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Cinema
'Yatra':
'Devdas' tale Shifted to Domesticated Domain
A review by
Subhash K. Jha
Film: "Yatra"; Cast:
Nana Patekar, Rekha, Deepti Naval and Nakul Vaid
Editor, Screenplaywriter, Cinematograper & Director: Gautam Ghose; Rating:
**
 This
is the story of a creator's journey. It could be seen as a metaphor of the
fairly prolific director's own journey across the oscillating oceans of the
motion picture. And never mind the rough patches and the debilitating
turbulence.
Gautam Ghose, who spearheaded the avant-garde movement in the cinema of the
1970s, has never been too comfortable with making films in Hindi, though he
did make that masterpiece "Paar" - describing the metaphorical journey of an
impoverished couple, played by Naseeruddin Shah and Shabana Azmi, across a
river with a herd of pigs.
Piggish behaviour we see in plenty in Ghose's new Hindi film and some of it
comes from the protagonist himself.
Dashrath Jogelkar (Nana Patekar) is one of those bull-headed writers who
sees himself as a harbinger of socio-cultural change even as his own
domestic domain disintegrates in front of his cynical eyes.
Many of Dashrath's responses to the world around him are so naïve in their
apparentness you wonder if Ghose shares his protagonist's incredulity at the
consumerist takeover of the middleclass or whether he would like to keep
himself distanced from Dashrath's obstinate disregard for a social structure
outside the domain of his imagination.
The ceaseless debate between the creative forces and the brute force of the
reality outside the imagination is not fully harnessed in "Yatra".
In spite of some lucid camerawork (Ghose himself) there's an unfinished
though fascinating aura to this modern somewhat suspended rendering of the
Devdas tale shifted to a domesticated domain and driven by a cultural
diversity that often borders on chaos.
In one sequence we hear Dashrath listening to classical music, his son (Romit
Raaj) playing the drums, wife (Deepti Naval), a portrait of indignant
docility, immersed in the kitchen sounds and the rain outside splashing in
to the domestic din.
This is a quasi-gone-corny classic rendition of Ghose's treatise on cultural
confoundedness as perceived through the eyes of a self-righteous creative
artiste, who thinks the world isn't good enough to accommodate his fertile
faculties.
This intriguing jigsaw about the life of the imagination moves through two
cities Hyderabad and Delhi. The characters appear to belong to a no-man's
land and the train journey that Dashrath takes with a filmmaker-fan (Nakul
Vaid, hardly there) seems more symptomatic of the writer's inner
perplexities than a manifestation of the journey that takes man from his
imagination to an indeterminate spiritual destination.
Expectedly, Rekha provides the most inspiring moments, and not just for the
besotted protagonist. Having played the doomed tawaif (prostitute)
innumerable times, Rekha can do the fallen women act by heart. And she does.
There're some graphic scenes of sexual violence with an uncouth Hyderabadi
zamindar, and a breakdown sequence at the end when Rekha pulls out all
stops. Here's an actress for whom less is definitely more.
The rest of the cast including Nana, who has the author-'wracked' role, goes
from profound emotion to keen disinterest.
There's an uneven quality to the narration, brought on partially by the
proclivity to cram in a surplus of ideas on the moral and cultural downslide
of a civilisation that has lost its balls and bearings.
Stagnancy is the underlying idea governing Ghose's hazily mystical journey
across a mind that sees only anarchy around itself. There're moments of
self-defeating social comment...
The sequence where Dashrath, the writer, imagines himself as suicidal farmer
from Andhra Pradesh hanging from a tree (farm fatale!) diminishes the scope
of the characters and their canvas into an amateurish morality tale.
And yet for all its creative failings there's no denying the power and
strength of Ghose's ideological comment. The last lap of the journey, when
the writer-protagonist vanishes from his social duties to spend time with
the fallen woman, who is transformed over a period of time into an item
girl, is like a cauldron of simmering ideas brought to a boil by a slow
burn.
A more fast narrative and a less verbose style of presentation - the
dialogues often border on pulpit polemics - would have gone a long way into
making this journey more emblematic of the excursive enthusiasm of a
creative mind than symptomatic of the malady that inflicts avant-garde
filmmakers from the 1970s.
Ghose hasn't been able to make a smooth transition from anger and
indignation to tolerance and introspection.
"Yatra" is "Paar" without the adventurous spirit or the metaphorical
reverberations. Frigidity marks the rigidity of the creative artiste who
dies in a kotha rather than at the doorstep of his family.
May 5,
2007
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