KOKO STANDS FOR KONKONA SENSHARMA. BY PRADIP BISWAS, THE INDIAN EXPRESS NEWSPAPERS, INDIA JURY MEMBER INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL OF INDIA AND FRIBOURG INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, SWISS CURATOR: ROTTERDAM, PUSAN, FRIBOURG, MOSCOW, TURKEY, IFFK, IFFI, VARNA ETC. Konkona Sen shrama, Koko in short to me and a few others, her mother Aparna Sen in particular, is first a disciple, like this critic, and a staunch follower of English literature and then theatre and then world literature. It is the vast domain and rich pasture that Koko gleams her sustenance from to grow and stay strong where further knowledge is the sine qua non. It was in the year 2002 while this critic was serving on the Jury of Indian Panorama and National Awards, IFFI, New Delhi, Koko ran into me at Siri Fort asking about the days programme and chart of major films worth seeing. As always Koko does not move alone and she told me, with her natural zest, that she had some other friends and they would like to see the films I would recommend. Since I was busy chatting with my friend filmmakers Nabyendu Chatterjee, Girish Kasaravalli, M.S. Sathu and T.V Chandran, on my immediate reaction I advised Koko to see Girish Kasaravallis Dweepa, winner of the Golden Lotus, Sumitra Bhaves Vasthupurush and T.V Chandrans Dany. However, I do not know if she really could make it to these Indian films, the best of the lot, but Koko looked positive indicating she would catch up with them. The anecdote I have referred to here is mentioned because I could discover serious desire in her eyes for good films that she seldom misses while in the film festival venue. And it is an indication of her taste and cultural attitude she nurtures and translates into action. For Koko, the directors like Godard, Angelopoulos, Carlos Saura, Kiarostami and Jafar Panahi, count heavily. Pier Paolo Passolini is also her favourite director and I remembered how myself, Koko, her mother Aparna Sen and Soumitra Chatterjee, the noted actor ran to and fro between two halls ie Nandan and Sisir Mancha during Kolkata Film Festival in 2001. And in the process we rediscovered Passolinis rarest film Ill Porcilo (The Pig Sty), which Mrinal Sen had personally recommended to me years back It is needless to mention that Koko, among others, was the first to offer reaction thus :What a metaphorical film, saying a lot of things on fascism and cannibalism in different vein! I was startled really by her mood of appreciation; I was pleased to know that she exactly delved into the film and identified the drift of the metaphor the way it was grafted by the director. For me it was a revelation of a growing girl, yet a student of English literature battling her own way to pick things and live by and stand defiant. I knew about the film and read Passolinis personal viewpoints about Ill Porcilo which is too elliptical and metaphorical even today though carrying a heavy meaning for us. Said Koko: A good film is the you don’t forget in life-time. No I was not surprised by her special critical observation on art of the film and theatre which she often lands into. Her keener perception, it seems, has been enhanced by her taste for classic works, revealing art, elegance, social values and humanism in the best manner. How has she learnt it? Let us hear what she has observed: I am very much a workshop kind of person. For my films too, be it Ek Je Aache Kanya or even Mr. & Mrs Iyer, I work-shopped with colleagues before getting into the act. I feel rehearsals of yore have now evolved into workshops which is actually a lot better than going straight into workshops which is actually a lot better than going into the act. According to Koko, she did The Changing Room, a play, it was all the more meaningful since the play involved a lot of physical movements and eye contact. She still feels, it is only better if you know your co-actors from weeks instead of doing such project with absolute strangers. Said she:Moreever, theres always a thing or two to learn from your fellow actors. Some of the best people to workshop with Rahul Bose, Sohag Sen and Nigel Ward. I feel there are some great theatre personalities like Ryston Abel, H.Kanhaialal and Rohan Khayyam from who theres a lot to learn. Koko possesses a quaint penchant for things having experimental fling to rediscover truth and ideas that stand by us and the society. What this critic finds very interesting in Koko is the non-conformist attitude, something away from the rut, the conventional escapade found trendy in mainstream culture. She recognizes herself first as an aficionado of theatre and then cinema. Since her acting talent gets sharpened and honed by her theatre-experience first, she never boggles to admit it. Said she: I have always been into theatre. Believe me, some of the good work in theatre happened to me when I was studying at St.Stephens College in Delhi. My class did put up some great theatre and most of the time I acted in them. In fact, we also put up some public performances. I do remember doing Royston Abels Much Ado About Nautankin in Delhi. Much later, when I came back to Kolkata, I did a play called Pink Mary and Asha and …I feel theatre takes a lot out of you but at the end of it there is a sense of exhilaration. She is so much intelligent in her own capacity that she easily can discern what is idiotic or cardboard character from the imaginative, challenging ones. Take her comments for example on Titli, a film she had acted in directed by Rituparno Ghosh. Said she: With Titlis role I was more at home. I told the director that I was feeling like an idiot as I was hardly acting. On the contrary she liked the sharper variation in the character of Mrs. Iyer in her mother film Mr.& Mrs Iyer. According to her Mrs. Iyers role was more of a challenge for its subtitles and its formal alienness from me - of speaking English with a Tamil accent, holding a baby, wearing a sari, a shwal and high heels, apart from hailing from a different culture altogether and I had to do a lot of research for the role. And lo! She won the National award for the Best actress in the same film, affirming her strength and trust reposed in her. Mr & Mrs Iyer is, therefore, a water-shade for Koko as it gave her not only the national recognition but drew for her the international attention too. Said she: The character of Mrs. Iyer offered me scope for a great deal of preparation. I went to Chennai and stayed with some people from one of the strongholds of Mylapore Brahmins and the Tamil families and studied women there, how they live and talk, what they wear and so on. It is said she had also taped some important conversations by the Tamiliansss and then arranged a workshop with Rahul Bose and other actors. She is rather foursquare in matters of personal perception. Without it, she believes, not much really progresses. Said she: In films, one has to maintain the identity of the character, as a continuity, often during irregular stretches of shooting period, and also the verisimilitude of reality despite the fact the person you are talking to is often not there beyond the visual frame. Like her mother Aparna Sen, Koko is well-clued to feminist causes and subaltern issues of women, very much active in our society, often ruled by patriarchy. In this respect, she has somewhat postmodern sensibility and which is good, Not as a polemic, Koko, in her very usual way, as an avid reader of modern literature, likes to debate on modern and post-modern issue that have stirred up so much heat and controversy in the recent times. In fact, she is not so much vocal about it but at the same time she is not radically passive either. As Linda Hutcheon, postmodern scholar, prescribes that postmodern art openly investigates the critical possibilities open to art, without denying that its critique is inevitably in the name of its own contradictory ideology. However, she does not really disagree with us when we say postmodernism paradoxically manages to legitimize culture even as it subverts it. It is this doubtless-ness that avoids the danger Frederic Jameson sees in the subverting or deconstructing impulse operating alone; that is the danger of illusion of critical distance. In films to day, we cannot fob off impact of postmodernism by any degree of logic. About modern art of cinema, it is the function of irony in postmodern discourse that prevents any possible critical urge to ignore or trivialize historical-political questions. As a particular way of style into meaning, she believes, we, as receivers of postmodern art, we are all implicated in the legitimization of our culture. Koko has a different take on theatre and films. Says she: For me, whether theatre or films, it has to be exciting enough to do it. Which is why I do so much less work. In fact, of the new films Imaandar, Ammu and Raat Akeli Hain that I am doing may not be the conventional heroine but they are certainly important roles with well-etched out characters. I would like to see more that go on a singing binge. Of late, I have watched quite a few plays at Off-Broadway. I intend watching a few more. On her director-mother, she has deep faith and respect the way she structures her films and deconstructs it. She has already acknowledged how meticulously her mother tries to express her ideas, prepare her own screenplay and how she can penetrate into the characters. According to Koko, she has seen many times all the films directed by her (Aparna Sen) and thinks each of her films is marked by a deep understanding of womans personal experiences and her gradual transformation from the microcosm to macrocosm. Konkona Sensharma is now doing a film with the director of Chandni Bar Madhur Bhanadarkar called Page-3 where she is enlivening a character of a journalist, discovering how shallow and hypocritical the people she has to deal with around her in reality. On the film she has remarked: The Page-3 culture is very accessible to a person like me, unlike the Iyer culture. I havnt done that much research; so far its just been going around Mumbai, getting to know local trains, going to newspaper offices and meeting the people who work there. EMAIL: cinepradip@gmail Email: [email protected] ENDS. 29.06.2004
Posted on: Sat, 27 Sep 2014 14:19:00 +0000
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