Pratidwandi (The Adversary) Rays master class

chronicling the tumultuous days of Calcutta of the 1970s

The film Pratidwandi (or The Adversary in English) is set in the period of political
upheavals, of student unrests and the influence of the leftist movement that was
so evident in many of the outdoor shots. Anger and dissatisfaction was in the air
and threatened to spill over. Siddhartha, the leading protagonist, a young man
approaching thirties and in desperate search of a job after his fathers premature
death and the family facing some sort of a crisis. He quits his medical studies
mid-way. He too is ideologically aligned, but would remain within his middle-class
moorings. Though throughout the film, his rebellious streak threatens to upset
the status quo and break free from the predictability of a middle-class existence.

It is a film about Siddhartha and his city of love, Calcutta, which he couldnt think
of leaving for any other place, and at the end, the sad irony was that he had to,
as he could not find a job in the city. Pratidwandi is perhaps Rays most
sophisticated and mature cinematic work. It is highly stylised. Rays unique
cinematic technique, his attention to details, the influence of French New Wave
cinema with its frequent jump-cuts, stylish visual metaphors and the amazing
dream sequences, are undoubtedly the highlights of the film. The process of
unravelling Siddharthas brain, of how his mind is transported to a certain
Biology class, when he sees a woman crossing the street, is brilliantly presented.
Or, in the beginning of the film when hes crossing the road, Rays cut to his
medical lecture. The other sequence which is where he goes to see his sisters
boss, is a revelation. He worries endlessly about how to protect his sister,
working in a private company, from her boss, who could be trying to ensnare her,
predatory that human instincts could be in a highly unequal power relationship
between the boss and his employee. One, of course, cannot generalise it,
though.

The film is based on a Sunil Gangopadhyay novel, but Ray brings his own vision
of adaptation that enhances the literary content of the original novel. In fact, this
is a perfect example of cinematic art transcending literary brilliance, and I am
sure, Sunil babu would have been proud of the final outcome. Dhritiman
Chatterjee acts brilliantly as Siddharth, in his debut role. His anger, frustration, a
sense of hopelessness, filled to the brim, and waiting to burst forth, his anguish
at the world being so hostile, unwelcoming, unjust, were very poignantly by him.
As I watched Pratidwandi again after almost 35 years, I felt exhilarated. Ray
brilliantly captures the mood of the city, the much maligned Calcutta, and the
generation of the sixties, a turbulent era the world over. The upsurge in France,
the mass street protests that finally overturned the regime of De Gaulle, the
spirit of being iconoclastic and irreverent, the era of Beatles and the youth
breaking out of the centuries old conformist mind-set, the flower generation in
Europe. It was a wonderful generation! The war in Vietnam and other miseries
add to the existential dilemma.

In this midst, when unemployment was a raging issue in Calcutta and other
regions, more so in the urban milieu of educated unemployed, our protagonist
Sidhartha is placed. He is young, has hopes, but finds the world suffocating and
his desperation in finding a job is so poignantly captured by Ray. The film opens
with Siddhartha facing an interview, in which an apparently innocent question
leads to his ideological leanings. He is asked, Which is a more important or
more epochal or a landmark event of the '60s? Landing on the moon or the
Vietnam war.? The answer, they one of those boxwallah managing agencies get astounds them, though given the political environment prevailing, was not
altogether unexpected. My Lai, the napalm attacks, the tragic loss of countless
lives and the utter devastation in the Vietnam War, would have been fresh on the
mind of the young protagonist, who replies that it is the Vietnam War that was
the most epochal moment and not the glorious landing of man on the Moon. The
interview ends in a disaster for him. Of course, he didn't get the job. They
couldnt afford to have a subversive element there. This was in the beginning.
The films penultimate sequence of another interview where his, and all others,
interminable wait for their turn under suffocating effect of relentless Calcutta
heat that proves too much as one of them faints. And then all hell breaks loose
as Siddhartas rage and intense frustration at this elaborate charade that was
going on simply boils over. Gate-crashing into the interview room and hurling
chairs and smashing them to pieces as the bewildered board frantically calls for
security, finally ends whatever little hope he had for a middle-class, cushy and
secured existence. Siddhartha much to his disliking had to go the moffussils for
livelihood. The films theme of dashed hopes moves us.

Its a most modern film by Indias most humanist director, avant-garde, stylised
and with excellent editing and musical score by Ray himself. A product of Bengal
renaissance, he is the perfect auteur-director, in the mould of Jean Luc Godard
and Francois Truffaut, and is the perfect example of the master who oversees the
entire mise-en-scene, that brilliant French term describing the arrangement of
everything that appears in the framing of the film actors, lighting, dcor, props,
costume. Ray adds another class act with Siddharthas childhood memories of a
singing bird that haunts him throughout the film and adds a poignant touch.

In depicting the mood of the city, the tumult and restless generation that
embraced the city, Ray was simply matchless. His unique and masterly way of
handling the serious aspect of cinema, the flash backs, the characters lapsing
into dreams that conveyed a lot, are some of the best moments in India cinema,
and even in world cinema. No doubt, the world rated him at par with De Sica,
Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Andrei Tarkovsky, Jean Luc Godard and Fellini
and other cinematic greats.