Dareechah-e-Nigaarish
Dareechah-e-Nigaarish
Toronto, ON
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Mrinal Sen: Antareen (The Confined)
Actress Dimple Kapadia and Director Mrinal Sen during the filming of Antareen. (Photograph courtesy of the Mrinal Sen website)
Antareen (The Confined), a movie based on the short story of the Pakistani Urdu Short Story writer and maestro Saadat Hasan Manto. The Art Film Antareen had screenplay and direction by the talented Bengali Film Director, Mrinal Sen and featured Dimple Kapadia.
Dimple Kapadia delivers a stunning performance with a lot of emotional depth and perception of the character she portrays.
شاعری اور نثری فکشن مِل کر آرٹ فلم کو جنم دے سکتے ہیں۔ نئے پاکستانی شاعروں کو اِس طرف راغب کرنے کے لئے مرنل سین کی خوبصورت آرٹ فلم’’انتارین‘‘ کے ایک جذباتی منظر کے ڈائیلاگ یہاں رقم کئے جا رہے ہیں ۔
Review of Art Film Antareen (The Confined)
courtesy of Ellipsis (Omars Film Blog)
Adapted from a story by Punjabi writer Sadat Hasan Manto, Mrinal Sen’s disjunctive Antareen is a study of two lost souls unable to make a concrete emotional connection. Compared to the political films Sen directed in the 60s and 70s, Antareen feels somewhat tame and at times apolitical. The premise sees a struggling writer confined to an old mansion in Calcutta in an attempt to find inspiration for a new novel. However, one night the writer (Anjan Dutt) receives an anonymous phone call from a woman (Dimple Kapadia) who simply wants to talk. The writer soon discovers through the telephone conversations that the woman seems trapped in her life and has in essence been cut off from society. Additionally, the relationship seems to trigger a new creative energy within the writer and he uses the intimacy of the woman’s experiences as a means of writing his new novel. The dilapidated mansion in which the writer stays is shown to have a life of its own – it is a colonial past that bears down upon those who inhabit it. In terms of characterisation, the mansion, which is effectively represented as a haunted house, acts as an appropriate psychological landscape for the loneliness of the writer and the woman. In terms of form, Sen employs various Brechtian devices including direct camera address to construct a narrative that is cleverly being imagined by the writer’s words. In a way, the momentary encounter on the train platform in the closing moments is reflexively manifested by the writer and the woman through an imaginary connection but their distance even when they are so close suggests such a deliberate encounter is purely an illusion as empty as their broken gaze. I’m not sure if I want to label Antareen as a minor work in the oeuvre of Sen as it certainly underlines a cinematic radicalism consistent with what has been a career of intellectualism.
June 06, 2007 Review of Antareen (1994)
(courtesy of Filmi Geek)
Antareen ("confined"), a quiet and literary Bengali film by Mrinal Sen, examines a peculiar relationship that arises between two profoundly isolated individuals. They connect and affect one another, in a demonstration that the effects of human contact can traverse both distance and anonymity.
A young writer (Anjan Dutt) arrives for an extended stay at the isolated, palatial home of a friend, who has given him the run of the house while he and his family are away. Completely alone - save for the occasional company of a servant and the servant's grandson - the writer settles in for late-night, tea-fueled writing sessions. One night the telephone rings, and though the other end is silent, the caller rings again the next day, and soon the young writer engages nightly in cryptic, languid conversations with the woman at the other end of the line. She is a rich man's mistress (Dimple Kapadia) whose lover has apparently lost interest in her. Still, he keeps her in a luxurious high-rise apartment, and also supports the rest of her family, from whom she is estranged. The young woman is lonely and depressed; she never leaves the apartment, and reaches out only to random strangers on the telephone. Their conversations, and the effect those conversations exert on each of them, is the focus of the film.
Though the film's pace is deliberate at best, it is intriguing enough as it unfolds, especially as the details of the woman's life come gradually into focus. Through the woman's conversations with the writer, she slowly overcomes her inertia and begins to pull the pieces of her life together. For the writer's part, in the beginning his interest in her appears somewhat mercenary, seeing her cynically, as grist for his writing. But he comes to truly care for her, as we are shown, for example, by his distress when she fails to call for several days. The dynamics of their relationship are constantly shifting. He has the power to reach her emotionally, offering observations that strike close to home. But for most of the film she holds the ultimate control over their interactions - she has his telephone number, while he does not have hers. The moment when she relinquishes that control marks a clear turning point in their interaction, and by the end of the film both of them have been thoroughly transformed by the experience.
What is less clear is the statement that Mrinal Sen intends to make with the film. It may be a statement about the randomness of human relationships, how we can be touched by input from completely unexpected and even virtually unknown sources. I can't help but feel that if I were acquainted with Bengali literature I would have a better sense of the film's message, as it contains numerous explicit references - and probably even more implicit ones - to the short stories of Rabindranath Tagore, among others. Without that background, Antareen is more of a mildly interesting curiosity than a truly compelling film.
Antareen is available for download at Jaman.com. The film is less than 90 minutes long; Dimple Kapadia is as pouty and lovely as ever in it; and the download is free - so if you are a fan of Dimple's it's definitely worth a look.
Review of Antareen (courtesy of Wikipedia)
Antareen (The Confined) is a 1993 Indian film in Bengali language, directed by Mrinal Sen, based on a story by Saadat Hasan Manto. It stars Anjan Dutt and Dimple Kapadia.[2][3] Antareen was the first non-Hindi project Kapadia took part in since Vikram (1986). She played a woman caught in a loveless marriage. Insisting on playing her part spontaneously, Kapadia refused to enroll in a crash-course in Bengali as she wrongly felt that she would be able to speak it convincingly. Her voice was eventually dubbed by actor Anushua Chatterjee, something Kapadia was unhappy with.[4]
At the 1993 National Film Award, it was awarded the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Bengali.[1]
Synopsis
The young writer (Anjan Dutta) seeking inspiration is living alone an old mansion of friend in Calcutta, one night he starts talking to an anonymous stranger (Dimple Kapadia) over phone, the conversation soon develop into a relationship as details of their lives are revealed. Then they decide to meet on a train.[5]
| Antareen | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Mrinal Sen |
| Produced by | NFDC Doordarshan[1] |
| Written by | Saadat Hasan Manto (story) Mrinal Sen (screenplay) |
| Starring | Anjan Dutt Dimple Kapadia Tathagata Sanyal |
| Music by | Sashi Anand |
| Cinematography | Sashi Anand |
| Release date(s) | 1993 |
| Country | India |
| Language | Bengali |
References
- "41st National Film Awards" (PDF). Directorate of Film Festivals.
- "-". Gomolo.com. Retrieved 27 October 2012.
- Rajadhyaksha, Ashish; Willemen, Paul (1999). Encyclopaedia of Indian cinema. British Film Institute. Retrieved 27 October 2012.
- Das Gupta, Ranjan (8 November 2009). "‘I am very moody’". The Hindu. Retrieved 27 October 2012.
- Anatreen Rotten Tomatoes.
External links
- Antareen at the Internet Movie Database
Feature films directed by Mrinal Sen | |
|---|---|
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Dareechah-e-Nigaarish
Toronto, ON
Canada
talat