A LETTERED SOUL, BOOK 2- MUSINGS ON ART AND CULTURE

STORYTELLING THAT GOES TO THE DEPTHS OF HUMANITY

ANTAREEN(1993)

ANTAREEN or CONFINES is an absolutely riveting watch, true to Mrinal Sen's realistic and socially conscious oeuvre. The mis-en-scene is, however, simple and within that linear style of presentation and a cast of two principal protagonists, he gives heft to Saadat Hasan Manto's original source material as also to the haunting quality of Rabindranath Tagore's The Hungry Stones. Nothing is explicitly spelled out and yet the two literary texts are incorporated to reveal depths of humanity defined by a profound sense of loneliness.

To the viewer, it is like a play. A study of dispersed claustrophobia where the woman cannot escape her surroundings so easily even though it is earmarked and demarcated by a supposed marital bond. She is alone in her spacious flat overlooking the best parts of modern Calcutta. It is, in fact, more of a self-motivated prison than a birdhouse. On the other hand is the man who is housed within the overwhelmingly mysterious confines of a dilapidated mansion. He has retreated here to seek solitude and work on his writings. Till a phone call rings and the lady on the other side strikes up a conversation that is unique to two strangers who have no prior connections to each other whatsoever.

She is framed within her balcony where the open space, the wind and the rain are incidental realities. He is inside the once prosperous and expansive palace of sorts where very few remnants of a glorious past remain. But he is at peace, making his own tea and consuming it while journaling his thoughts regarding the place and then the quandaries of life, compounded by his regular correspondence with the lady. Both occupy a centre in their rooms, one in the urban apartment and the other under a dark ceiling.

They don't ask each other names or meet. This is an unique delineation of an undefined relationship or maybe a friendship. Given the nature of their often earnest conversations, it is divested of any sexism, amorous connotations or the conventional voyeurism of such a dynamic. Yes, they are strangers. They don't have a personal stake in each other's lives. Still, their words are all that sustain them. The hesitant beginnings and the eventual opening up of the lady regarding her painful history are intertwined with how truth is stranger than fiction. ANTAREEN is such a story. It makes an impact with its silent roil precisely because of its treatment and the dignity with which the man-woman bond is given attention.

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To me, some scenes stand out. Like when the lift operated by the lady's live-in housekeeper is framed as it moves up till her floor, the haunting quality and distance regarding her present in that movement, seen within these claustrophobically animated confines. Or when a car speeds through the deserted street in the night and a woman's shriek resounds in the lady's nightmare. Even when an ambulance's siren rings out. The way minimal time devoted to these shots integrate with the lady recounting her own sorry state or the circumstances of her marriage to an absentee better half who basically funds her financially strapped family is striking. Both the shriek and the ambulance siren maybe relate to her emotional breakdown, symbols of her experiences as a woman negotiating her way in this cruel world. Mr. Sen accords her melancholy but never a lack of agency. So when she ventures out to meet her family in a rare instance, the awkwardness, her mother's guilt and her encouraging words of financial independence to her sister fit in with her trajectory of stops and starts. As also that final shot at the station where she takes her journey to an unresolved destination and is united unexpectedly with the man whom she has opened herself to. It's a subtle moment of recognition on her part which saves it from a point of cliche.