Review of A River Called Titas

There have been few notable movies made in Bengali on the lives of fishermen community like Ganga in 1960, Dwiper Naam Tiya Rang in 1963 before Titas Ekti Nadir Naam in 1973. Incidentally Ritwik Ghatak who is the director of Titas Ekti Nadir Naam was also the scriptwriter for Dwiper Naam Tiya Rang. Ghatak took his experimentation of film making to next level in this direction of his, which is described as hyperlink cinema with multiple narratives, characters and plots and subplots intertwined with each other to present a holistic picture of the lives of the community living by the riverside. Based on the novel by Adwaita Mallabarman, the first half is distinctly different from the second. While there seemed to be a story being built in the initial half came to a sudden halt to intermission. For regular movie watchers, it would seem to take the natural transition to beyond intermission and good enough to cover the whole length of a film, but what we see are different characters and incidents taking place in latter half with the one central character in Basanti and the boy Ananta to a minor extent maintaining continuity. Such experimental story telling with minimalistic movement of camera angles and many close up shots would either have takers or no takers. One particular portion towards the end struck me where after the river Titas died down and the fishermen community was denied their right to the land even, an old village woman talked of only one profession left, that is of begging and the younger woman talked of her old age being an advantage to that end unlike hers. The film ends with Basanti digging through the sand with her hands for some water in starvation baring the stark realities of the hand to mouth poor of our country who know not of many other than a singular livelihood. 6.5-7/10.