Movie Mahal

Preceded by ‘Nagarik’ (The Citizen) which only got a release after Ghatak’s death, his second film ‘Ajantrik’ is the quirky story of one man’s undying love for his car, a 1920’s Chevrolet affectionately referred to as Jagaddhal. Ghatak says that he procrastinated over the story for twelve long years before making it into a film. Arguably one of the most idiosyncratic art films to have emerged from the fifties, ‘Ajantrik’ utilises a remarkably layered sound design and unsentimental narrative approach to produce a poignant and funny depiction of the awkward relationship between man and machine. When asked in an interview of the films most personally satisfying for him as a director, Ghatak chose to highlight four in particular including Ajantrik referring to its ‘brevity of expression and for certain technical achievements’. Film critic and academic Jonathan Rosenbaum go as far as to draw some enlightening parallels with the work of Jacques Tati:

‘I have no way of knowing if Ritwik Ghatak ever saw Jacques Tati’s 1953 masterpiece Mr Hulot’s Holiday, but when I look at his second feature, Ajantrik (1958), it’s hard not to be reminded of it…There’s a similar association made between Bimal (Kali Banerjee), the cab-driver hero of Ajantrik, and his own broken-down car. The fact that this car has a name, Jagaddhal, and is even included in some rundowns of the film’s cast, also seems emblematic of this special symbiosis.’

Ritwik Ghatak: Reinventing the Cinema, Jonathan Rosenbaum, 2006

On the most basic level Ghatak imbues the car with a riotous personality that comes to symbolise wider ideas including that of technology, the machine age and above all, rapid modernisation. Such are the affections Bimal harbours for his battered Chevrolet, his presence and existence becomes defined by an innate attachment. One could definitely label this as a road movie, with Bimal’s episodic journey across the plains of the Ganges delta providing some illuminating compositions of rural landscapes. However, it is the observation of the Oraons tribe through the elaborate dance rituals that offers a glimpse of Ghatak’s personal ethnographic fascination with marginalised cultures and people – a preoccupation underlined in an article titled ‘About Oraons: (Chotonagpur)’ written in 1955 by Ghatak and a short ‘preparatory test film’ which he shot whilst filming ‘Ajantrik’. He had hoped to make a film on the ‘life of the Adivasis of Ranchi region and on the Oraons of Rani Khatanga village’ but this like many other ideas were never realised due to financial difficulties and an uncompromising approach.