UTTARA 2000
by
BUDDHADEB DASGUPTA
Buddhadeb Dasgupta won the National Award for the Best Director for this film.
Wrestlers Nimal and Balram lived at a faraway railway post. They used to wrestle each other to while their time away. Then one day one of them gets married. This breaks the harmony of their relationship. There are strong homoerotic overtones in this film.
The film is based in a seemingly peaceful setting in Purulia, but is full of sporadic incidents of violence against proselytizing Christians. Dasgupta portrays as if the Church was rescuing poor, helpless, starving locals, and was unfairly targeted by criminally dangerous outsiders. The reality, as we know, has always been quite different. This is just a lame attempt to justify religious conversion.
The film features some rice bag converts who dream of easy and plentiful life in the US, a sweet-talking pastor, a kid aspiring to become a wrestler, some Hindu criminals who wreck violence upon the village and the Church, and dwarfs.
One of these scenes shows an army of dwarfs traversing mountains, plains, and rivers, suggesting the search for an alternative world. As the dwarf who tries to help Uttara explains, these people have grown weary of the world of 'tall people', who are full of cruelty and despair, and seek an alternate world. This is a metaphor for the wider world plagued by inequality and corruption. The troupe of masked folk dancers, who meander through the village, function in a mythic framework, representing the continuity of culture and tradition, and act as a stabilizing force in the various conflicts that mar the idyllic world of the village.
At the climax, Wrestlers keep fighting, ignoring cries of help, even as the Church burns. The sport becomes an arena for clashes of the egos of two wrestlers, rather than resulting in their spiritual and moral growth.
Comments
Post a Comment