Biopics hold all the more fascination if the subject is interesting. Otherwise, they tend to get monotonous. But Suman Ghosh’s documentary, Parama: A Journey with Aparna Sen, is extremely gripping. Obviously, for Aparna Sen is a fascinating personality. Just screened at the Rotterdam Film Festival, it traces her career graph with lucidity and compelling movie clips. Who can forget Violet Stoneham in 36 Chowringhee Lane (helmed by Aparna) played with admirable natural ease by Jennifer Kendal. A haunting portrait of loneliness, Sen’s first work behind the camera captures the pain and pathos of an elderly Anglo-India spinster, who lives in Calcutta’s (It was not renamed then) Chowringhee Lane. In fact, this lane actually exists. With Dhrtiman Chatterjee and Debashree Roy, who play lovers and use Stoneham’s flat as their love nest, it was a poignant work. I still remember Stoneham, a teacher, walking the city’s deserted streets at night all by herself to the melodious lyrics of “Silent Night, Holy Night”.
However, before Sen got into direction, she acted in several films – most notably in Satyajit Ray’s Samapti (one segment of Three Daughters). She had also been a favourite of Mrinal Sen, Tapan Sinha and Rituparno Ghosh. And even Merchant-Ivory got her to essay brilliant roles in The Guru (1969) and Bombay Talkie (1970).
Actor Anjan Dutt however feels that Aparna did not get the kind of parts she deserved. “ I do not like the bulk of her acting because she was capable of doing far better roles than what was offered to her”. Actress Shabana Azmi disagrees with this view. “ An actress must do a wide gamut of roles, otherwise she is limiting herself”. In fact, Aparna herself agrees with this and she told her father, Chidananda Dasgupta, who was better known as a brilliant critic than a moviemaker: “There is no way you will not act in mainstream cinema if you want to make a career out of it”.
Yet, she would never allow her daughters, Konkana SenSharma, an actress in her own right, to watch mainstream or popular Hindi or Bengali cinema. “Sometimes, I would sneak in and watch it”, Konkana says. “ We watched a lot of world cinema. My mother moulded our tastes in cinema”.
Apart from 36 Chowringhee Lane, my own favourite is Mr and Mrs Iyer with Konkana and Rahul Bose. It a story about a young couple who share a bus journey and come to understand each other. Bose was compelling as was Konkana.
Aparna’s life too has been a happy journey. With films like Parama, The Japanese Wife, 15 Park Avenue, The Rapist and so on, Sen has had a good life and times. What is more, she took on very bold subjects like extra-marital affair (Parama) and rape (The Rapist). These often made her cinema a lively talking point.
Aparna is knocking 80, but she is still spirited and full of life.
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