‘The Cloud Capped Star’ Ritwik Ghatak’s post partition classic
Ritwik Ghatak, the legendary Bengali director, never achieved the fame of his contemporary (at times adversary) Satyajit Ray. His output was erratic as was his personality—he died an alcoholic at the age of 50 in 1976, with many unfinished features and documentaries. Yet the genius and ingenuity evident in his films were never in doubt. Most of films studied the aftereffects of Bengali Partition following India’s independence in 1947. Hence ‘The Cloud Capped Star (1960)’, considered by many to be his greatest achievement, follows the story of a refugee family from East Pakistan struggling to make ends meet in post-partition Calcutta.
Ghatak claimed his inspiration for the ever-suffering main character Neeta (brilliantly played by Supriya Choudhury) came after seeing a woman with a withered appearance at a bus-stop; which he considered a symbolic status of Bengali refugees. Neeta, a hardworking college student, bears the burden of her whole family: her father is hapless, her mother is never appreciative, and her brother loafs around while her sister preens herself. Throughout the film she continues to suffer for her family, to the extent of delaying her own marriage to a student (Sanat) till her brother achieves his goal of becoming a singer. She is a modern-day Joan of Arc, but her adversaries are her own kin: her mother constantly nags her for money, and her own sister ends up marrying her loveinterest (Sanat). In the end she ends up terminally ill, but keeps her illness a secret from her family. Her brother, after becoming a famous singer in Bombay, comes home to visit and discovers Neeta’s illness. He admits her to a sanatorium far away from home, and in a poignant scene she tells him that all she ever wanted in life was ‘to live’. But it is too late for her; she suffered for her family’s happiness, but her personal dreams of happiness never materialized.
What’s astounding about this film is the repertoire of cinematic techniques that Ghatak uses to emphasize emotions. Nita is constantly framed in low-angles, accentuating her goddess-like status; the visual depth of field is reminiscent of compositions in Orson Welles’ classic Citizen Kane, but the most notable aspect is Ghatak’s use of sound. There’s the visual motif of a train passing through the horizon, which is used as a metaphor for the division of the family’s homeland of Bengal. But the most heart-breaking scene in the film concerns Neeta and her brother, singing a melancholy song from Rabrindanath Tagore, suddenly interrupted by distant lashing sounds, further underscoring Neeta’s depressing plight.
A Cloud Capped Star is a bleak, angry film. It’s a strong critique on the social and economic conditions of the era, at times melodramatic, but Ritwik Ghatak’s story of a middle-class Bengali family’s disintegration is a perfect allegory about the destructive consequences of Bengali Partition.