L'homme-auto

"They call me a machine, they don't understand that Jaggadal is also a human". The complex interaction between nature, mankind and the machine in the backdrop of an harsh and rocky wasteland of Bihar comes the unique story of Jaggadal. Though the name is masculine but the car is definitely feminine as illuminated in the movie. This is the masterstroke of Ritwik and could well be his defining work. No other movie captured this relationship between a man and his machine as have been done here. All later movies based on such theme will be pale including the most recent AI. Only a vagabond and an insane be so ungrateful and unemotional to something which have been making a living for him for so many years. A point proved in Ajantrik. Machines are not just numbers like 571 on the rope-way bucket moving in an orchestrated fashion along a guided track doing a very mechanical thing. Machines, like humans also have the ability to grow affinity with their owner and show all the emotions even jealousy. Jaggdal for example, never gave up carrying impossible tasks one after another.

There were people in the movie who never believed in this extra-ordinary connection and ultimately they were proved right but only superficially. That's one of the reason Bimal laughed at the end.

If the true measure of all art is to evoke emotion and to create a lasting impression in the mind of the audience, then Ajantrik has indeed succeeded, in-spite of how awkward and outrageous the story could be. This would not have been possible without the brilliance of Kali Bannerjee and the supporting caste. Ajantrik would have been a great movie if it had just stopped there.

However, the movies doesn't stop there and it went on exploring many other things and there lies the greatness of Ritwik. Taking a subject which is almost impossible to render on screen e.g. to make he audience feel emotional to an inanimate object; something never attempted before in cinema and not only brilliantly executing it but ultimately delivering much more than that. His movie has many threads as it tells a multi-dimensional story where the actors and the surrounding often overlap and Ajantrik is no exception to this and yet it doesn't bore the audience, rather it keep the viewing much more intriguing with the seemingly discorded but ultimately very coherent perplexity of the sights and sounds.

The movie also has brilliant photography ever captured of a car in motion pictures. The ending is one of the finest and the looming close up says it all. The sound track as always impregnable.

A must watch for any true connoisseur of movie. Something is definitively wrong with the rating system in IMDb. Also disheartening to see so few reviews.

Deals with the relationship between a a car and his owner. This is the best of Ghatak which does not deal much with his uber famous separation theme. Rumour has it that Ray made 'Abhijan' by getting inspired for this. Even some people cites this as a stepping stone of 'Taxi Driver' by Scorsese much later. I remember this being one of my childhood favourites. I cried loud during the climax for some reason. And that is the success of his storytelling.

Ajantrik (1958) by Ritwik Ghatak was adapted from a short story of same name by Subodh Ghosh

The story of this movie can't be explained because when we start to list the events that happens in this story, we will invariably miss everything that is important.

This story is not about events but an emotion.

Lets say a person has passionately stockpiled a collection of Playboy magazines for years. And one day he burns them all up in utter disgust upon recognizing how much this passion has taken out of him. And while all the magazines are burning, he suddenly feels regret shooting up his spine making him to scream, 'what have I done?'. After sobbing in utter distress for few days, he slowly starts collecting Hustler magazines.

No, this was not the set of events that is happening in Ajantrik. But this is what gets conveyed in Ajantrik, the burden of human need and obsession.

Ajantrik is a meditation about a primal emotion that keeps every man and woman tied to a cycle of obsession and despair.

And the guys who sit below trees say, recognition of this emotion is the path towards liberation.

I saw this movie long back, and I never knew who the director was, until of late. If you live a character in a movie, no matter how odd or eccentric it is, this is one, and Kali Banerjee absoultely nailed it. He was an immensely talented actor of his day, partly underutilized I say, much like Kharaj Mukherjee of now. Still he came up with breathtaking performances in Neel Akasher Neeche, Kokhono Megh, etc. Ritwik Ghatak shows his class yet again, and comparisons can be drawn of this film with Ray's Abhijaan, where both the characters share the love of what they drive. Very apt title for the movie... 8/10.

Bimal becomes emotionally attached to his car, proving that you do not have to be alienated from inanimate fetishized objects. The car, 1920 Chevy jalopy, sputters and winks, communicating in a science fictional language with his increasingly obsessive master/ brother/ doppelganger. The sound in the film is remarkable and could easily work as an audio play. Makes the sound in films today look backward and archaic. Ghattak uses many different angles: part social realism, part Laurel and Hardy slapstick, part ethnographic documentary (scenes of a religious night ritual which Bimal wanders into are especially striking). In this way, the picture resembles 'Brick and Mirror' by Golestan or Merjui's 'The Cow' and works in a far more cohesive manner than an art school pastiche like 'Taxi Driver', which was probably influenced by it. Not far from the dusty roads and lakes is Samuel Beckett and his large human- headed flowerpots. Ghattak is a modernist of the old school. It is not all humiliation for Bimal and the car, although Ghattak has said the idea is absurdist and one shouldn't fall for the image without the irony. Sending up the sentimental, the car is finally junked as Bimal oozes tears. A child honks the remaining horn and giggles in the outback dust. Despite his loopy friendship with the clunker, there's a lot of heart in the way he is depicted (Kali Bannerjee deserves a lot of praise for playing Bimal straight, without a smirk). After all, you can't make something just to despise it, unless you are Dr. Frankenstein or you design public housing. That is a dishonest laughter. Problem: prints tend to be bad and the English summation probably butchers the more subtle Bengali dialogue. Criterion should do this one, but they tend to ignore non- Ray Indo- Asia. 'Ajantrik' (Pathetic Fallacy, or The Unmechanical) is vigorous as hell. At times, it slips into a sleepwalking lyricism, as the camera is hypnotized by a beautiful runaway girl or Bimal sitting exhausted by the water with his mechanical friend. They race trains, carry impossible numbers of people to weddings, and endure the laughter of impudent, mud- slinging brats. A buddy road movie for anthropomorphic sensualists, the film constantly threatens to go off in a million directions. That's part of the ruse: Ghattak really runs a tight ship, edited like a piece of music, with an utterly original way of gluing together his parodic elements. He even jibes his Parallel Cinema comrades, while using some of their more striking innovations in photography to project the truth of his unreality. Black comedy in our sadly post- Ritwik Ghattak world is just suburban cruelty. Film students today should watch this so they can get some idea of what an avant garde used to be.