Apologies in advance: this column is, partly at least, an exercise in shameless fanboy-ism. But it also pertains to a recent film - Vikramaditya Motwane's lush, beautifully shot Lootera. For me, one of the highlights of this movie was the performance of the veteran Bengali actor Barun Chanda, whose dignified, sympathetic presence as the ageing zamindar of Manikpur - the father of the film's heroine Pakhi (Sonakshi Sinha) -brings gravitas to the early scenes, and plays a big part in rooting the story.
Set in the 1950s, Lootera - its first half, at least - is largely about the passing of an old world: the world of the landlords, their inherited wealth, and some of the gentility associated with their way of life. This was a life that was unduly privileged and had no place in a freshly independent nation-state marching towards equality of opportunity; one must be wary of over-romanticising it. But perhaps it is a natural human emotion to feel some sympathy for people who have become vulnerable to the forces of rapid change. Many classic movies - Indian films such as Jalsaghar as well as international ones such as John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Visconti's The Leopard - have movingly chronicled such changing times and lost lives. In Lootera, the zamindar struggles to maintain his composure as his ancestral wealth is rudely carted away in trucks and his daughter is simultaneously betrayed by the man she loved - a man who is a symbol of a new age - and Chanda's lined face and limpid eyes tell a whole story. It is the story of an old world at the mercy of an approaching one.
Given that he represents a fading past in Lootera, it is interesting to note that Chanda's defining film role - the lead in Satyajit Ray's 1971 Seemabaddha (or Company Limited) - had him playing the upwardly mobile advertising executive Shyamal, who learns the tricks of corporate one-upmanship and is gradually drawn into a vortex of amorality. I don't know if one can properly claim to be a "fan" of an actor after seeing him only in one part, but such was my relationship with Chanda for many years. I saw Seemabaddha on the big screen at a festival a decade ago, and for the first few minutes the leading man didn't have much of an impact: he was gawky, bespectacled, almost too normal, a face in the crowd (which, I later realised, was part of the point). But the performance grew on me. Ray himself said once that his definition of a star was someone who continued to be interesting and worth looking at even after he has stopped doing anything specific. In my view, Chanda certainly fit that description.
Beloved films - or performances within films - often seem diminished when you revisit them, like old houses that you remembered only from childhood, when everything seemed impossibly grand. That didn't happen when I re-watched Seemabaddha on DVD a few days ago. I was just as taken by Chanda's performance - and perhaps that has to do with the fact that it was never larger than life to begin with. Shyamal is a likable everyman who, through circumstance, acquires control over the lives of less privileged people, and finds himself changing because of it. The force of the film lies in the gradualness of this change - it happens so organically and undramatically that we can imagine it happening to ourselves. And unsettlingly, Chanda's performance seems to grow in charisma and confidence just as the cut-throat side of Shyamal's personality begins to emerge.
It says something about the relaxedness of Bengal's "star system" that Chanda could play the lead role in a major Ray film and then slip out of the world of movie acting and go back to his regular day job (as an ad man!), only returning for sporadic appearances. In the city earlier this year, at the Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival, I got to meet him, had a couple of candid conversations and watched him perform on stage. I'm far from being a celebrity-pursuer, but this was a very pleasing encounter. I'm not a particularly demonstrative movie-watcher either, but when Chanda - or Barun, as I have come to think of him now - made his appearance in the opening scene of Lootera, I felt like cheering loudly in the hall.
Jai Arjun Singh is a Delhi-based writer
jaiarjun@gmail.com
jaiarjun@gmail.com
