Mayur Lookhar
Mumbai, 12 Dec 2017 23:31 IST
Despite Argentinian actress Eleonora Wexler’s spirited act, the hollow screenplay and poor contemporary drama make this Pablo Cesar film hard to bear.
Say Bengal and the two names that spring quickest to mind are Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Nobel laureate Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore. The latter is arguably the most cherished literary giant in the the history of Bengal, if not India.
While Tagore has hundreds of poems, songs, novels and short stories to his credit, one chapter from his life that has not been spoken about much in India relates to his relationship with Argentinian writer Victoria Ocampo.
Articles and even books have been written about it, but never has any filmmaker made a feature film on the subject. The fear of hurting Bengali sentiments was perhaps a deterrence.
The first film on the admittedly platonic Tagore-Ocampo relationship has finally been made by Argentinian filmmaker Pablo Cesar. Thinking Of Him was the closing film at the 48th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa last month.
Remarkably, Cesar revealed that it was diplomat Rengaraj Vishwanathan, India's former ambassador to Argentina, who first suggested that he make a film on Ocampo and Tagore. At a panel discussion on 'Tagore in celluloid' at IFFI, Cesar said he wanted to contemporize the chapter from history. Hence, he has incorporated a modern story that intertwines with the Tagore-Ocampo saga. What we get to see is the Tagore-Ocampo story in monochrome and the contemporary tale of an Argentinian professor who travels to Santiniketan in colour.
For the uninitiated, in 1924, Tagore was travelling to Peru but fell sick and was stranded in Buenos Aires, capital of Argentina. Writer, intellectual and ardent Tagore fan Victoria Ocamp saw this as the perfect opportunity to meet her literary hero. The duo soon charmed each other with their poems. The exchange of letters continued even after Tagore returned to India.
Cesar picked Argentinian actress Eleonora Wexler to essay the role of Ocampo while Bengali cinema veteran Victor Banerjee played Tagore. The modern-day tale sees professor Felix Mazzano (Hector Bordoni) travel to Santiniketan for some soul-searching. The suicide of one of his students has left Felix disturbed and he heads east in search of peace. Felix has his own demons to beat, too. In Santiniketan, he meets Kamali (Raima Sen) and develops a soft corner for her.
I haven’t followed Tagore beyond the school curriculum, but if Cesar wanted to contemporize the subject to reach out to the present-day audience, he sadly fails to strike a chord. While the two eras are shot in different styles, the storytelling in both lacks soul. The screenplay is not only tardy, but also mostly hollow. To be sure, there are moments where the film holds your attention, but it rarely gets out of second gear.
Writer Jeronimo Toubes and Cesar must have deliberated hard how to go about telling this tale. Do we turn this into a literary masterpiece with a plethora of poetic exchanges? Or do we curb the poetic exchanges and make it more human and appealing to the common audience? The nature of the screenplay suggests that Cesar failed to strike a balance. As a result, Thinking Of Him comes across as a half-baked effort. Perhaps he would have been better off just narrating the tale of Ocampo and Tagore.
The contemporary story of Felix looks promising in the beginning but fades into a dour drama once Felix lands in India. True, Santiniketan is a spiritual place where people mediate more than talk, but one can’t afford to have prolonged silences in a feature film. While in Argentina, Felix bears a glum look, but in India he is transformed into the clichéd overenthusiastic foreigner who amuses you with his childlike demeanour. In the process, the character becomes a caricature.
Raima Sen utters just a few words and has very few scenes, too. It's almost as if she does not exist in the film. Cesar may have aimed at drawing a parallel with the Tagore-Ocampo relationship, but Kamali and Felix have nothing going for them. The duo hardly communicates, and shares very few scenes. There is no chemistry between the artistes either. It makes you wonder what the contemporary tale is all about, and whether there was any need for it. Especially since it has very little correlation to the Tagore-Ocampo story.
The veteran Victor Banerjee puts in a rather lacklustre performance as Tagore. While I do not know how Tagore was as a personality, there is no conviction in the way Banerjee recites the poetic letters. At times, he appears to be rushing in his dialogue delivery.
The sole saving grace of the film is Eleonora Wexler. The Argentine’s poise expresses both dignity and grace. She has confessed to being uncomfortable in English and perhaps the filmmaker used the services of a voiceover artiste, but Wexler has been able to show the soul of Ocampo with her endearing act.
Here is Ocampo, all excited to meet Tagore, but when the moment arrives, nerves get the better of her and she ends the conversation with a simple ‘it was a pleasure to meet you’. Don’t we all experience this when me meet our idols?
Wexler’s impressive show, however, cannot save Thinking Of Him, which is let down by a half-baked screenplay. We hear Kamali say Tagore wrote over 3,000 poems and songs in his lifetime but one lifetime is not enough to read and understand the great man. Sadly, Pablo Cesar fails at his first attempt. Will he get another shot at redemption in this lifetime? Tagore, for certain, won’t be ‘thinking of him’.