| Chaturanga | |
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The poster for the film Chaturanga |
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| Directed by | Suman Mukherjee |
| Produced by | Campfire Films Production |
| Written by | Rabindranath Tagore |
| Starring | Rituparna Sengupta Dhritiman Chaterji Subrata Dutta Joy Sengupta Kabir Suman |
| Music by | Debojyoti Mishra |
| Cinematography | Indranil Mukherjee |
| Editing by | Arghakamal Mitra |
| Release date(s) | 21 November 2008 |
| Running time | 125 mins |
| Country | India |
| Language | Bengali |
Chaturanga (Bengali: চতুরঙ্গ "Four Chapters") is a Bengali Movie released in 2008. Directed by Suman Mukherjee, the movie featured Rituparna Sengupta, Dhritiman Chaterji, Subrata Dutta, Joy Sengupta and Kabir Suman.[1][2][3]
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Based on the novel by the Nobel Prize winning author Rabindranath Tagore, Chaturanga is about a love caught between conflicting worlds of ideas. Set in Colonial Bengal at the turn of the twentieth century, the film weaves a rich tapestry of crisscrossing desires and moralities.The lead protagonist Sachish fleets from radical positivism to religious mysticism in his quest for life's meaning. However, his search ultimately yields nothing but crushing disillusionment. This is because he cannot square his abstract ideals with the powerful presences of two women in his life. One of them is Damini, a young Hindu widow, and the other is Nanibala, the abandoned mistress of Sachish's own brother.Sachish tries to convince himself that Nanibala is simply a helpless woman who needs to be 'rescued' by him. Similarly, during his later religious phase, he pretends that the widow Damini is merely an enticement of Nature that must be avoided at all costs for spiritual salvation.Chaturanga thus becomes, after a point, a psychodrama of unbelievable cruelty. Nanibala becomes a victim of it because as a 'fallen woman' she can only be 'saved', but her humanity cannot be recognized.Damini is first given away by her dying husband, along with all her property, to a religious guru. She then falls in love with Sachish who can accept her only without her sexuality.
The songs, especially those from the Vaishnav tradition, are erotic. The divine is expressed in them through allegorical depictions of the illicit love between Krishna and Radha, who was actually his aunt. There is a radical side to this blend of eroticism and divinity. Radha's love for Krishna is beyond all social norms. It is directly expressed, without the priest or the Brahmin caste coming in between. When devotees sing and rejoice in that form of love, it is thus a popular and democratic process that defies caste divisions.
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