MR & MRS IYER: Aparna Sen's Latest, a Probe into Human Psyche

          KOLKOTA: Aparna Sen, the director who hit world headlines with her disturbing yet true portrayal of an old woman's life in the critically acclaimed '36, Chowrangi Lane' two decades ago, has her second English release, 'Mr and Mrs Iyer', set in the backdrop of the communal riots that hit India after a 16th century mosque in Ayodhya was demolished by Hindu zealots.

           It is a finely woven love story between a Hindu married woman and her Muslim companion. But, as Sen says, what makes her film different is not just its strong inter-religious overtones but the striking insight into the working of an individual mind when caught in bizarre circumstances. In the film, she questions the trend of reducing a human to his one basic identity: "Religion."

           Ironically, it was during the making of this film that religious riots broke out in Gujarat in which over 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed. For Sen as well as her unit, Gujarat was a grim reminder of the harsh reality which they were dealing with and, in fact, made them sit up and question the basics of their film. I had known and read about the Bombay riots but nothing had prepared us for Gujarat.

           "We got a shock during the last lapse of our shooting, that was when the riots broke out. It almost seemed that we had precipitated it and we felt terrible," said Sen, who was honoured with a retrospective at the Kolkata Film Festival last month.

           The film begins with a curfew situation in rural Bengal, where Meenakshi Iyer, a Hindu woman, saves her Muslim companion from blood-thirsty Hindu zealots by referring to him as her husband. Though the inspiration was macabre, Sen has clearly struck a chord: the movie won a Junior Jury prize for best director at the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland and the script earned her a Netpac Jury prize for "courage in raising an issue of relevance in a work of cinematic density."

           Apparently the film seems on similar lines with Maniratnam's 'Bombay' which was again a love story set in the backdrop of communal violence. To this Aparna Sen justifies that her film, Mr and Mrs Iyer, is not a mainstream Bollywood film, it's a simple tale of two people thrown in unforeseen circumstances. She brushes away the thought of making commercial cinema clarifying what cinema means to her.

           Mr and Mrs Iyer is about how relationships grow and are nurtured when people are forced to be together on a journey. The film deals with characters from diverse backgrounds. While Raja Choudhary (Rahul Bose) is a Bengali, Meenakshi Iyer (Konkona Sen) is a Tamilian Brahmin. Konkona expressed that the experience of being directed by one's own mother is no different especially after the film, 'Titli', in which both Konkona and Aparna had performed their real life roles of daughter and mother on screen.

           Actor Rahul Bose who plays the role of a wildlife photographer in the film, Mr and Mrs Iyer, has been acting in several off-beat 'Hinglish' films like English August. He has strong opinions with regard to the recent developments in Indian cinema where 'Hinglish' films are being appreciated. Making a point on the 'cross-over' films, Rahul said that only Everybody Says I'm Fime after Lagaan has been a 'cross-over' film. The distributors seem to be keen on such low-budget films with a good subject sense since they feel it is easier to recover money than other big-budget films which are consistently falling at the box-office.

           After Hindi, English is increasingly becoming the medium of communication for people all over India. And with that 'Hinglish' films at their peak now are trying to reach the urban, young, English-speaking audience both in India and abroad.

December 27,  2002

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