ARTIST OF REINVENTION
It takes courage to remake oneself and even more to invite others to reawaken an industry. Prosenjit Chatterjee, who has blazed past every marker of superstardom in Bangla cinema, is doing just that
ARECENT AFTERNOON. One can make out a crowd gathered outside a crumbling mansion in the heart of old Calcutta. Parked in front of 4, Beadon Street, is an ultra-luxury trailer, engine humming quietly. The word is out on the street: “He is here.” Trams jangle, two-wheelers whizz past, cars toot angrily. But oblivious to the frenetic hustle of the unruly street, the crowd hangs around, hoping to get a glimpse of, and maybe a selfie with, a man who inspires non-stop adoration in packed cinema halls: Bangla cinema’s superstar for last 35 years, Prosenjit Chatterjee.
Lights, Camera, Action. Prosenjit is filming Mayurakshi, the story of an NRI son and his ageing father, portrayed by veteran actor Soumitra Chatterjee, who are separated by continents, lifestyles and emotions. The 200-year-old home of the Dey family forms the perfect setting, with its mildew-shrouded walls and priceless masterpieces peeking through layers of dust and grime. Prosenjit sits in absolute stillness on a rickety chair, as director Atanu Ghosh shouts “Cut!” several times to instruct a newcomer. But the minute “Quiet on the set” is called for and the clapper snaps shut, he carries on without missing a beat, exactly from where he stops: no checking on video monitors, no digging into mobile phones, to capture continuity.
“Hi,” he smiles. And the first thing you notice is that unlike a lot of stars, he looks in person exactly as he looks in his films. Also, unlike most stars, he is free of attitude. Ask him what explains his never-ending popularity and he says, “Maybe, my honesty.” Talk to people who have seen him become a star and they say that his unselfconscious, endearing screen persona, coupled with his chocolate-boy good looks, turned him into the gold standard of a romantic hero for countless Bengali women. He smiles: “I remind them of someone they are fond of—a son, a brother, a brother-in-law, someone they went to college with, a friend.” That’s trademark humility of a man who has made nearly 300 films and racked up more hits than anyone else in the last 35 years.
That’s just half the story. The 54-year-old Prosenjit is today the toast of a new breed of ambitious filmmakers keen to reinvent Bangla cinema. Big-banner corporate production houses with global presence are entering Bengal and turning to him for inspiration and profits. The elite Bengali audience—educated, artistic and affluent—which had stopped patronising mainstream cinema, after the demise of towering heroes like Uttam Kumar and legends like Satyajit Ray, are coming back to the halls. The hard-to-please urban youths are abuzz about the new “middle cinema”, at the centre of which is Prosenjit.
That’s because Prosenjit has upgraded his game. When he started out as an actor in 1983, he was barely 17. It was an uphill struggle, as his father, yesteryear film star, Biswajit, was not present in his life or in his career. Then came the big hits, starting with Amar Sangi (1987), which crossed 75 weeks in theatres and turned him into a star. If he wanted to, he could crank out blockbusters every year. Instead, Prosenjit wanted compelling roles in smart, cool-headed and ultimately wrenching films, that explore human emotions and relationships with unusual depth and subtlety. His career started tracing an unlikely and altogether hard-fought path, as he transformed himself from a romantic hero to a cool character artiste. Take, for instance, the just-released Yeti Obhijaan, directed by Srijit Mukherjee and shot in Glacier 3000 ski region of the Swiss Alps, where he plays a crutch-wielding ad-
venture character. It has had Bollywood legends, Amitabh Bachchan and Aamir Khan, praising the “superstar from Bengal” and congratulating him on Twitter.
The making of the transformation began under Rituparno Ghosh, the director who heralded the Renaissance of Bangla films from the 1990s. “He was a friend and made me understand that I had the soul of an actor,” says Prosenjit. The National Award winning Utsab (2000) was the first film where Prosenjit worked under Rituparno’s direction. Then came Chokher Bali (2003) and Dosar (2006), winning both the director and the actor national and international awards. From 2010 on, Prosenjit entered the new era of award winning films—from Autograph to Moner Manush (2010), Baishe Srabon and Noukadubi (2011), to Mishawr Rahashya (2013) to Jaatishwar (2014), Praktan to Shankhachil (2016) and more—psychological and adventure thrillers or biopics, where he was sometimes the main protagonist, sometimes not.
“A lot of people were very surprised when I selected Prosenjit for the role of Lalon Fakir in Moner Manush,” said Ghose in an interview with Washington Bangla Radio (“What are you doing?”). But Ghose had seen an “artiste” in Prosenjit. As the film went on to win national and international awards, Ghose was vindicated. “In the end, he was accepted as Lalon Fakir in Lalon’s homeland, Bangladesh. Critiques told Prosenjit that whenever they think of Lalon, they would visualise him. I told Prosenjit, there lies your award, bigger than any.”
“I knew that I was choosing the road less travelled, but I did not want to walk it alone,” says Prosenjit. When he joined the industry in the 1980s, it had become a “graveyard”. Films used to have a budget of not more than Rs 20-22 lakh. The storylines were garish copies of Bollywood films, the studios looked desolate (“The canteens were overrun by digs, outdoor shooting meant the hero wouldn’t even get a room to himself.”). But the strength of that industry was that it was cohesive, like a close-knit family. “And I became a bit of a youth leader,” he recalls.
For every problem the industry faced, seniors sent him in to meet the ministers, the bureaucrats, the influencers. When the Technician Studio was closed down in the ’90s, he led the team to petition, campaign and finally gherao the Writers’ Buildings for 21 days; he fought against Bangla dubbing of Hindi films; had gheraoed Doordarshan to protect piracy (VHS). And he did all that, as he says, not for himself, but for technicians, for producers, for other
people’s films. And he emerged as a “face” (“Somehow everybody listens to me. They know, this man is not thinking or talking at an individual level, but for everyone.”). Today, he says, “I see my industry as a company. And I am the CEO. If my company grows, I grow, and everybody grows with it. It’s time to give back.”
As you chat with Prosenjit, it’s quite easy to forget he’s a superstar until, as he makes his way through the crowd to his trailer, he turns around without his sunglasses and smiles—a great, big smile—at the assembled crowd. With a jolt, one gets the full force of his smiling charisma and appeal to the masses—an “everyman” leader—that’s inherently in him. The crowd sighs. Take a look around his trailer: carpets and cushy sofas, modular sectionals, array of family photographs, dressing unit with 1,000 watt bulbs, books, low tables, small, intimate lamps, a snazzy washroom. The phone rings: his son, the 12-year-old Trishanjit. A father-son conversation ensues, about a football match that the son wishes desperately to win and the father wishes him luck, with a note of caution: “Winning is not the big thing, playing is, you know.”
“Hey,” he says, with a big grin, “things are changing.” Today’s stars are enjoying a much better economic status, they come to studios in fancy cars. The studios are chock-a-block. Bangla cinema is enjoying much better economic prospects today. Corporates have started coming in, from Eros, UTV, Fox Star, Reliance, Zee (“Technology to business patterns, everything has changed. We need to upgrade, to generate revenues.”). Bangla films are being made and released together with Bangladesh, being released across metros in multiple halls. Bengalis all over the world are being targeted to patronise and watch Bangla films. “Bangla is the second most spoken language in India and the sixth around the world,” he says. “If even 50 per cent Bengalis watch Bangla films, it can be a Rs 100 crore business.”
Prosenjit has taken to producing films on new themes and by young directors. He heads FICCI and CII entertainment wings, lobbying with leading production houses like Shree Venkatesh Films to include Bangla films in their repertoire of Tamil and Telugu remakes, persuading Bollywood producers to buy rights of Bangla films. “Content is king today,” he points out. With Bangla literature as a rich pool of content and seven out of 10 young directors in Bollywood from Bengal, he hopes the tide will turn. But true success can come only when Kolkata becomes a hub of film production once again, with local talent, he explains.
Why not? Sujoy Ghosh did his entire Kahaani (2012) here in Bengal, entirely with local technicians and talent, except Vidya Balan, and it turned out to be a super-hit across India. Shoojit Sircar’s Piku (2015) was all about Kolkata. “I am acquiring lots of Bangla stories and novels and my production team is pitching those in Mumbai. I am also planning to direct a Hindi film, with a big cast in the background of Kolkata next year,” he smiles.
The Mayurakshi team is waiting for Prosenjit. It’s time to go. A muted yellow light shines from the gracefully colonnaded Minerva Theatre, the 124-year-old original laboratory of Bengali thespians, just down the road from the Dey mansion. And you think of the line Prosenjit swears by, a line that his co-workers have engraved on a plaque and gifted him: “You become successful by helping others become successful.”
“I SEE MY INDUSTRY AS A COMPANY. IF MY COMPANY GROWS, I GROW, AND EVERYBODY GROWS WITH IT”