Chokher bali (2003)

In my adventure romp through the rich fields of Indian cinema, I have been very fortunate.  Thanks to the guidance of thoughtful friends in communities like the BollyWHAT? forums to shape my selections, I have seen very, very few Indian movies that I found truly awful, without any redeeming feature.  There are only about two Indian movies that I pulled the plug on partway through,  and only about two more, out of the ninety or so reviewed on this site to date, that I wished I hadn't stuck out until the end.  I regret to say that Chokher bali ("A grain of sand") is a third.

In Raj-ruled Calcutta, Binodini (Aishwarya Rai) has had a hard year.  Her family's marriage proposal was rejected by Mahendra (Prasenjit Chatterjee), so she was married to another man, who survived less than a year.  Binodini enters the ascetic world of the 19th-century Hindu widow - she dons plain, unadorned sarees, forgoes all makeup and ornamentation, commits to strict dietary restrictions, and ceases her English education.  When Binodini arrives for an extended stay at Mahendra's home, she insinuates herself into the quotidian routines of every member of the household.  She develops a fast friendship with Mahendra's vapid and privileged wife, Ashalata (Raima Sen), and encourages the other widows in the household - Mahendra's mother and aunt - in the mild transgression of drinking tea, a habit that is both forbidden to widows and also excessively English.  She also entertains a light, intellectual flirtation with Mahendra's friend Behari (Tota Roy Chakraborty), a bookish agitator for independence.  Most explosively, she cultivates a passionate sexual affair with Mahendra himself.  From there, the tightly-wound threads of human relationships in the household snap and unravel.

At least I think that's the story.  The film opens with an impenetrable twenty minutes of exposition, in which the backstory leading to Binodini's stay in Mahendra's household is told in a confusing series of voice-overs.  It is equally unclear at all moments who is speaking and whose drama is being told - names of characters swirl by with little solid connection to images on the screen.  I watched the opening segment several times before I felt confident that I knew who was who; my viewing companion paused the film and referred to a plot synopsis on-line to settle her own confusion.   These are not markers of competent filmmaking.

And matters don't improve from there.  While the beginning of the film is dense with this exposition - telling the viewer what happened instead of showing it as a film can and should - in the middle of the film, when we finally do get to see the characters interact, there are excruciating segments in which very little happens.  The characters' most intense and personal feelings are revealed in letters written to one another and read in voice-over.  This device may have worked beautifully in Rabindranath Tagore's famous novel from which Chokher bali is adapted; in the film, however, it only spares the actors the challenge of conveying their emotions on screen, and robs the viewer of the experience of perceiving them.

Whatever message Chokher bali might wish to send - whether regarding the plight of widows, male-female inequality, sexuality, or any other theme - is lost among the endless narrations and the lurching pace of the story.  Even the film's ostensible focus, Binodini, is a mess of inconsistent characterization; she wheels from conniving manipulation to false contrition to real contrition and back again so many times that by the end her motivations are completely opaque.  Adding insult to injury is the fact that the film, originally shot in Bengali, is dubbed into Hindi, severing the connection between the actors' movements and their words and evoking Sunday-afternoon Japanese monster movies from my childhood.  In a better film this would have been forgivable and perhaps not even noticed; here, though, it only exacerbates a simply dreadful cinematic experience.

(Chokher Bali is available for download from Jaman.)

Comments

[Amit]

I'm sorry you didn't like this movie. I saw it a couple of years ago and liked it a lot. I'm quite sure I saw the Bangla version with English sub-titles. Could that be one reason?

Or maybe a certain someone has colored your views when it comes to movies about Indian widows? ;) :p
(j/k)

This was one movie where I actually appreciated Aishwarya Rai's acting ability.

[Dr Bhavin Dedhia]

I too hated this movie simply disgusted by bad direction and amateurish actin. It wud be simply gr8888 if you could tell me how to add technorati tages like u have added after end of post

[carla]

Amit: I did briefly think about *Water* as I was watching *Chokher bali*. If I had enjoyed *Chokher bali* more, I might have been interested the way it put plight of widows in sharp relief by having them live in and among the rest of the world, even while following their ascetic rules. There were some poignant scenes in which Aishwarya's character helps dress Raima's character and anoints her with fragrance and the like.

Dr Dedhia - my bloghost, TypePad, handles the Technorati tags for me automatically; at the bottom of the "new post" page, there is a place where I can just type in the tags I want, easy.

[shakthi]

Aptly reviewed. I too have issue with Rituparno Ghosh's unstable performance in his so-called art films. I never liked the other much applauded "Raincoat" of his either, similarly verbose, superfluous and affected. Though it is often said first rate novel, second rate movie adaptation, this cannot be availed as an excuse for personal ineptitude. Think of Satyajit Ray's Charulata, Teen Kanya.

[Sanket]

Agree completely on this one. My mother got her both of her Master's degrees in India in Literature (Indian & English). When the movie was coming out she was so excited about it being a huge fan of the book. We went to see it and both came out with this expression of 'huh' on both of our faces. It didn't matter that she read the book & I didn't - it was just awful. Bad movies don't bother me - they happen. But bad movies that COULD have been great - well that just makes me angry. This is one of them that could have been so much more if they had just, I don't know... tried?

[carla]

Thanks, shakhtiji and Sanketji, for the reassuring comments. As an outsider I am sometimes afraid to criticize Indian movies - it's not always easy to tell the difference between "didn't like" and "didn't understand." This time I was pretty confident! But I'm not always.

[yves]

Carla, I told you I would write a review on Raincoat. But I won't write one on Chockher Bali. The film was so pathetic, so arty in the bad sense of the word, that it doesn't even reach the level of interest of the bad films which are bad for good reasons.

I admire you that you actually went through the pains of commenting on it at such length!
Yves

[carla]

Yves, your comment made me smile! I like to review the films I don't like too - it can be fun to be creative in describing just what I didn't like about a movie, and thinking about it keeps me entertained while I am watching! :)

Seriously, though, what gets me going is not just that a film is bad; when a film squanders its potential I am inspired to write about it. I don't waste time analyzing films that are thoroughly uninteresting. In the case of *Chokher bali*, I wanted to like it so much more than I did, and I was frustrated with what a waste of potential it was.

[yves]

Waste of potential -- true.
If you're interested, and you haven't yet read it, here's one review called "bad Bollywood":
http://letstalkaboutbollywood.over-blog.org/article-5791725.html

[Melissa]

I watched this film a few years ago and absolutely loved it, having been a fan of the book. Don't even try watching any Hindi dubbed versions; watch the original Bangla version, in that version the only dubs were for Ash and Raima. It's definitely the type of movie you really have to pay attention to, it helps to read the book first but finding a quick plot summary online somewhere I think would have enhanced your experience...I know it can be hard to pay attention to a film when you're spending a bulk of your time trying to remember who's who.

[carla]

Thanks for the comments, Melissa. I of course did pay attention while watching *Chokher Bali* - to the point of backing up and rewatching some of the early scenes to figure out what was going on. In my view, if *Chokher Bali* were a well-made movie, it would not require one to do this (or read a synopsis beforehand) in order to enjoy it.

[Kavita]

I think the character of Binodini is totally screwed by Aishwarya. She can't do character roles for nothing. You need a "sophisticated vamp" image for her. she just does not cut it. She can only do roles where all she is needed to do is to look beautiful. Otherwise she is a disaster. The complexity of the character was hard to understand based on the movie. I had to read the book for a true understanding of the role. She is pathetic, man.