The Cloud-Capped Star
d. Ritwik Ghatak (1960)
The Criterion Collection
This month all films in The Criterion Collection are on sale at Barnes and Noble for 50% off. If you’re looking for something to pick up (and even if you’re not), I highly recommend Ritwik Ghatak’s beautiful, powerful 1960 film The Cloud-Capped Star. It is a special release of a film that has, heretofore, been very difficult to see.
The Cloud-Capped Star is one of several films Ghatak made that explore and bring to the surface the dislocation and suffering of Bengali refugees trying to resettle in the aftermath of colonial India’s partition into India and Pakistan, which occurred at midnight on August 14-15, 1947. Such is the family at the center of The Cloud-Capped Star, made up of a father, a mother, and three children who are entering adulthood in the late 1950s.
When the film opens, we see a lush row of gorgeous, vibrant trees. Under them we meet the family’s oldest daughter, Neeta, played by Supriya Choudhury. This beautiful image of those magnificent trees introduces the strength and beneficence of Neeta, constantly reaching out and offering.
Indeed, Neeta is an amazing person. She is working while going to school in order to support her entire family. Her older brother Shankar (Anil Chatterjee) should help lighten her load, but he is blinded by his own dream of becoming a famous singer. Because his dream brings in no support in the way of food and shelter, he himself is another burden on Neeta. And this is not just incidental. The whole family looks to Neeta for support. It is her job and they expect her to continue, regardless of the sacrifices she makes when it comes to her own temporal needs as well as to her own future.
The situation is dire, but there are moments of hope, as there should be in a good melodrama . . . even if such moments are presented with an image that suggests Neeta is in a cage.
First and foremost, Neeta is looking for companionship outside of her immediate family. Sanat (Niranjan Ray) is a hard-working man who looks like he’ll be able to raise his foundation, and he and Neeta have more than just romance: they are both practical. At least that’s what Neeta thinks.
I don’t need to go further into the actual story for you to see where this is going. Neeta is strong but can still be torn apart by so many demanding forces. Ghatak’s stylistic choices emphasize this beautifully. The most stable shot is the one of the trees, with many others not just moving the camera but also positioning the actors in a way that it looks like they might spin out of control. Here, for example, is Shankar grabbing Neeta’s letter and reading it out loud.
And, perhaps most notably unique (and commonly remarked upon in critical appraisals of this film), Ghatak’s sound design makes it feel as if this is not just an inter-familial drama. It’s almost as if the basic elements of the world are at play. In a particularly sad scene we watch smoke rising off roasting spices and hear them popping as a mother and daughter concoct a rather terrible plot without words. It brings to mind the plots and conspiracies found in the source for the film’s title, Shakespeare’s The Tempest: The Cloud-Capped Star is not an exact line from the play, but it comes from this speech in Act IV, scene 1, when Prospero recalls the existential plots against him:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
The solid trees we see when the film begins seem, then, to be part of a larger illusion. What is real is the sensation of being blown about from one impermanent state to the next. In the case of The Cloud-Capped Star Neeta is blown back and forth between hope and despair, and it’s such a painful drift.
Trevor,
Went to the 5th Avenue Barnes & Noble and purchased The Cloud Capped Star for 1/2 price after initially having trouble locating it as it is in Bengali but the associate pulled it off the shelf and as you mentioned, the half price sale ends Dec. 1st. It is difficult to get a good DVD print of a film from from 1960, let alone in Bengali, let alone with a female protagonist. Partition is not particularly remembered these days nor the incredible hardships of displacement and unforeseen difficulties it presented. So I am really looking forward to viewing this DVD so thanks for letting us know of its existence and the fortuitous opportunity to acquire it at an affordable cost. Finds like this make it so worthwhile that the Mookse exists and carries on by letting us know and recommends the best in film and books from all over the world.
Larry B.
That is great to hear, Larry! And thanks for the kind words — I always appreciate them :-)
I hope you’ll come back and let me know your thoughts on the film after you’ve had a chance to watch it!
This film is beautifully shot in black and white with awesome cinematography that is rarely this excellent. But it also has some amazing use of all kinds of camera angles totally in the service of the story. Yet it has an existential quality that makes for a very sad but very realistic kind of cinema. I don’t particularly like sad stories but I do like stories where the protagonist demonstrates amazing strength and courage in the face of almost unendurable circumstances. The soundtrack with the birds, the wind and rain and the different kinds of trees give a detached quality, sort of an indifference to the human life as lived. Having a job kind of detaches or uproots one from life at home at least for the greater part of a day. This film was made more like a filmed novel although it is based on a story. But the director uses good dialogue sparingly but the lines let you know everything without seeming forced or mannered. Also the looks on characters’ faces convey so much. The music, particularly the fluidity of flute and sitar give this film a poignant South Asian quality. And the footage of trolley cars and buildings in Calcutta or Kolkata today give you the modern city conflicting with nature surrounding a village. The acting was very smooth and natural though operatic at times. The heroine and her journey are compelling despite your being able to perceive where the story is going. It is a classical film and maybe not for everyone, but there is an excellent discussion of the film by two filmmakers, who were students of Ritwik Ghatak. Ghatak apparently was never accepted as being a brilliant filmmaker during his lifetime in India. But he is revered by film students and his influence can be seen in many Hindi cinema films dealing with families or characters in small towns or villages challenged by life circumstances. I think what I like best about this film that makes it really relatable is that the family one is born into and one’s possibilities and opportunities in life are so random, capricious and unpredictable. And the odds of success or failure can be really good or very bad to a huge degree for either. Few films are this blunt but sometimes the truth of which they speak cannot be glossed over if the director is aiming for honest transparency.
I had some more thoughts about Ritwik Ghatak’s film but I realize anyone viewing it might gain a completely different idea or quite a few different ideas or perspectives, which often happens with a brilliant film, book or play. It’s a bit like Shakespeare’s best work in that way. It’s brilliance is a little difficult but who knows what an unbiased open minded viewer might realize by having given it a chance?
SPOILER ALERT! Please do not read this comment (unless you’re really curious and don’t mind spoilers) until after you have seen Ritwik Ghatak’s film, “The Cloud-Capped Star.”
One small part of what the protagonist, Neeta, says at one point in this film has stayed with me overnight and gotten me thinking. Most or some film viewers might not agree on this but Neeta might be seen as a reluctant feminist hero. She says she is sure the new man she meets, Sanant, will wait to marry her until after her circumstances improve. But it occurred to me that an ordinary woman will mostly always wait for a man she loves to get his life together. But a man waiting some time for a woman to get her life to improve? Nah. And Sanant looks like the self-centered handsome Westerner even if financially struggling, and initially seems willing to wait for her, even if she looks ordinary and unappealing compared to her younger sister. Ironically she sort of randomly resolves to look after her family and unknowingly slips, though a woman, into the form of instinctual family protector which is usually a form assumed by a male. So ultimately, just the opposite of what is usually expected, happens. Neeta becomes completely worthy of Sanant and as he becomes completely unworthy of her. He succumbs to the innocent charm of Neeta’s much more appealing younger sister. Neeta reflects the highest spiritual family values that one sees in many pre early 1990s Indian families although Neeta’s own family is fragmented or seems (even if broke) more dysfunctional in the American style. Sanant also represents the older Indian higher valuation of a man’s life over a woman’s. Traditionally, there have been many Indian men who will have sacrificed much for their wives and daughters, out of duty, choice or very deep love. But Western or very successful men sometimes regard a woman as only worth being the bearer of his children and that, only if she looks appealing, so his children will look handsome or pretty and therefore, when growing up, will have the opportunities only extended to the good looking, so he can pursue his life success somewhat independent of them. Or that seems the latent ideal that successful men pursue. In the old India of higher spiritual values, family always mattered more than any single individual. In America, only one’s singular independence matters, even if it pushes him away from family and old friends as huge success is valued even above them. I wondered why Ritwik Ghatak never mentions Partition in this film. And I think he was on to something more elemental in how women and men relate to each other in adverse circumstances. The spiritual strength of a woman can shine as brightly as that of any man. But in a dysfunctional patriarchal society (which Neeta’s family seems to represent) it is way undervalued because nobody looks for that sort of woman or looks for that sort of strength particularly in an ordinary looking woman. Neeta shares some of the qualities exhibited by the protagonist in the iconic film “Mother India” that was released to great acclaim in 1957. As stated in a newer film, “The Warrior Queen of Jhansi, ‘ We women have several forms: mother, sister, daughter, friend . . .” Neeta is like a spiritual mother to her family which becomes the ultimate sacrifice she maybe never wanted, in the end, to have made. There is an unlikely understated theme of feminism that sometimes one sees in older Indian and South Asian films. But I think this film gives some answers as to how and why strong ordinary women are hugely undervalued in America and in the more Western influenced newly evolved higher end affluent India of today. The Cloud-Capped Star is an amazingly powerful film that might make you reconsider the potential spiritual strength that any ordinary woman might have.