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Antarmahal is a 2005 Indian Bengali film, directed by Rituparno Ghosh, based on a short story by the name Pratima by the renowned Bengali author Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay. It stars Roopa Ganguly, Soha Ali Khan and Jackie Shroff in lead, and Abhishek Bachchan, Sumanta Mukherjee and Biswajit Chakraborty in supporting roles. Raima Sen stars in a cameo role in the film.[1][2][3]
The story takes place towards the end of the 19th century in Bengal. Bhubaneswar Chowdhury (Jackie Shroff) is a rich and oppressive Zamindar (Landlord). He is planning to please the British so that they bestow on him the Raibahadur title. There are quite a few contenders and so something unique has to be done, so he decides to put Queen Victoria's face on the body of the Goddess Durga whose clay idol is made every year for Durga Pooja.
On the other hand, he also wants an heir and since he blames the failure on his elder wife Mahamaya (Roopa Ganguly) he marries again, the much younger Jashomati (Soha Ali Khan). Both these wives compete against each other in an ego struggle. In his pursuit for a son, Bhubaneswar rapes Jashomati every night while a priest reads hymns for conception near the bed, ordering Mahamaya, in a drugged state, to fulfill the carnal desires of five sexually deprived Brahmin priests.
Although she luckily escapes the fate due to the untimely ending, Jashomati, while in her traumatised and lonely state, gets physically drawn towards a young sculptor (Abhishek Bachchan). It's in this centre of all this that the sculptor makes his masterpiece, his tribute, and seals Jashomati's ultimate fate.the script is based on protima a masterpiece of Tarashankar bandopadhyay.
Age does strange things to you. When I first read Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay's short story Protima at 13, I was moved. I fantasised about nurturing a secret affair with a handsome potter. 20 years later, when I saw Rituparno Ghosh's Antarmahal, inspired by the same story, I was moved once more, albeit for a different reason. I shivered at the oppression women suffered at the hands of their 'masters' -- the zamindars, husbands and priests.
Ghosh takes enough liberties with the plot. But as a skilled craftsman, he never lets it go awry. Rather, on a canvas built by Bandyopadhyay, Ghosh paints a lively portrait of nineteenth century Bengal. He touches upon various tales of oppression, of aged husbands raping wives half their age, society making fun of wives unable to bear children, priests taking advantage of helpless housewives and so on.
Bhubaneswar Chowdhury (Jackie Shroff [Images]) is a wealthy and tyrannical zamindar. His life is ruled by two obsessions -- his desperate need of an heir, which his wives Mahamaya (Roopa Ganguly) and Jashomoti (Soha Ali Khan) seem unable to deliver; and competing with his regional rivals to produce the most magnificent effigy of a goddess for the annual Durga Puja.
In his relentless effort to belittle his rival, Chowdhury hires a potter Brijbhushan (Abhishek Bachchan [Images]) from Krishnanagar and orders him to make the goddess' face after Queen Victoria. He hopes this gesture will earn him the title of Rai Bahadur. It will be unfair to give away the rest of the story.
Ghosh is often referred to as belonging to the Ray school of filmmaking. After Antarmahal, one has to say he is the perfect disciple. For, like the master, he too has the great ability of choosing the right cast.
Who but him could have thought that Jackie would speak impeccable Bengali, that too with a nineteenth century inflection? In an interview with rediff.com earlier, Shroff said he managed to speak the language alien to him by simply memorising his lines. If that were the case, full credit goes to him and Ghosh for an astonishing feat. Shroff played a Bengali zamindar quite well. This film will add to his list of best performances and is likely to win him an award or two.
If Shroff is the perfect zamindar, Roopa Ganguly was cut out to be his wife. With her apparently commanding yet kind presence in the household, she puts in one of the finest performances of her career. She has always left her mark in each of her films, but Antarmahal will add a special feather to her cap.
Soha, as Roopa's rival -- her husband's second wife Jashomoti -- looks refreshingly new. Like Raima Sen [Images] in Chokher Bali, Ghosh makes Soha do exactly what he wants, much to the audience's delight. Ghosh does with her what Ray used to with her mother (Sharmila Tagore). In fact, Soha's dimples, smiles and deep, probing eyes are sure to make someone like me, who grew up on Ray's films, nostalgic.
The film, as it's A rating will tell you, is full of intimate scenes. That can make a few prudish eyebrows rise. But those immune to Ghosh's films will not mind. After all, he weaves a story set at a time when women were treated like pieces of furniture.
While the taut script never lets its pace slack, a detailed set and neat cinematography keeps the interest alive. The director does well to lend a subtle treatment to the romance that evolves between Soha and Abhishek, as if to accentuate the uncouth lovemaking that takes place between the zamindar and his beautiful second wife.
On the evidence of three prior films of his that I had seen, Rituparno Ghosh is a master at making films that are conceptually suggestive, but leave the viewer disappointed. Utsab, the tale of a dysfunctional family gathered in the parental home was perhaps the best, but was nevertheless marred by a flatness, and an often uncinematic sensibility on Ghosh's part; Chokher Bali could have been the best, except Ghosh in his wisdom decided to mutilate the film by about 40 minutes in its Western and Hindi release (the three hour version released in West Bengal is unavailable on DVD), with the result that the film promises much but feels truncated, and is light on the political -- unforgivable when one considers the explicit concerns of the Tagore novel on which it was based -- with the result that the film seems to be "about" the widow at its core (played with assurance, but not the requisite passion, by Aishwariya Rai), not the subjugated but awakening India Tagore likened her to; Raincoat was an embarrassment, and although Ghosh's adaptation of O. Henry's short story The Gift contained some affecting moments, including some (odd as this sounds) compelling sentimentality, it conveyed the distinctly uncinematic sense of a stage play that had been filmed. Not even a soulful soundtrack and one of Aishwariya Rai's most memorable performances (hard though it is to imagine her as a woman who is "past it", Ghosh turns her Bollywood persona inside out in portraying her as a malfunctioning flesh-and-blood marionette) could save this film, and the less said about Ghosh-the-director here, the better. [Confession: I, um, own the DVD, though don't ask me why].
I thus approached his latest offering with a fair bit of trepidation. I needn't have: Antarmahal: Views of the Inner Chamber is a strange, and strangely compelling film, unforgettable because of its evocation of the sordid impact of colonialism on even the "inner chamber" of the sacred. Jackie Shroff plays a Bengali zamindar, a Thakur obsessed with outdoing his peers when it comes to the annual Durga pooja, and the erection of the idol the festival entails; since he also earnestly wishes for a "Rai Bahadur" honorific from the Crown, he hits upon the idea of making a Durga idol with the head of Queen Victoria. Once the viceroy (who is to be invited to the festival) sees Shroff's devotion to the Queen, the idea goes, he will certainly recommend the award of the "Rai Bahadur" title. The issue is complicated by the fact that none of the local Bengali sculptors are prepared to acquiesce in the sacrilege; no matter, as Shroff arranges for a penniless "Hindustani" artist (Abhishek Bachchan) to come and do the needful.
Shroff badly wants the "Rai Bahadur" title, but he also wants a son, which is why after over a decade of marriage he has taken a second wife, the achingly vulnerable Yashomati (Soha Ali Khan), though in the film his desperate attempts to sire an heir (through some of the most loveless sex ever filmed) have proven unsuccessful. In desperation, and in a disturbing representation of the sacred in the service of an utterly wordly project (not to mention the commandeering of female bodies for utterly instrumental purposes), Shroff agrees to the presence of a priest while he copulates with Soha, in the hope that the chanting of Scripture will outweigh the bleak fact that has been unable to sire children with either of his wives, or his mistress of five years. The irony is bitter: this, after all, is a man who defends himself against charges that his Durga bearing the Queen's likeness is sacrilegious by smirking that the Gods lack the power to bless or curse in these times.
Yet sex, as in Chokher Bali, a destabilizing force without equal, suffuses this film, perhaps in no way more than in the figure of Brij Bhushan (Abhishek), who simply by his presence incites lust and longing in both of the Thakur's wives. The elder wife herself uses her body to distract the priest when he is chanting Sanskrit verses while the Thakur and Yashomati copulate (the last thing she wants is for the ritual to be effective, and for Yashomati to produce an heir), and most bitingly, the English portraitist hired by the Thakur frets that the Durga idol Brij Bhushan is fashioning might end up, not as a homage to Queen Victoria, but as a scandalous work of art, given the regal nudity of the idol. And, most significantly for the plot, the Thakur's project for the Durga idol is itself ultimately subverted by the erotic disordering that Yashomati sets off in Brij Bhushan -- with catastrophic results.
A word about the performances: for those who worry that Abhishek's singularity might be submerged amidst films like Dus, there is much to be heartened by here. His role does not require much range, but his combination of innocence and effortless carnality is potent in this film, and reminds the viewer that no one among Bollywood's younger male actors uses silence as effectively as the post-Yuva Abhishek. Soha Ali Khan is surprisingly effective here, and her assured handling of a character who is anything but assured bodes well for her development as an actress. Jackie Shroff is forceful as the coarse Thakur, but he lacks the acting intelligence to suggest any depth to his character, and the result is a rather one-dimensional character. Rupa Ganguly is superb as the Thakur's first wife, though in all fairness she also has the most well-rounded character to work with: one sees her in a number of lights, from the older woman simultaneously jealous of her young souten and protective of Yashomati in the face of the Thakur's depredation, to the woman who lusts after the provocation in the form of Brij Bhushan: I found the disappointment that flits across her face when the young sculptor addresses her as "maaji" to be the most poignant momemnt in the film.
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