Bird of Dusk review: Sangeeta Datta creates a legacy of Rituparno Ghosh with intensive research

Sangeeta Datta’s Bird of Dusk reflects the director’s passion for delving deep into the life of the pioneering filmmaker and cultural icon Rituparno Ghosh and also allows the audience to become a part of her own journey.

However, the documentary is not personal; rather it creates scope for introspection and raising questions about the multifaceted artiste. The comprehensive documentation of the artiste’s journey also leaves the reviewer in the dilemma whether Ghosh should be addressed as he or she, as during the culminating phase of Ghosh’s journey, the sensitive creative soul tried hard to find an identity in the spectrum of gender fluidity.

Kaustav Bakshi and Parjanya Sen used the term ‘hir’ or ‘zie’ to address the polymath in their article A Room Of Hir Own. This reviewer will also follow in their footsteps to address Ghosh here.

Datta’s documentary has a poetic beginning that gives the picture behind its title. It is a delight to see Ghosh explaining the story behind Abanindra Nath Tagore’s conception of his painting Bird of Dusk. The explanation itself hints how life itself formed into several artistic creations in Ghosh’s mind, eyes, hands etc. The conversation between Jisshu Sengupta and Ghosh has much more to reflect on Ghosh as a seer, thinker and how zie conceived love on the whole.

Tagore’s painting Bird of Dusk was inspired from a vision he had while sitting in Mussoorie on the day of [Hindu festival] Dussehra. The vision got new colours of the painter-writer himself, and turned into something beautiful that was far away from his vision. This prelude of the documentary makes way for the journey of Ghosh, who took inspiration from every bit of Kolkata, Bengaliness and Bengali lifestyle that manifested in hir films with a universal approach and got appreciation in several festivals in Berlin, Spain and London.

The remarkable aspect of the documentary is that it reflects Datta’s hard work to create a legacy of Ghosh. She has gone into hir childhood albums not only to show hir photographs, but also to build the background that sowed the seeds of the artistic potentials of Ghosh. Hir mother’s stories coloured hir imaginations. Zie would never shy away from expressing hir creative aspects or spontaneity while dancing to Helen’s songs while studying in South Point School. These glimpses into hir early days show how rooted zie was into hir own culture and traditions. In hir own words, zie as primarily concerned himself in catering to the Bengali audience. The international film festivals — where most of hir films got openings — were never hir goal.

The documentary is also a sheer delight for a foreign audience who wishes to have a composite peak into the culture of Kolkata and its life. In her attempt to capture the city as much as possible through the lenses of Ghosh, Datta and cinematographers Subhajit Prasad and Souvik Datta have delivered an array of memorable and picturaresque moments that truly hold the essence of the City of Joy. The compositions are aided by Soumitra Chatterjee and Mir Afsar Ali’s narrations from Ghosh’s autobiography, First Person.

Datta has interviewed a host of actors and directors, including Soumitra Chatterjee, Sharmila Tagore, Aparna Sen, Kaushik Ganguly, Prasenjit Chatterjee, Konkona Sensharma, Nandita Das and Arjun Rampal along with hir favourite technicians, including National Award-winning cinematographer Avik Mukhopadhyay, editor Arghyakamal Mitra and many other visual artistes and costume designers. She has juxtaposed their accounts with hir films chronologically and gradually peeled the layers of the artistic soul in a way as if they were the revelations to the actors as well.

The accounts are candid and they unveil a lot about the grey areas of the personality. At the same time, Datta also convincingly captures how each of the actors could not help but get influenced and shaken by the perspectives and work experiences of the director. As in the documentary Mir aptly puts it, “Love him or hate him — you cannot ignore him.”

Ghosh was immensely inspired by Rabindranath Tagore and Satyajit Ray’s sensibilities, works and philosophies. Apart from the emphasis on human relationships, their values and psychological turmoils in hir films, hir illustrations while working in the advertising agency Response for 10 years, also throws light on how inspired zie was as an artiste in totality by both Tagore and Ray who were also two of the most complete artistes with their contributions on literature, films, painting, philosophy and various other fields.

Datta doesn’t stay away from including the bits of complaints Sharmila or Nandita had for Ghosh to portray a fuller picture of the artiste, who also knew how to market hir films or works. Even through this account, Ghosh’s honesty becomes more apparent that perhaps too convinced the actors of hir true intentions. Datta also includes excerpts from the interviews film critics outside the country to give a sense of the widespread impact Ghosh’s films had on the international reception of Bengali films and culture on the whole.

She also intersperses Ghosh’s own words on hir mother’s death, hir thoughts on hir own films, hir sense of success and failures that contain the potential to move the audience with hir deep sensitivity. At the same time, hir uncompromising nature as a director is also revealed through the accounts of Rampal and Soumitra Chatterjee.

It is also significant how she places Ghosh’s debut as an actor in Kauhsik Ganguly’s film Arekti Premer Golpo (2011) marking a significant departure in hir life. Datta deserves credit for aptly presenting this phase in Ghosh’s life since which zie could not hide the inner woman anymore. This is an important chapter in the documentary as it allows the audience to have a grasp into the organic and authentic transformation in Ghosh’s life, as zie starts owning hir identity and becomes vocal about hir sexual preference and gradually becomes an icon for hir statements and beliefs.

As zie dresses up as a woman for a sequence in Arekti Premer Golpo and comes face to face with a part of hir self, that zie probably never dared to, it clearly conveys the revelation that changed Ghosh as a human being and an artiste forever. The episode of Ghosh breaking into tears after zie got done with the shot dressed as a woman and said to Ganguly that the woman left hir avatar for good speaks volumes of hir acute vulnerability of that transcending moment.

One might get reminded of Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl (2015) in this regard, as Ganguly says that the inner woman that zie was long hiding behind hir characters played by Rituparna Sengupta, Mamata Shankar, or Aishwarya Rai and Kirron Kher in hir films, came out and killed the filmmaker. Hir last film Chitrangada: The Crowing Wish (2012) is a testament of hir constant fight to come to terms with hir identity.

Datta’s documentary ends on a sad note, as well as overwhelms to a certain extent as it states how Ghosh did not want to be known to be carrying a disease (diabetes) to the world outside and rather became a recluse in the last days of hir life, fighting the battle with diabetes and loneliness on hir own.

Datta has mostly used a melancholic background score in the documentary that adds to the sensitive approach she takes. Bird of Dusk shows how influenced Datta herself was while working with the prolific director in various films as an assistant director and has become in sync with hir sensitivity.

Theatre artiste Ranjan Bose, dressing up as Ghosh and reading excerpts from First Person seems redundant in the initial sequences until he reveals Ghosh’s monumental influence on his theatre productions and the core subject matter of his theatre culture.