Synopsis
Mr. Bhuvan Shome (Utpal Dutt), is a middle-aged
widower and a dedicated civil servant working
with the Indian Railways. He is a strict
disciplinarian, almost to the point of being
fanatic who had not hesitated to throw his
own son out of job. So when he arrives at
a remote town in Saurashtra in Gujarat for
game hunting, the local ticket collector
(Sadhu Meher) is paranoid because he has
been served notice by the man for taking
bribes. But in the course of his rocky bullock
cart journey to the remote hinterlands,
an attack by a marauding buffalo, a failed
attempt at duck hunting and his interactions
with a frolicking village belle, Gauri (Suhasini
Mulay), who helps him to trap birds, he
discovers the simple joys of human relationships
and rural life. He undergoes a change of
heart and becomes a better person, thanks
to the humiliating but elevating experiences
of a single day.
The film
By 1968, Mrinal
Sen’s career had hit a low point
and he found it extremely difficult to find
producers for his projects. Though he was
a veteran of eight films and had become
a well-known name, none of his last five
films were memorable in terms of content,
form or commercial success. In 1969, he
applied for a loan from the newly formed
Film Finance Corporation (FFC, the precursor
of NFDC) and managed to get funds from them
for his next film. The result was Bhuvan
Shome (1969), a radical departure from
Sen’s earlier films and the usual
Indian cinema of the period. This film finally
launched him as a major filmmaker, both
nationally and internationally; it also
initiated the 'New Cinema' or the 'Indian
New Wave' film movement in India.
Simplistic to the point of being almost
threadbare, the episodic narrative of the
film is nevertheless peppered with visual
effects and self conscious sound designing
and intrusive music which in retrospect
look almost gimmicky. But at that time,
with its liberal use of freeze frames, masking,
quirky scene transitions, jump cuts, unexpected
shot juxtapositions and rudimentary animation,
it was quite a novelty and endeared itself
to its viewers immediately. There are passages
in the film that have an extemporaneous
feel, and sometimes verges on the documentary
mode, almost to the point of looking like
a Films Division newsreel. Sen carried these
cinematic effects to extreme lengths in
his later films which were heavily influenced
by radical European cinema of the period
as exemplified by the likes of Jean Luc
Godard and Marxist thoughts. But what sets
this film apart from his immediate later
films is his selection of a simple story,
which was devoid of any didacticism that
his later films came to be associated with.
In its essence the film is closer to the
spirit of the Russian short stories by masters
like Gogol and Chekov where nothing seemingly
happened as far as outward plotting was
concerned, but throbbed with monumental
reverberations just below the surface.
 The
protagonist is introduced through a voice-over
by Amitabh
Bachchan who received a princely sum
of Rs 300 for his contribution! Over the
commentary, the director resorts to animation
to pile up files on his desk to indicate
his bureaucratic obsession and inserts images
of Vivekananda, Ray,
Tagore, Ravi Sankar and relevant footage
of the ubiquitous political rallies of 1960s
Calcutta along side freeze frames of Shome's
close-ups to stress the quintessential nature
of his Bengali roots, despite having lived
all his life outside Bengal. The railway
tracks shot head on from a fast moving train
acts as a leitmotiv through out the film,
accentuating his regimented personality
that begins to wane as the film progresses.
The rocky journey on a bullock cart that
carries Mr. Shome to the hinterland at the
beginning of the film looks as it has been
milked beyond capacity to derive maximum
humour at the expense of a city bureaucrat.
The interaction between the urban passenger
who feels distinctly uncomfortable and the
rural driver (Sekhar Chaterjee) looks forced
and protracted. The only saving grace is
Utpal Dutt’s acting, which despite
being mannered adds to the charm of the
personality and compensates for the non-natural
tone of the segment. The same treatment
is meted out in the next segment when their
journey is suddenly arrested by a rude buffalo
and a frightened Mr. Shome is chased across
the barren landscape by the animal, much
to his horror. It fails to evoke any laughter
and the uneven editing here does not help
matters either. The futility of the segment
reaches its climax when the protagonist
is forced to climb up a tree to save himself
from the marauding animal!
The Gauri-Shome track forms the major chunk
of the film from this point. Thankfully
the film too manages to attain a certain
poise hereon as the pretty village girl
takes over the reins, and teaches the rude
bureaucrat the basics tenets of commonsense
necessary for shooting ducks in this kind
of a remote area. She turns out to be the
fiancée of Jadhav Patel, the ticket
collector who he had booked for corruption.
In Gauri, Mr Shome finds a fresh, throbbing
pulse in a dying world. And suddenly everything
lights up, perhaps heightening his sense
of hitherto isolation, in his newfound joy.
He realizes the futility of his arrogance
and his bureaucratic puritanism. He understands
the value of Nature and receives lessons
in folklore in an abandoned haveli, which
was supposedly a retreat of the king of
the region at some far off time where he
came to spend time with his queen.
There are some remarkable scenes between
the two characters that add sparkle to the
film. The scene where Gauri criticizes her
fiancé's boss without knowing that
this stranger is the 'culprit' forms the
central point in the film and acts as a
turning point in the 'education' of the
man. Mr. Shome listens to her tirade against
the bad boss with a long face; nobody has
ever spoken to him like that and analyzed
his character so ruthlessly and pointedly.
It really is quite funny. The reference
to the buffalo by the delectable heroine
is a smart subtext: he is like the rude
buffalo whom everybody is scared of, she
declares; and just as the buffalo can be
tamed only by Gauri, so is Mr. Shome tamed
by her eventually. The image of the girl
literally riding on the buffalo, which is
repeated at the end of the film when Mr.
Shome has joined office, but a changed man
now, drives home the point but with a force
that looks too didactic though. But by that
time we have had our fun at the man’s
expense. Another amusing scene is when she
literally forces him to get into a the local
dress and ties the long and ubiquitous pagri
(turban) around his head so that the ducks
don’t get scared by his city uniform;
the unfriendly and unpopular man had never
looked so funny and helpless in his life;
the pretty girl has him twirling around
her little finger. The point when she places
her hand softly on the shoulder of Mr. Shome
just as he is about to shoot emphasizes
her apprehension and suddenly underlines
her character; it’s a very tender
moment and brilliant touch in the film.
Despite all her practical inputs on trapping
birds, Mr. Shome however, misses his target
despite repeated attempts and is frustrated.
The sound of the gun shocks a bird but does
not kill him; Gauri retrieves the bird and
gives it to Mr. Shome. But when he has started
his journey back to town, carrying the frightened
duck in his arm, he realizes the futility
of his hunting ambitions and turns back
and returns to the girl’s hut. The
girl is surprised and excited to see him
back. Mr. Shome gifts the bird to her so
that it can keep company to her pet bird,
before going back once again. And so the
taming of the rude bureaucrat completes
a full circle.
As soon as he rejoins his office he summons
Jadhav Patel and tears down his dismissal
orders and promotes him to a bigger junction,
in fond remembrance of his times with Gauri
and her imminent marriage to the man. This
is a far cry from his declared motto on
his arrival at beginning of the film: "Duty
first, self last." But the ticket collector
has the last laugh: he writes to Gauri that
a bigger junction means bigger money. And
we assume that the young couple has a hearty
laugh at the expense of the metamorphosed
bureaucrat without his ever realizing it.
Mrinal Sen had major problems with the audiences’
interpretation of the film. Most viewers
read it as a story of the process of humanization
of a stuck up bureaucrat and sympathized
with the protagonist. Ray wonderfully summarized
the film in seven words: "Big Bad
Bureaucrat Reformed By Rustic Belle."
But with his leftist political leanings,
Sen time and again stressed that it was
just the reverse: it is the story of how
a stuck up bureaucrat is taken for a ride
by simple village folks. He had major issues
with Ray’s interpretation and always
made it a point to refer to him and differ
with him in public forums.
Be as it may, the film remains a lighthearted
attempt at comedy, which was not Sen’s
strongest métier, but it does manage
to reach across and strike a chord in the
hearts of its viewers over successive decades.
It has a freewheeling style and all the
indulgence of an adventurous director who
was trying desperately to seek a form that
would endear him to his audience without
alienating them and bring his film to commercial
success. In this he definitely succeeded,
unlike in his later films where his style
and treatment did tend to became too esoteric
at times.
No discussion of the film would be complete
without the mention of its debutant cinematographer
KK Mahajan.
A fresh graduate from the FTII (1966 Motion
Picture Photography Batch), his brilliant
camera work beautifully captures the landscape
of the vast and barren Saurashtra in all
its lustre and brings out the texture of
the sand dunes vividly. Particularly memorable
are the wide-angle shots of the heroine
in ethnic sari with a huge rifle slung across
her slender shoulder as she guides Bhuvan
Shome dressed in a local outfit across the
undulating sand dunes of Saurashtra. These
images of Suhasini Mulay and Utpal Dutt
trudging on the sandy barren landscape on
their way to the hunt have become almost
iconic. The breathtaking bevy of shots of
cranes taking off from the riverbed and
flying in the sky are other highlights of
the startling cinematography.
Mrinal reminisces about KK.: "…That
was the beginning of a journey, a long one,
which perhaps in just two cases, that too
under unforeseen circumstances, never broke.
KK. and I, worked together, starting from
Bhuvan Shome and continued unabated, once
a year, in various places, various languages,
and interestingly, in diverse situations.
In the process, I learnt a lot and so, I
believe, did he and we have been growing
together steadily, happily, clumsily. True,
we had initial problems to understand each
other but neither he nor I took unreasonable
time to get to know ourselves and then coming
out of one film and walking into another,
year after year, we became, as was expected,
almost one inseparable entity."
(Courtesy: The Cinema Journal, 1991)
Mention must also be made of the 16 year
old Suhasini Mulay who is spot on in the
role of the sprightly, young Gauri. And
of course Utpal Dutt, who carries the film
on his shoulder. The stock expressions and
the unique style of dialogue delivery that
came to be associated with his performance
only contributed to his popularity and never
felt repetitive. He had a way of carrying
those expressions and speaking lines with
an élan in whatever role he did and
we never tired of them. In this film he
makes full use of these devices and the
audience lapped them up with relish, marking
him out amongst the most memorable characters
in the annals of Indian cinema – Bhuvan
Shome.
Bhuvan Shome has been a long and
memorable journey for all its participants
and is still fondly remembered by cinephiles
and film historians. It went on to win three
National Awards: Best Film, Best Actor (Utpal
Dutt) and Best Director for Mrinal Sen and
was screened in the Directors’ Fortnight
section at the Cannes Film Festival in 1970.
Ranjan Das is an alumnus of the
Film and Television Institute of India (FTII),
Pune with specialization in Film Editing
1992. Having edited various documentaries
and directed different programmes for Bengali
Television, he has also written for the
popular TV serials Sidhhant, Crime
Patrol and Rihayee.
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