LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 20:11 November 2020
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

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Charulata as an Adaptation of ‘Nastanirh’:
Satyajit Ray’s Craftsmanship in the Recreation of Tagore’s Work on Celluloid

Bithi Mojumder, Rubaiyan Asif, and Fatema Akter

Abstract

Tagore’s short story ‘Nastanirh’ (‘The Broken Nest’) shares with us the intricately etched characters created by the master himself and brought onto the small screen by the visionary director Satyajit Ray in his film Charulata. Set in a politically unstable period, Tagore’s ‘Nastanirh’ is constantly shifting in the social world of the early twentieth century in undivided Bengal. The audience in our times too will find this world engaging as well as challenging, feeling attached to their emotions, issues, drama and anxieties. Ray retains Tagore’s narrative style even in the visual medium and enhances the words of his pages by casting talent that truly captures the essence of the social and cultural contexts of his work. This study is an analysis on how Ray makes the film powerful, credible and appealing on celluloid in transition with songs, music, cultural references and its newfound political and social expressions, a little more than the actual described world within Tagore’s narrative. This paper aims at exploring how Tagore’s words in ‘Nastanirh’ and Ray’s vision in Charulata have amalgamated into a show that transports us back in time to a world as complicated as this one but with far more appeal and beauty.

Keywords: Satyajit Ray, Charulata, Tagore, Nastanirh, Literature, Film, Adaptation, Recreation, Celluloid.

Introduction

Literature functions as an inspiration for a film. A film adapted from literature would contain something of the chemistry of the mind of the filmmaker. There can be several reasons for such adaptations ranging from the director’s love for the story, reinterpreting the word text into a film text and the director’s belief that a period in history can be beautifully recreated in the visual medium. Since Tagore’s works are universal — in time, space, emotions, and human relationships, they offer filmmakers a challenge to make the film as powerful, credible, and appealing on celluloid as it is in printed text. Satyajit Ray’s (1921-92) Charulata (1964) an adaptation of Rabindranath Tagore’s (1861-1941) short story ‘Nastanirh’ (‘The Broken Nest’, 1901) is known for its historical significance and its exquisite cinematic crafting. The film stands on its own merits with Ray able to transform his abiding interest in the culture and ethos of nineteenth-century Bengal as well as his veneration for Rabindranath Tagore's fiction that captures it so well into an exemplary work. The film explores Tagore’s vision of rural-urban division, colonialism, women’s emancipation, and nationalism. In order to transpose Tagore’s works across time and media, Ray took a poetic liberty in his method of adaptation. He has brought change into the beginning and ending of the short story as well as has reshaped the plot of the story, focused on the intimacy of Charu and Amal as lovers , added his concept of “nabina” and “prachina” and introduced entirely new set of events and exchanges in his cinematic version of ‘Nastanirh’. Just as Tagore exercised his discussion in written mode, Ray audio-visually expanded the author’s vision in ?lmic mode and pushed the author’s argument further than the original.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Bithi Mojumder, Rubaiyan Asif, and Fatema Akter
Lecturers, Department of English
Noakhali Science and Technology University, Bangladesh
bithimojumder89@gmail.com
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