Akaler Sandhane

'Aakaler Sandhane' (In Search of Famine) to my mind is one of the best films Mrinal Sen ever made. His superb touch, some puckish humour and sense of drama is backed up by some wonderful acting. No wonder this film simply ran away with every award in India and the Silver Bear in Berlin.

The story is about a film company which sets out to make a film on the Great Bengal Famine of 1943. They select a village in rural Bengal for outdoor shooting and start work. The story weaves around the trials of the troupe in the village.

To me, the best part of the film is the way Mrinal Sen interlaces three distinct themes. The first is the superficial story of the film company and the difficulties they face. The second is the class distinctions conservatism and prejudices that permeates village society and the third is a scathing criticism that 50 years after independence, stark poverty still exists and famine still stalks the land.

"Akaler Sandhane" is a hauntingly beautiful and deeply layered Bengali film that transcends time and narrative. Directed by the legendary Mrinal Sen, the movie brilliantly blurs the line between reality and fiction as a film crew sets out to portray the 1943 Bengal famine - only to find themselves emotionally entangled with the real struggles of the village they're filming in.

The strength of the film lies not just in its socio-political message, but in its storytelling style - subtle, self-reflective, and disturbingly relevant. Sen masterfully critiques both the cruelty of historical famine and the ethical dilemmas of artists trying to recreate human suffering.

Performances are pitch-perfect - particularly by Smita Patil and Dhritiman Chatterjee - capturing raw vulnerability and conflicted conscience. The cinematography, stark and poetic, pulls you right into the emotional landscape of the film.

This is not just a film about a famine - it's a film about representation, responsibility, and the power imbalance between those who suffer and those who tell their story

A must-watch for lovers of meaningful cinema.

I watched this film with a lot of expectations. Maybe that is why now i feel kind of dissapointed. Don't get me wrong. It is an excellent film by its own merit. There is no doubt about it. It has a a unique 'film within a film' premise. It tries to focus on one of the the darkest corners of bengal history. There is also a ' art vs reality' vibe undercurrent here. Moreover it has a political element. The director tried to shed light on the class struggle between the proletariats and the elite and how it may have a role in engendering famine. This film deals with so many serious issues that it cannot help but be preachy at times. Especially the local school headmaster character and his sermons feel kind of forced. Look, i get the points the director wanted to make but in doing so, he sacrificed a good deal of spontaneity. That is my nitpick about the whole film. If it were less preachy and more spontaneous, then it would definitely make a more pround impression on me

Just adding what I inferred as the message of the movie (Caveat: I am not an avid film buff and see very few movies in a year. So my interest and exposure to films is limited. This may be considered before the reader takes any of my ratings/comments/reviews seriously. Given this rider, I am open to correction anytime by anyone.)

The film tries to convey the message that there is often thin and blurred line between fiction and reality.

In the movie, the villagers fear that playing the role of a 'fallen woman' would make a woman a 'fallen woman' in the eyes of society (the villagers).

Similarly the film crew is insensitive to the villagers need and does not think it is creating a 'famine' by taking away the village produce for its own extravagant consumption.

Akaler Sandhane (AS2) was released nearly a decade after Satyajit Ray's Ashani Sanket (AS1) . There are a number of clues to help the viewer connect the two films, and read its message hidden between the lines; but for that, it is necessary to re-watch AS1 after AS2.

Early in AS2, a character says that the bamboo groves remind him of Pather Panchali. For any cinephile, it's fleeting invitation to recall Ray's work, specifically AS1, the only other significant film on the Bengal Famine of '43. Later, Dhritiman's character is annoyed that an actor has shaped her eyebrows, and admonishes her for being insincere. In another scene, a young woman, fan-girling over the "real" Soumitra Chatterjee, asks the "director" why the the great actor wasn't part of his project.

It is worth noting that by the time Soumitra Chatterjee took part in AS1, he was already a mega star, having taken part in over 40 popular films. Mrinal Sen must have watched Soumitra Chatterjee's stellar presence, and Babita's immaculately shaped eyebrows in a closeup of the harrowing climax in AS1, and mused how easily the veneer of the "real" breaks and exposes the "make-believe" underneath.

In fact Sen constantly plays with this idea of "real" and "make believe" with wit and satire. Smita Patil's character breaks down convincingly in front of the camera, but the audience is aware it is make-believe, because they see the camera and hear the director's running instructions on how to feel. In contrast, Durga's the emotions are real and present. Smita Patil snaps out of her character in the very next scene, but Durga can't. The viewer also becomes aware of the Sen casting choice for Durga, who genuinely looks rural and of low-caste, relative to Ray's casting of Chhutki, who glaringly does neither.

It may be a stretch to see Dhritiman's character, the high-intellect, charming, urbane, privileged "director" to be modelled after Ray. He is an outsider in a real village, with his imported classicist and humanist morality, searching for something that is staring right in the face.

I love Ray's work; his art, literature, music, and of course films, and until now, never got into Mrinal Sen's films. But with AS2, i'm beginning to appreciate Mrinal Sen's iconoclastic, provocative rebellious art. How fascinating!