By Haraprasad Das :

‘Krantdhara’ is the best film in Odia I have seen in ages. If one could draw a comparison I would rate ‘Krantidhara’ cuts above Maya Miriga , the celebrated Odia film. While saying so, I must make it clear that unlike Maya Miriga there is nothing arty about ‘Krantidhara’. It is an earthy film that captures a contemporary political issue beautifully. ‘PatiPanchayat’ is its fluid metaphor. A hapless wife going about her domestic life with great ease and felicity succumbs to the manipulative design of the husband to seek election to the post of chairperson, PanchayatSamiti.

The educated, vivacious but self-effacing wife while succumbing to the wily husbands power game, allows her own counsel to prevail. The understated drama keeps on unfolding scene after scene in breathtaking pace. It is unusual for a low budget film without songs, dances and the distracting props to concentrate on the narrative and yet deliver the flaw less dramatic content while keeping the rhythm, pace and attention intact.

Kudos to the director for the masterly way in which he has handled the story. No, it is not an art film. For me ‘Krantidhara’ is a mainstream film. It achieves the impossible when one considers the way art films struggling to find their feet in mainstream releases have bombed at the box office. ‘Krantidhara’ steers clear of the clichés. There are no artistic payloads. No telescoping, no flashbacks, no innuendos, no rhetorics.

A small reverie where the female protagonist imagines a welcoming home and a penitent husband did not work out as the crisis in which the woman was stuck had already made the audience warm with anticipation of the surest opposite. The power of the celluloid narrative was such that the simplest and straightest worked while the arty interventions failed. At the very end when the woman immerged from sea, a suspicion remained. Was the change of metaphor from fire to water too abrupt?

The film opens with a close shot of a domestic chore of tea being made on blazing fire, a tiny little symbol of pent up emotions awaiting to spread like slow fire. No high drama, no explosive confrontations, no obvious suggestions, yet so much could be achieved with economy and creative skill. The screenplay is amazingly taut, neat and refreshingly original.

Art films showing politicization of the village society are many, even mainstream cinema has produced many stereotypes of the exploiters, the middle men, the smart operators, the bumpkins, simpletons and thugs. But a family story veering around a husband and a wife could hardly ever be a vehicle to carry the metaphor of the rotting grass root of politics. The piercing story by Iti Samanta has laid bare exactly how the basic building block of the rural community has been allowed to rot in the hands of ambitious power hungry new leadership of rural community. The village touts and the moneylenders and Mahajans are gone. Now it is the power brokers of high politics who manipulate and create the new leadership for their own benefit.

One must admit that the actors have done full justice to the screenplay. Samaresh as the wily power-hungry husband and Gargi as the pliant, tolerant, virtuous wife with a conscience have kept the attention of the audience riveted to their silent war. War between good and evil. War between morality and politics. War between development and the hijackers of development. War between planning and implementation. War between love and power. In all these subtle wars there is no grey area left for interpretation.

There are clear cut conclusions. The film leaves behind the message that the scheme of women’s empowerment through reservation of panchayat leadership for women has been foiled by corrupt and power hungry men. The ‘PatiPanchayat’ metaphor has been worked out by clean brush strokes with great depth and understanding of the rural life. More importantly the cinematic handling of domestic environment is outstanding. The screenplay and the direction succeed in portraying the entire gamut of relationships in so few images! Only a maestro could do it and Himansu Khatua is a Maestro!

The domestic scene operates for the Director at two levels. At the ground level the film shows an obedient, duty-ridden housewife, relaxed old parents at peace with the achiever son’s wrong doing, two nice children and the husband, who represents a vicious counter point. The home is full of little noises, no scene is lifeless. Gestures and muffled noises blend with the sound track to create the right atmosphere. The editing too is absolutely first rate. No jerk, no jump, no arbitrary intervention or overlap. The scenes unfold like the pages of a book. The rural ambience too has been authentically created. While reminding the audience that three generations, with their generational tags of stasis (old parents), struggle (the protagonist) and style (the kids) are evolving in the heat of mutually setup by the Directorial crucible.

Acting is flawless. Samaresh in the role of the husband draws freely from his long cinematic experience to rescue the character from awkward stereotyping. The female protagonist, the new found Gargi is a casting coup. The Director has used the many facets of the quiet presence of this woman of the house through a string of gestures ranging from servile obedience to stoical resignation. The typical wifely acts have been uplifted with remarkable finesse by the actor. The characterization is at once clear, complex and intimate. The scene where the wife changes into a Saree right in front of the husband, the scene where she is forcibly taken by a lusty husband are scenes where very little has been said and a lot has been left unsaid and yet the silence is vocal.

The camera work does the talking by picking up bits and pieces of visual imagery with great flair. The crumbled hut of the old woman who was deprived of a home, for instance burns in me like a slowly fire even now.

The film ends in a conflagration that symbolizes the moral re-affirmation that the woman must finally triumph. The woman not only escapes from the fire, she emerges like a Goddess from the sea to take on a hostile world. That is the birth of a “Revolution” that could rewrite the destiny of woman. Like Draupadi born from fire, the woman here too is born from fire to take on the forces of darkness.

The film is a classic of the contemporary cinematic idiom, a ‘must see’ for anyone who thinks cinema as a social medium has failed and films depicting the contemporary society throw away vital signals through which reality is constructed. ‘Krantidhara’ is a cycle, as it were, a vicious cycle of time, interrupted with the fiery birth of a woman so that the new tale of empowerment can be told again and again with new co-ordinates for a long time. I wish the governments, panchyat raj and woman affairs departments see the film and get it screened across the country with sub-titles, so that the narrative is not lost with the end of the film.