In Akaler Sandhane, Mrinal Sen employs a meta-fictional structure to probe the political complexities of representative practices. The narrative begins with a production team camping in a village in Bengal to shoot a film based on the 1943 famine. In the ensuing process, the social conflicts that haunted the village during the actual famine get reinvoked in the course of several encounters between the villagers and film crew. It leads to unrest among the villagers and the eventual disbandment of the shoot. Sen's critical acuity in articulating the dynamics of such encounters needs no further acclamation. The differences in their worldview, disruption of the local economy, and the incitement of past trauma are distinctly stated in the film. The village headmaster's didactic speech in the end further rounds up the troubled situation between the film crew and the village authorities from a dual perspective. But what lurks beneath Sen's critique of filmmaking structure is an acute recognition of the force of narrative devices and formal tropes in fiction.
The crew's director, played by Dhritiman Chatterjee, goes through a process of unlearning as he faces unforeseen circumstances during the shoot and negotiates with the village's reality. As the scenes of his film unfold in the village, the locals associate themselves with the enacted sequences. Durga, a resident of the village, finds her predicament reflected in the character of Smita Patil, the female protagonist of the concerned film. The orthodox Brahmin elites of the village, on the other hand, find themselves on the evil-side of the story as it highlights the exploitative practices of upper-castes. Haren Aon, who used to perform in jatras, rekindles his lost passion for playacting by witnessing the shoot. Despite the contextual differences between the villagers' past and Chatterjee's story, these associations develop over narrative tropes that touch upon the universal conditions during a humanitarian crisis. The moral dilemma of a married woman who trades sexual service for survival necessities is one among such tropes. Instead of the plot/story as a whole, narrative fragments and their particular affects become a site of identification and reflection. Even on a formal plane, the word "cut", accompanying the clapperboard, is joyously reiterated in onomatopoeic association by the village children.
What does storytelling achieve after all? In the film's end, the Brahmins remain stubborn, Durga's predicament is unchanged, Haren's involvement with the crew terminates, and the production company fails in its endeavour. But, the act of storytelling in that space generated an opening for the villagers, as well as the crew, to reflect on their cultural practices and current state of existence. The potency of fiction precisely lies in this bare affective capacity to situate ourselves better and rethink our relationship with others. In the light of this reading, one cannot help recalling Sen's remark in an interview for the Cineaste: "you cannot topple a government or a system by making one Potemkin... All you can do is create an environment in which you can discuss a society that is growing undemocratic, fascistic."
The crew's director, played by Dhritiman Chatterjee, goes through a process of unlearning as he faces unforeseen circumstances during the shoot and negotiates with the village's reality. As the scenes of his film unfold in the village, the locals associate themselves with the enacted sequences. Durga, a resident of the village, finds her predicament reflected in the character of Smita Patil, the female protagonist of the concerned film. The orthodox Brahmin elites of the village, on the other hand, find themselves on the evil-side of the story as it highlights the exploitative practices of upper-castes. Haren Aon, who used to perform in jatras, rekindles his lost passion for playacting by witnessing the shoot. Despite the contextual differences between the villagers' past and Chatterjee's story, these associations develop over narrative tropes that touch upon the universal conditions during a humanitarian crisis. The moral dilemma of a married woman who trades sexual service for survival necessities is one among such tropes. Instead of the plot/story as a whole, narrative fragments and their particular affects become a site of identification and reflection. Even on a formal plane, the word "cut", accompanying the clapperboard, is joyously reiterated in onomatopoeic association by the village children.
What does storytelling achieve after all? In the film's end, the Brahmins remain stubborn, Durga's predicament is unchanged, Haren's involvement with the crew terminates, and the production company fails in its endeavour. But, the act of storytelling in that space generated an opening for the villagers, as well as the crew, to reflect on their cultural practices and current state of existence. The potency of fiction precisely lies in this bare affective capacity to situate ourselves better and rethink our relationship with others. In the light of this reading, one cannot help recalling Sen's remark in an interview for the Cineaste: "you cannot topple a government or a system by making one Potemkin... All you can do is create an environment in which you can discuss a society that is growing undemocratic, fascistic."