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Journalism of Courage
When Sharmila Tagore became a bona fide star, she had journeyed from Satyajit Ray’s masterpieces to Bengali and Hindi films, balancing arthouse and commercial cinema. But she would return to her Bengali roots whenever she could, her last being 14 years ago. As she approached her 80th birthday, she decided to end her self-imposed exile and expressed a desire to work in Bengali cinema again to actor-producer Rituparna Sengupta. “Why don’t you find a good script? We can do it together,” she suggested.
Sengupta, a Bengali superstar for over two decades, took this as a cue to find a fitting story. “I wanted to re-establish her connect with the Bengali audience who admire her Ray films,” she says. Coincidentally, her friend and director Suman Ghosh had engaged Tagore in a discussion about Ray’s films in the US. “This led us to explore an untapped mother-daughter dynamic rooted in differing perceptions of time and space,” says Sengupta, who, unlike Tagore, did not have a Ray-backed debut and built her career through mainstream films with a brief Bollywood stint. However, she embraced offbeat roles in films by Aparna Sen and Rituparno Ghosh. Winning the National Award for Ghosh’s Dahan (1998) motivated her to produce woman-centric films like Alo, Potadar Kirtee (2016), a gangster-superstar romance, Ahaa Re (2019), a cross-border love story, and now Puratawn. The long pauses are because Sengupta is selective. “I am not a big producer but a passionate one. I love stories which inspire me or an issue which triggers me. I am not in the rat race of making money though it is important for survival. But I have seen that passion-driven scripts work. That’s why I am producing short films too,” she says.
But she is a realist enough to stay away from direction. “That requires a different eye. I look at a script from an actor’s lens and need a director to interpret and execute that vision,” she says.
Puratwan has already been feted in the film festival circuit. Though Tagore dominates the screen, Sengupta insists the film shouldn’t be seen from a woman’s lens. “I am not an ultra-feminist. But I do believe in the power of the woman to make a difference in the script where other characters have equity too. I am not looking at messaging. I want the viewer to take back an emotion that can help them fill up spaces in human relationships,” she says.
In the film, Sengupta plays a corporate professional struggling to balance work and relationships, while Tagore portrays her dementia-afflicted mother clinging to her past in her crumbling ancestral home. Despite her condition, she remains as concerned for her daughter as she was when packing her school tiffin. The daughter, seeking her mother’s grounding presence, fails to realize that her mother tries to maintain relevance by repeating old rituals. She is also unaware of a long-held family secret that reveals the extent of a mother’s protectiveness.
“The daughter craves for her mother’s reassurance although she too had not bothered to understand why her mother had clung to a lost world. We tend to invisibilise the elderly, expecting them to see the world through our prism, and take them for granted,” says Sengupta. The film draws on reminiscence therapy, where dementia patients recall episodic memories from their past to maintain their sense of continuity and feel happy. “So, the mother is happy with her daughter, even though she sees her as a little child. Rather than alienating her, why not embrace her world,” asks Sengupta.
The film’s layering required constant collaboration between Tagore and Sengupta. “Shooting on location wasn’t easy but she cooperated. When we had trouble securing a mansion permit, she asked if we could switch locations. I insisted we couldn’t, and she agreed to wait it out. Despite being an icon, Sharmiladi remained open to feedback, ensuring her performance was nuanced and authentic. She was emotionally invested,” says Sengupta. “She reads a lot and is updated about the world around her but has old world grace. After every shot, she would take everybody’s feedback. She was mentally agile but still had an actor’s vulnerability. Without it, no performance can look real,” adds Sengupta.
The two women bonded on the sets. “She helped me understand the mother-daughter dynamic better. I lost my mother to kidney disease just after the film was screened at the MAMI fest in Mumbai. Sharmiladi comforted me when it mattered,” says Sengupta. “She also shared behind-the-scenes moments of her films and that was a learning experience too,” she adds.
With two superstars from different eras sharing the screen space, did Sengupta ever feel intimidated? “No way. I am not an insecure actor. Stardom matters but a story works when actors shed their image and immerse themselves in the narrative,” says the actor who is now working on a thriller, then a satire and a film on child psychology.
