Antarmahal: Views From The Inner Chamber(ScreenDaily Review)
Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2005 2:58 pmAntarmahal: Views From The Inner Chamber (Antarmahal)
Dan Fainaru in Locarno 23 August 2005
Dir: Rituparno Ghosh. India. 2005. 118mins.
Returning to the late 19th century, Rituparno Ghosh spins another sumptuous, yet intimate family story with Antarmahal: Views From The Inner Chamber, playing once more in the same register he successfully used two years ago for fellow Locarno competitor Chokher Bali.
Less enticing and not as rich as his previous effort - in part due to the lesser source material - Ghosh once again grapples with old traditions, religious taboos and, above all else, the previous condition of women in Indian society, where they were regarded as beautiful, decorative objects at the mercy of their husbands and masters.
Again the feature plays inside the dark chambers of a rich Bengali family, with female characters predominant, moving at the slow, ceremonious pace of life at the time.
Similarly, production design and camerawork enhance the musty, scented, voluptuous atmosphere, lavishing attention on every detail of make-up and costume and painstakingly exploring the customs and social structures within the traditional Indian household.
But Views From The Inner Chamber fails to equal Chokher Bali when it comes to the scope of the plot, which here stretches credibility to a dangerous point. There is a also a lack of depth among the male characters, from the insensitive husband to the libidinous priests.
The film should enjoy some play among Indian audiences at home and abroad, who will recognise lead performers such as Jackie Shroff and Rupa Ganguly. But, unlike with Chokher Bali, there is no one of Ayshawarya Rai's calibre to give the picture the significant push it needs into broader non-specialised markets.
Bhubaneswar (Shroff), a vain, rich and despotic local landowner, desperately wants two things: a male son and a title of the British Empire. To beget an heir, he has taken a very young second wife, Jasomati (Ali Khan), after 12 years of sterile marriage to Mahamaya (Ganguly).
Every night he laboriously mounts his new spouse in scenes that are unusually explicit by Indian standards (though not by others), in loveless but insistent attempts to get her pregnant. Behind the door his first wife rails at his efforts and takes opium to appease her frustration and jealousy.
For the British title, he follows the advice of one of his counsellors and decides to put the face of Queen Victoria on the statue of the Goddess Durga. A young sculptor from the countryside is brought in for the purpose, and instructed to paint the face of the British monarch on the naked body of the 10-armed goddess fighting a demon.
The film's best and most arresting feature is its encounter between the two women, rivals for the husband's favours and yet accomplices when faced with his tyrannical, unscrupulous and boorish tantrums.
The older one, Mahamaya, comes from a rich family and is secure in her position, while the younger one, Jasomati, worries that unless she produces a son she will be chased away. Mahamaya still nurses a kind of perverted affection for the man who has turned his back on her; Jasomati suffers his nightly sexual assaults obediently, since she has no other choice, or at least so it seems.
Though social decorum is preserved throughout and traditional etiquettes are never seen to be broken until the surprise ending, the film carries a strong sense of risk and sensuality.
It reaches an almost shocking pitch at one point when the first wife performs a kind of virtual striptease to distract a priest mumbling holy verses next to his copulating master as part of fertility rite.
And it is suggested again in the scenes when the young sculptor (Bachchan) lovingly shapes the most intimate curves of the straw-and-mud Durga, passionately caressing them as if they were flesh and blood.
Abhik Mukherjee's camerawork tenderly paints intimate images of the semi-dark rooms, paying full tribute to the visual richness of Indian adornments in dress, make-up or interior decoration. It is perhaps most successful in how it captures the beauty of its female subjects, praised in the film’s first words, spoken in voice-over by a British artist commissioned to paint the household’s master.
Rupa Ganguly, as the jilted wife who towards the end is willing to sacrifice everything, including her dignity and modesty for her husband's whims, steals most of her scenes, although Soha Ali Khan offers no mean competition. Their presence carries Ghosh's picture throughout - certainly enough to keep genre aficionados content.
Production companies
RG Productions
AB Corp
Puja Films
International sales
AB Corp
Executive producers
Anil Kuriakose
Kameshwar Mishra
Producer
Vashu Bhagnani
Cinematography
Abhik Mukherjee
Editor
Arghyakamal Mitra
Production design
Indranil Ghosh
Music
Debojyoti Mishra
Main cast
Jackie Shroff
Abhishek Bachchan
Rupa Ganguly
Soha Ali Khan
Raima Sen
Mrinal Mukherjee
Sumanta Mukherjee
Bishwajit Chakraborty
Ratna Ghoshal
Dola Chakraborty
Shibani Bhattacharya
Peter Taylor
Debesh Mukherjee
Arpan Bashar
Kameshwar Mishra.
Dan Fainaru in Locarno 23 August 2005
Dir: Rituparno Ghosh. India. 2005. 118mins.
Returning to the late 19th century, Rituparno Ghosh spins another sumptuous, yet intimate family story with Antarmahal: Views From The Inner Chamber, playing once more in the same register he successfully used two years ago for fellow Locarno competitor Chokher Bali.
Less enticing and not as rich as his previous effort - in part due to the lesser source material - Ghosh once again grapples with old traditions, religious taboos and, above all else, the previous condition of women in Indian society, where they were regarded as beautiful, decorative objects at the mercy of their husbands and masters.
Again the feature plays inside the dark chambers of a rich Bengali family, with female characters predominant, moving at the slow, ceremonious pace of life at the time.
Similarly, production design and camerawork enhance the musty, scented, voluptuous atmosphere, lavishing attention on every detail of make-up and costume and painstakingly exploring the customs and social structures within the traditional Indian household.
But Views From The Inner Chamber fails to equal Chokher Bali when it comes to the scope of the plot, which here stretches credibility to a dangerous point. There is a also a lack of depth among the male characters, from the insensitive husband to the libidinous priests.
The film should enjoy some play among Indian audiences at home and abroad, who will recognise lead performers such as Jackie Shroff and Rupa Ganguly. But, unlike with Chokher Bali, there is no one of Ayshawarya Rai's calibre to give the picture the significant push it needs into broader non-specialised markets.
Bhubaneswar (Shroff), a vain, rich and despotic local landowner, desperately wants two things: a male son and a title of the British Empire. To beget an heir, he has taken a very young second wife, Jasomati (Ali Khan), after 12 years of sterile marriage to Mahamaya (Ganguly).
Every night he laboriously mounts his new spouse in scenes that are unusually explicit by Indian standards (though not by others), in loveless but insistent attempts to get her pregnant. Behind the door his first wife rails at his efforts and takes opium to appease her frustration and jealousy.
For the British title, he follows the advice of one of his counsellors and decides to put the face of Queen Victoria on the statue of the Goddess Durga. A young sculptor from the countryside is brought in for the purpose, and instructed to paint the face of the British monarch on the naked body of the 10-armed goddess fighting a demon.
The film's best and most arresting feature is its encounter between the two women, rivals for the husband's favours and yet accomplices when faced with his tyrannical, unscrupulous and boorish tantrums.
The older one, Mahamaya, comes from a rich family and is secure in her position, while the younger one, Jasomati, worries that unless she produces a son she will be chased away. Mahamaya still nurses a kind of perverted affection for the man who has turned his back on her; Jasomati suffers his nightly sexual assaults obediently, since she has no other choice, or at least so it seems.
Though social decorum is preserved throughout and traditional etiquettes are never seen to be broken until the surprise ending, the film carries a strong sense of risk and sensuality.
It reaches an almost shocking pitch at one point when the first wife performs a kind of virtual striptease to distract a priest mumbling holy verses next to his copulating master as part of fertility rite.
And it is suggested again in the scenes when the young sculptor (Bachchan) lovingly shapes the most intimate curves of the straw-and-mud Durga, passionately caressing them as if they were flesh and blood.
Abhik Mukherjee's camerawork tenderly paints intimate images of the semi-dark rooms, paying full tribute to the visual richness of Indian adornments in dress, make-up or interior decoration. It is perhaps most successful in how it captures the beauty of its female subjects, praised in the film’s first words, spoken in voice-over by a British artist commissioned to paint the household’s master.
Rupa Ganguly, as the jilted wife who towards the end is willing to sacrifice everything, including her dignity and modesty for her husband's whims, steals most of her scenes, although Soha Ali Khan offers no mean competition. Their presence carries Ghosh's picture throughout - certainly enough to keep genre aficionados content.
Production companies
RG Productions
AB Corp
Puja Films
International sales
AB Corp
Executive producers
Anil Kuriakose
Kameshwar Mishra
Producer
Vashu Bhagnani
Cinematography
Abhik Mukherjee
Editor
Arghyakamal Mitra
Production design
Indranil Ghosh
Music
Debojyoti Mishra
Main cast
Jackie Shroff
Abhishek Bachchan
Rupa Ganguly
Soha Ali Khan
Raima Sen
Mrinal Mukherjee
Sumanta Mukherjee
Bishwajit Chakraborty
Ratna Ghoshal
Dola Chakraborty
Shibani Bhattacharya
Peter Taylor
Debesh Mukherjee
Arpan Bashar
Kameshwar Mishra.