Storm Advisory: Cyclone of a Life on
the Horizon
By Nathan Lee
"And now for something completely
different. “Herbert,” a mad, messy and frequently amazing
epic from India, features many of the qualities you expect
from Bollywood: garish verve, dizzy excess, punishing
duration, wild leaps in narrative tone and structure. But
that’s the simple part.."
Herbert. 2006. India. Directed
by Suman Mukhopadhyay. Screenplay by Mukhopadhyay, based
on the novel by Nabarun Bhattacharya. With Subhashish
Mukherjee, Bratya Basu, Sabyasachi Chakravarthy, Lily
Chakravarty. Herbert tells the kaleidoscopic saga of
Herbert Sarkar, an idiot savant in Calcutta who incites
the wrath of the International Rationalist Society with
his successful business enterprise, "Dialogues with
the Dead." Rife with allusions to classic Hollywood
and to directors from Satyajit Ray to Jean-Luc Godard,
Mukhopadhyay's debut feature is an astounding,
encyclopedic parable: part magical-realist fable, part
allegory of cultural imperialism. Shot in flashy reds and
twilight blues that recall the Technicolor of MGM
musicals, this wittily self-reflexive film features a
remarkable lead performance by Mukherjee as the film's
visionary madman. 142 min.
Thursday, December 11, 2008, 8:00
p.m. (Introduced by Mukhopadhyay)
Friday, December 12, 2008, 6:30 p.m. (Introduced by
Mukhopadhyay)
Saturday, December 13, 2008, 2:00 p.m.
Sunday, December 14, 2008, 5:00 p.m.
Monday, December 15, 2008, 4:30 p.m.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008, 8:45 p.m.
"Suman Mukhopadhyay, in his
complex narrative style, uses Herbert brilliantly as the
pendulum, which moves back and forth in time, capturing a
period and juxtaposing it with its ideology and social
ethos. Thus, the film not just covers the life of the
protagonist, but also the city which has travelled through
the times, governed by different ideologies. In this
highly stylistic film, Suman Mukhopadhyay uses some
brilliant techniques which gel amazingly well with the
narrative".
Deepa Ganesh
The Telegraph
"Mukherjee employs a range of
cinematic, dramatic devices in the film. Flashforward-flashbacks
(parents, childhood) to Brechtian alienation (father
behind movie camera). And strong influences of several
European masters, especially Fellini is clearly evident.
But despite such 'educated' references, somehow he never
lets his ideas or storytelling become 'alien' or elitist.
Maybe because he manages to keep his film grounded, rooted
to our own culture-specific milieu, utilising all its
banal characteristics, colloquialism and linguistic slang
(profanities bit too excessive though) with passion and
flamboyance".
Mandira Mitra
The Statesman
"In Herbert, the film, literature meets theatre meets
cinema to lead to a form that's a delicious carnival - a
never-ending series of snapshots that continually push and
threaten to rummage the fragile membrane that separates
the world we know from what remains unknowable".
Chitralekha Basu
Sangbad Pratidin
"Ritwik would have embraced Suman
after watching Herbert".
Subodh Sarkar
Herbert will have 10 screenings in Museum of Modern
Art (MoMA), New York as the part of the program
Contemporasian during December 11-17, 2008.
Herbert 2006. Directed by
Suman Mukhopadhyay. Screenplay by Mukhopadhyay, based on
the novel by Nabarun Bhattacharya. With Subhashish
Mukherjee, Bratya Basu, Sabyasachi Chakravarthy, Lily
Chakravarty. Herbert tells the kaleidoscopic saga of
Herbert Sarkar, an idiot savant in Calcutta who incites
the wrath of the International Rationalist Society with
his successful business enterprise, "Dialogues with the
Dead."
Details...
"A saga of the Teesta talks of a
system that enslaves people and is one of the most
remarkable plays produced in a long time".
Statesman
"Teesta Paarer Brittanta is a
must-see. Even with a 30-member cast, everyone performs
well, exuding a rare sense of team-work."
The Telegraph
"Titas Ekti Nadir Naam -Adaita
Mallabarman's novel to Utpal Dutt's theatre , Ritwik
Ghatak's film - three autonomous, extraordinary creations.
Suman's Teesta Paarer Brittanto will remain as an instance
like that". (Translated from original Bengali)
Ananda Bazar Patrika
"Just think, isn't the intellectuals
of modern India is not asking the same question (which the
play examines)? Isn't Medha Patekar is speaking alike? …watching
Suman's play naturally gives remembrance of Ratan Thiyam's
colour scheming". (Translated from original Bengali)
Sananda
"Watching the play, I realized that
this is not just seeing visuals or hearing sounds, but
immersing oneself in a relentless flow of life".
(Translated from original Bengali)
Rituparno Ghosh in Editorial
Anandalok
"The cream of Kolkata's young
theatre persons came together to produce a masterpiece where
ideology and aesthetics, agitprop and art were inextricably
fused."
Subhoranjan Dasgupta
Frontier
"Suman Mukhopadhyay's technique is
to hurl lots of scenes at the viewer, gradually allowing an
epic, ensemble pattern to emerge."
Abhijit Ghosh Dastidar
The Times of India
"Best of Bangla stage after 22
years."
Sudip Ghosh
Kolkata This Week, Amantron.com
"… watching Mephisto is an
experience …. Umpteen journeys and continious dialogues
between the Third Reich and our own present skilfully and
almost unobstrusively laid bare before the audience."
Mrinal Sen
Pioneer, New Delhi
Presented by Kolkata's new experimental
group Tritiyo Tirtha (literally, 'the third connection')
under the baton of the young thespian Suman Mukhopadhyay, it
produced a brilliant blend of highly imaginative fantasy
elements, followed by a pure comedy that excelled by
visualising Kafkaesque imageries.
Kalantak Lalphita operates at the level
of a beautifully evolved visual burlesque. The story depicts
the imaginary turmoil of the eighth-generation descendant of
a businessman who had supplied thousand sheep to the British
troops for fighting against Tipu Sultan. But his dues have
remained unpaid till date owing to the labyrinthine red
tapes.
UK Banerjee
Presented by Kolkata's new experimental
group Tritiyo Tirtha (literally, 'the third connection')
under the baton of the young thespian Suman Mukhopadhyay, it
produced a brilliant blend of highly imaginative fantasy
elements, followed by a pure comedy that excelled by
visualising Kafkaesque imageries.
Kalantak Lalphita operates at the level
of a beautifully evolved visual burlesque. The story depicts
the imaginary turmoil of the eighth-generation descendant of
a businessman who had supplied thousand sheep to the British
troops for fighting against Tipu Sultan. But his dues have
remained unpaid till date owing to the labyrinthine red
tapes.
UK Banerjee
"Suman Mukhopadhyay's vision of
Raktakarabi came closest to matching Tagore's revolutionary
stagecraft. …it could become for this generation what
Sombhu Mitra did for his a half-century ago."
Berkeley Playwright Channels Bengali
Bard in New Production
By Marcus Wohlsen
The stage is empty, except for a wooden
doorway, a strip of linen, and a rough piece of fabric
hanging from the rafters. The lights go up, and the set's
cold sparseness gives way to the warmth of a lone voice,
singing.
Sudipto Chatterjee appears in the doorway
dressed in simple white pants and smock. His feet are bare.
Two musicians, one playing a hand drum and the other a
traditional two-stringed instrument called the do-tara,
accompany Chatterjee's rich baritone. He sings a song
composed by Lalon Phokir, an itinerant musical mystic who
roamed the countryside of colonial Bengal throughout the
19th century. The Bengali lyrics are projected in their
English translation on the fabric screen overhead.
"There's a Man in the Heart, atop a throne of
light," he sings. "Tell us, O Teacher, of what he
looks like."
Lalon spent most of his 116 years seeking
this man of the heart, the spirit of the divine that, in his
songs, suffuses every human body. Chatterjee, an assistant
professor in the Department of Theater, Dance, and
Performance Studies at UC Berkeley and a 2004-2005 Townsend
Fellow, has himself focused much of his career on seeking
Lalon. Chatterjee's self-penned one-man production,
"The Man of the Heart" premiered to packed houses
during its two-night run in September, marking a culmination
of that search.
What Chatterjee found is that the truth
about Lalon is slippery. His biography is elusive, his
beliefs fluid. Yet within that very ambiguity, Chatterjee
believes, lies Lalon's bracing relevance to a world torn by
religious strife.
Chatterjee's fascination with Lalon began
during his childhood growing up in Kolkata (Calcutta). A
singer from the countryside passed by the Chatterjee home
every day singing the songs of Lalon. Chatterjee taught
himself these songs with the help of his father's record
collection.
In his early 20s, Chatterjee met a fellow Lalon aficionado
and soon-to-be fast friend, Suman Mukherjee, today one of
India's most influential young directors. Mukherjee, a
Townsend Center artist-in-residence in September 2005,
directed Chatterjee in "The Man of the Heart,"
deploying the same mix of minimalist set design, music, and
multimedia that have characterized his larger productions in
India.
Over tea the day after the second show,
both men said their desire to create a performance about
Lalon came from a need to rescue him from a mindset they
believe has transformed their hero into a "feel-good
icon."
In Kolkata "Lalon is celebrated, but
for all the wrong reasons," Chatterjee said. The urban
intelligentsia of India, he says, have claimed Lalon as a
folk-hero progenitor of Indian secular democracy. That
reading, he said, strips Lalon of his complexity and
authentically Indian spirituality. "Seldom there is an
honest attempt to recognize why he is so good," he
said.
In "The Man of the Heart," Chatterjee moves back
and forth between the voice of Lalon and the Lalon scholar.
In the guise of the latter character, he observes that Lalon
could have been no democrat, since he did not know what
democracy was. Democracy was an imported concept, the
colonizer's ideology later appropriated by the colonized to
achieve their own Western-style notion of freedom. Lalon,
Chatterjee said, was the "last prophet" of a
different kind of liberation, one based in authentically
Indian spiritual ideals.
In Lalon's lifetime, Hindu and Muslim
fundamentalists chastised Lalon for gleefully synthesizing
both religions to form his own body-centered theology. Today
Hindus and Muslims both claim Lalon as their own.
"The Man of the Heart" suggests
that not only is the historical record vague on what
religion Lalon officially professed, but that he played the
trickster to ensure history could never pin him down.
"The Man of the Heart" interweaves contradictory
accounts of Lalon's biography, his family, and his religious
affiliations through a dizzy mix of narration, archival
documents, and video footage from contemporary Bengal to
illustrate the fundamental ambiguity of Lalon's identity.
In the context of India's ongoing and often violent
conflicts between Hindus and Muslims, Chatterjee believes
Lalon's syncretism holds an urgent message for today's
audiences. "Lalon is talking about the reconciling of
so-called Tantric Hindu belief systems with Islam, which are
so irreconcilable from outside," Chatterjee said. By
locating spirituality within the physical body, he says,
Lalon creates the possibility of a universal identity that
undermines the religious divisions fueling violence around
the world today.
"The kind of divinity Lalon is
talking about that resides within this mortal frame is
something that we all need to hear and learn from," he
said Chatterjee and Mukherjee have not decided whether to
assemble a Bengali version of "The Man of the
Heart" to perform in India. They say the script would
need to undergo significant revisions for a Bengali
audience, which unlike an American audience would come to
the popular figure of Lalon with several preconceptions.
Mukherjee especially is no stranger to
controversy in Bengal. His politically charged "Tales
of the River Teesta," based on the novel by Debesh Roy,
tells the story of poor rural Bengalis displaced by a
government land-reform program. The play directly criticizes
Bengal's long-entrenched left-wing government, which led to
cancellations of scheduled performances across the Bengali
countryside. A caravan taking the play to Bangladesh
encountered police roadblocks.
While they mull the possibilities,
Chatterjee and Mukherjee have several projects keeping them
busy. Mukherjee has left Berkeley for Kalamazoo College in
Michigan to direct "Nagala-Mandala" (Play with a
Cobra) by Girish Karnad. Chatterjee is at work on an essay
about the last Indian play produced by UC Berkeley, an
elaborate Sanskrit production staged in 1914. He will also
direct the West Coast premiere of "Harvest," set
to debut on campus in November 2005. The play, by Indian
dramatist Manjula Padmanabhan, tells the story of a dark
future when multinational companies harvest the organs of
poor Indians for rich American customers.
Like "The Man of the Heart,"
Chatterjee and Mukherjee's other plays take up one of their
favorite themes: the hidden power of those whose voices
aren't heard, or, as they like to say, "the moss under
the stones of history." Much of the power of the
unheard in India lies in their embrace of a spirituality
that defies the strictures of established religious
orthodoxies. That is the power of Lalon, and, they believe,
the power of theater that upholds a similar impulse to defy
any form of ideology.
"Let's read the myriadness of Lalon
in its myriadness," Chatterjee told an audience during
a post-show discussion of Man of the Heart. "Let the
rainbow be a rainbow. Otherwise it becomes white
light."
"Captivating 'Naga-Mandala' is feast
for eyes, ears...theatergoers in the Nelda K. Belch
Playhouse listened intently and seemed enthralled as the
story quietly unfolded before them."
