Cityscape

The film’s title Mahanagar@Kolkata,probably tries to capture the struggle of the old world with the demands of change as shown in Mukhopadhyay’s film. “The cultural baggage we carry is not typical to people from the other metros. Change doesn’t go without resistance here. Industrialisation has not caught up with Kolkata like it has with the other bigger metros. And one party has been in power in the state for over three decades – what else is proof of the idiosyncrasies of the city?” asks Mukhopadhyay. A contradiction that he hopes to delve into through the three stories that cuts across classes. Circumstances throw Manmatha,an upper class Bengali into a car with Jagdish,a lower middle class grocer. Biren,an aging unemployed man from the fringes of the city,lives in constant fear of something fatal. Rohit and Rongili belong to the clan of moneyed young couples spawned by the MNC boom in the country – the sheen of wealth standing before a hollow existence. “Something strange happens to Rohit on the day of the lunar eclipse. He starts hallucinating while drinking alone in his swanky apartment. He sees a pyre lit in the heart of the city for a pagan ritual of burning widows. Sometime later he is found lying unconscious in a hospital,” says the director. While the surrealistic vein in the last story seems to be clashing with the immediacy of reality in the others,Mukhopadhyay explains that all the stories in some way,act as interfaces between two realities. “Bhattacharya’s works keep jumping in and out of the two antithetical realms. My film too continuously negotiates between them,” says Mukhopadhyay.

While Kolkata,in Mukhopadhyay’s film seems to have a dark,ominous feel about it unlike popular representation,the director says it was not a conscious ploy to skirt cliches. “I believe in surrendering to spontaneous response. Kolkata to me is populated with shadows and truths,victories and failures in equal measure. I have spoke my heart in the film,” he says.

However,he dismisses the hoopla round Chandan Roy Sanyal’s ‘nude’ scene in the film. “I didn’t create the hype around it. The scene reflects an individual’s state of mind,when he is trying to break free. It was shot effortlessly. It’s just that our country is yet to acknowledge the contemporary langauge of cinema. The censor board has to keep various sentiments in mind,but cinema is suffering in the process,” he adds.