’s methodology that rules out love for a woman colleague. Indranath’s ‘punishments’ differ from person to person. Indranath does not mind Ela loving Atin but commands another young girl to get married while sending off her lover to a distant camp. Ela discovers that Atin’s commitment to the movement has overshadowed his love for her. For Atin, there is no turning point.
Bappaditya Bandopadhyay has adhered strictly to Tagore’s story and lived up to the challenge of bringing across a poetic, lyrical and romantic interpretation of a political novel. He includes Tagore’s multi-layered satire through the British-attired Indranath who rides expensive cars and smokes foreign cigars. Atin tells Ela about how the group killed an old village woman exploiting the trust of a colleague who belonged to the same village, counted the loot while the woman lay dead and enjoyed a lavish feast with the proceeds, all in the name of ‘revolution.’ The film ends with Ela lying dead amidst the flames.
Bappaditya uses the flashback to open with Ela’s death and Indranath’s voice-over and ends with the same scene. Gautam Basu’s art direction with the ‘weathering’ of the mansion, Ela’s parents’ period home, her uncle’s British-influenced quarters, the party scene orchestrated just-so, the straw structure of the Durga idol carrying the resonance of past grandeur, the camera zeroing on it again and again, to the washermen’s colony that becomes Atin’s hideout with the dirty bed and the mosquito net askew are excellent.
Rana Dasgupta’s cinematography captures the rainwashed river ghats where Ela waits for Atin, the figure of Ela against the backdrop of an open window frame and Botu (Rudraneel Ghosh) caught in a top angle shot leading the police to Atin’s hideout. The tea-shop in one corner stacked with packing boxes infuse a lyrical quality to the film. Gaurav Chatterjee’s music reflects Tagore’s secular philosophy with three songs placed in keeping with the mood of a given sequence. There is an English song in the party scene while the fakir number suggests Ela’s mother’s fundamentalist attitude in contrast to Ela’s progressive ideology. Indraneel appears stiff as Indranath. Rudraneel as Botu and Paoli as Ela are wonderful while Bikram as Atin is refreshing.
Elar ... is a beautiful film. But till the interval, the dialogues are too complex and philosophical for a film where the visuals speed ahead before the dialogues can register. The scenes between Ela and Atin lack the sizzling erotic chemistry that is there in the original. The dance number of the school girls is redundant. Elar ...is a low-key, lyrical slow-paced romance that captures the period and the nature both as props for the characters and the incidents and as nature fluidly.
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