Award for Bengali Pride?

Iconic Bengali actor Soumitra Chatterjee getting the Dada Saheb Phalke award - the highest honor in Indian cinema – may be recognition of his hard work in the last 53 years, but it also is a delight for West Bengal in several other ways. For the past several months West Bengal has been caught in a chain of controversies-political one -upmanship, crime, Maoist violence   and what not. The announcement of the award is sure to sooth those frayed tempers. For Chatterjee, however, it   was an “emotional moment” and, as he himself said, would receive the award ‘on behalf of the doyens of the Bengali movie industry whose guidance helped him evolve as an actor’.

Ten years ago –precisely in 2001 –Chatterjee had turned down the Best Actor award accusing the national selectors of discrimination. Now that the top most award has gone to him he should not be complaining any longer.  For Bengalis, too, this will   be undoubtedly a cherished moment. There is no disputing the fact that West Bengal has given birth to some of the best talents –actors, directors, music directors, singers- who have made the country swollen with pride. Before Chatterjee, eleven others from this state had got the prestigious award and eleven is not a bad number compared to all other awardees put together. For India’s film fraternity this is the only award incontrovertible- the conviction has outgrown – and that not much politics goes into it at the time of selection. Naturally, it is in the wish list of every veteran film personality. Of course, much before Chatterjee got the Phalke award, he was honored with 'The Officier des Arts et Métier’s, the highest award for arts from France and lifetime achievement award from Italy. Recognitions come late in India, but they do come.

Chatterjee getting the Dada Saheb Phalke award has yet another dimension-the amount of toil and hard work Bengalis like him put when it comes to film and theatre.Then, there is what is called ‘chemistry’. Chatterjee's association with Satyajit Ray is often compared with the chemistry between famous actor-director duos of the world such as Akira Kurosowa-Toshiro Mifune and Marcello Mastroianni-Federico Fellini. So strong was the chemistry that Chatterjee became Ray's favourite, and played the lead roles in most of the movies including "Sonar Kella", "Charulata", and "Ghare Baire". Besides Ray, directors like Tapan Sinha, Tarun Majumdar, Mrinal Sen and others were responsible for honing Chatterjee’s acting skills.

Soumitra Chatterjee’s forte was tackling the most difficult of the characters with ease which his contemporaries were not capable to handle. This made him so different from others of his breed.Chatterjee had his own school of thought- and acting -which had few parallels.Chatterjee, was out and out against acting in commercial and his  dislike of  Bollywood films was above board. While this 77 -year old actor loathed commercial films, he    refused to accept ‘Padma Sri’ protesting against the government’s lackadaisical attitude towards art films. Ironically, having acted only in ‘art’ films for decades, Chatterjee today is seen in Bengali commercial films too. This proves  beyond doubt the apathetic approach of governments-not only West Bengal but others too - to non-commercial films.

The timing of Soumitra Chatterjee being declared the winner of the Phalke award is equally attention-grabbing. Why that after Mamata Banerejee took over the Chief Minister of West Bengal, there is a surfeit of activity in the field of arts? With her honouring the veterans in the field of art and cinema, she has in a sense gone beyond her own theatrics of political paramountcy.But the fact remains that during the thirty-four year long Left Front rule there was a dumbing down of all that West Bengal once stood for including cinema. Looked from another angle, at a time when Bengali films have become shameless carbon copies of Hindi money-raking films, Phalke award to Soumitra Chatterjee is some kind of succor.