Young at heart, rebel in the mind. That is Mrinal Sen for you. Outrageous, angry, unorthodox but always honest in his work. His films didn't provide conclusions, rather they probed the viewer to engage in a dialogue.
Silhouette film magazine's tribute on the master's centenary captured this timeless essence of his cinema.
Neither anecdotal nor heavy with academic jargons, these diverse twenty critical essays are an absolute starting point in any serious discussion on the cinema of Mrinal Sen.
In the context of Indian cinema Mrinal Sen is probably the most unique instance where a filmmaker shrugged off the uncertain, groping trends of his early work to a more assured signature in his later films. This in no way tries to underscore the fact that within this sweep as well, Sen changed the philosophical fulcrum of his films multiple times.
From his contemporary films in the early 1960s till his epoch-making Bhuvan Shome (made in 1969 which ushered in the Indian New Wave), from his angst-ridden films on his El-dorado Calcutta to the more subtle trajectory in the films of the eighties, Sen constantly surged to find new meanings, new ways, new paths to his cinematic truth. His films, apart from a handful, were never popular in the Box-Office but that didn't make him cautious about experimenting with ideas and forms. He made films in Hindi and other Indian languages, apart from his native Bengali, much to the dismay of many of his compatriots who could, at their very best, merely think of casting actors with a vernacular different from Bengali in their Bengali films.
In being more open to other racial identities, in terms of locale, setting and language, Sen could achieve greater success in terms of recognition and acclaim, at many times from international forums as well. The Silver Bear at Berlin for Aakaler Sandhane in 1980 and the Cannes Jury award for Kharij a couple of years later mark the point. Notwithstanding the awards Sen's films continued to intrigue the audience to look beyond the obvious, to think deeper.
More importantly, through out his career, Mrinal Sen seldom looked for content endings and faithful completions. His quest had always been towards the unresolved conclusions, the tentative culminations which is why his films continue to intrigue us even now.
14 May 2023 marked his birth centenary, undoubtedly Indian cinema's most consistently polemical filmmaker. To pay homage, 'Silhouette' film magazine carried several articles for the four weeks starting with his birthday. The articles, critiques and reviews, covered different aspects of his cinematic career and urged the reader to probe further to re-visit his cinema and to reexamine the political intellect of its auteur.
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