Ground Realities
The death of an actor . . . and more
NOT many among us may have been in touch with Manna. And there may not be very many people we know who have watched his movies. Those of us now in our early or mid fifties stopped going to movie houses a long time ago, perhaps way back in the early 1980s.
There were, of course, all the good reasons why that kind of a situation cropped up. There were increasingly fewer good movies being churned out by our moviemakers. The scripts were going from bad to worse. Good actors were fast turning into tales of the past. And, most tellingly, obscenity was taking over where good sense once used to be.
Now, of course, you can spend some good time defining obscenity or the line where reality collapsed into obscenity. But what you cannot ignore is the truth that for a very long number of years decency has been a casualty, a hugely missing factor, in Bangladesh's movie industry. Which is why the middle classes, so much a factor in the shaping of social attitudes, have studiously avoided visiting the many cinema halls here. The old trend of families making their way to movie houses on weekends to spend some quality time is now but part of collective memory.
That is where Manna comes in. He was not an artiste in the mould of Razzaque or Azim or Rahman or Bulbul Ahmed or Farook. But popularity was nevertheless his, a particular reason being his determined opposition to obscenity or everything that militated against morality in movies.
There was decency in his behaviour. An angry young man in tinsel town, he was forever aware of a need to build a stable future for himself. In the three hundred or so movies he acted in, there was a lot of verve he brought into a telling of the tales. The story lines may not have been great. Besides, the degree of acting people came by in the old tales in all those black and white movies was not to be spotted in Manna's co-actors. Even so, people flocked to those movies.
The middle classes may not have been convinced that Manna's movies needed to be seen, but with artistes like Shabnam playing the role of his mother in a film called, simply, Ammajan, there was proof that a distinctive attempt at a turning away from bad deeds in the film industry was underway.
Manna's death, after a mere forty four years of life, prohibits us from speculating on the heights of artistry he might have scaled had he lived on. There are instances of actors graduating from mediocrity to greatness.
Manna was not mediocre, by no stretch of the imagination. But people like him, touched by shades of responsibility, or a sense of it, sometimes make it possible for people to begin believing once more in what used to be and what might yet be. And that is when, here in this country, you tend to fall back on actresses such as Kabori.
It was forty four years ago that she turned into a household word among Bengalis through her deftly played role in Shutoraang. All these years later, she remains an epitome of single minded, purposeful acting.
These days she is into directing movies, which is one more indication of accomplished individuals still being around and willing to help us go round the bend in search of films that make sense. You could here think of Shabnam, of Nasima Khan, of Reshma, of Shabana, of Babita, whose contributions to Bangladesh's film industry have underpinned the strength of our movie industry.
Think back on the times when Subhas Dutta acted in films, and then got down to the business of directing them. Then there was Khan Ata. It is this legacy which, in our times, directors of Chashi Nazrul Islam's kind have tried to uphold.
It is a hard task they face. There are the glaring, pitiless realities that confront them. On the one hand, an overpowering desire on the part of a section of filmmakers to plagiarise, from Indian Hindi movies, and then present the concoction to the Bengali audience here has only created a kleptocratic class intent on earning good financial returns in place of eminence. On the other, there is the hollowness which comes from a projection of story lines that are as far removed from the truth as they can be. And that untruth is in the image of the unnecessary cleavage women in Bengali movies have of late demonstrated, or been compelled to demonstrate.
The point that must not be missed, though, is that where the story demands certain situations, they cannot and ought not to be glossed over. Since movies in the Indian subcontinent have generally remained musicals, and since romance is a key ingredient in any story, it is quite natural for emotions to come in a package that might include anything from hand-holding to embraces to frenzied dancing to the sounds of music. But then comes the question: does such glitz in movie making take account of the critically sharpened sensibilities that define perceptions of films in our times?
There are the art films we have welcomed in recent years, but they do not appear to have made a dent in the public mind as yet. You do not blame the producers and directors of these films for such a state of vacuum.
It all has to do with the sordid stories of singing supermen and gyrating women coming from across the border. The imitations our producers do here are third rate, which is to say they humiliate our public sensibilities. We still have not reached a state where, in the interest of realism, men and women may kiss in profundity of passion in our movies.
But we have done worse, something that our filmmakers do not appear to realise. Take a typical song sequence in any of our films today. There before you is the lustful leading man breathing -- and nuzzling -- down the neck all the way to the region above the bosom, and beyond, of the leading lady who, in turn, is attired in a flimsy sari, which convenience exposes a goodly part of her physical being; or she may be outlandishly fitted out in what is clearly an excuse of western fashion.
These are images that have infiltrated our movie industry relentlessly since the early 1980s. And you only have to observe the titles of the movies to understand how far Bengali movies in Bangladesh (conditions are not much different in West Bengal these days) have declined in terms of quality. Here is a pick: Darhao Kotha Achhe (with someone coming up with a crude translation, Stop, I Have Talk); Shaami Keno Ashami, Baba Keno Chakor, Bhoyongkor Shonghorsho, et al. And there are the literal translations from movies coming from across the frontier, with a local, meaning Bengali, touch to what is originally a Hindu story. How many of you have seen Qeyamat Theke Qeyamat after you have gone through Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak?
Manna's death removes a much needed voice in defence of movies with meaning. But that ought to be no reason for the campaign against a film industry of substance to falter. In an era where theatre reaches a crescendo of intellectual attainment in Bangladesh and music explores a diversity of possibilities, our films must find a way out of the pit they have been thrown into. They can reform. Else, they can die.
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