Rima Das is one of the few current filmmakers who have given a fillip to Assamese cinema by making sensitive and raw unvarnished films with stories firmly anchored in the region to which she belongs. As a filmmaker she is more invested in the characters and their private emotional worlds as they get affected by larger social processes rather than in making films with technical finesse only.
In filming their joys and turmoil her lens evokes more by a considerate viewpoint rather than through pure psychological or inquisitive probing. Whether it was her break-out film Village Rockstars (which was India’s official entry to the Oscars in the year 2019) or Bulbul Can Sing (2019), therein the frames bespeak a cinematic voice patiently recording the poignant lives of ordinary young and adolescent girls who go about their everyday in mundane rural settings of lower Assam. What stood out, however, was the quiet way in which Das was able to interrogate patriarchy and its workings through the conflicts of her protagonists.
Tora’s Husband, the latest film of Rima Das, is about the travails and troubles of a happily married couple and their two children as they navigate through a pandemic hit world. The film’s narrative is centred on the husband Jaan, a resourceful businessman who finds it increasingly challenging to keep afloat his small bakehouse in the post pandemic scenario. It deals with his inner conflicts as well as challenges in relation to more worldly matters.
The opening shots of the film squarely establishes Jaan as an able ex-football player (who is one of the leading organisers of the game in his town) which takes a backseat as the film progresses and we see him struggling in his personal equation with his wife as well as with his different businesses. Instead of sports, going on drinking jamborees with his pals becomes his only escape from his troubles.
His larger familial world is strained too as his mother stays away in her ancestral home which puts his social status as a responsible son in the local community suspect. But none of these conflicts seemingly leads to any kind of resolution by the end of the narrative as the filmmaker here is more concerned about depicting the nagging conflicts through minutely observed moments in the characters’ interactions with each other and with themselves.
Rima Das achieves this by moving and stopping with her characters as they grapple to find a way out of their inner turmoil. Her camera movements reveal a cinema verité instinct and her frames vary from both being objective and lyrical as it switches between the world of Jaan and his kids. Thus, as the cinematographer of the film also, Das is able to exploit the camera eye to make the viewer reflect on the proceedings of the film.
The editing of the film also reveals this aim of the filmmaker as the scenes are more like moments etched around a larger social crisis and the crisis within Jaan and Torali’s world. The resultant rhythm and pace of the film therefore helps evoke the emotions in the story in a way that touches the viewer’s perception subtly. Probably, persistent application of this pattern resulted in the slightly drawn out feel in the film’s narrative by the time the credits roll.
In the role of the protagonist Jaan, Abhijit Das delivers a sensitive and sincere performance. His body language, face and eyes communicate the pain and joy of Jaan quite effectively. Tarali Kalita Das (Tora) is also very good, revealing the vulnerabilities and joy of a mother beautifully. One wonders at the abilities of the director Rima Das and by extension of neo-realism as a filmmaking philosophy when it is taken into consideration that both Abhijit Das and Tarali Kalita Das (brother and sister-in-law of Rima Das respectively in real life) are non-professional actors.
The bond of the kids with their parents is photographed in beautiful frames which speaks volumes about the empathy of Das as a filmmaker who is not afraid to show the beauty found in our most mundane surroundings. She also displays her eye for the idiosyncrasies of life and characters in small town, especially in capturing little moments of humour and reflection like in the couple of scenes featuring an old drunkard who is an occasional visitor to Jaan’s bakery who never forgets to beg for a buck or two, or the chance encounter of Jaan with Kamrupi folk musicians on the busy town street. Both these tropes seem to echo Jaan’s predicament as he too like them is in dire need of cash to turn his business around to a more agreeable shape.
In Tora’s Husband, the establishing couple of scenes in a sense works metaphorically as Jaan, the former soccer player does his basic morning workout and plays around with a football. In the very next scene, we see him taking his little son to their ancestral land and explaining its perimeters.
Thus, the film’s subtext is etched through two seemingly ordinary scenes, which is a deft introduction to Jaan’s world as he dribbles through a challenging phase in his personal life made doubly difficult by the pandemic. The soundscape of the film is another highlight as it corresponds faithfully to capture the hurly-burly and the quiet of each of the moments in Jaan’s intimate, domestic and professional spheres. Young Assamese music sensation Bishrut Saikia’s soulful tracks wonderfully blend to a couple of scenes underlining the bond between Jaan and Torali.
Probably, to the film’s overall detriment in terms of its appeal, couple of scenes (like the scene of Jaan’s confrontation with a road contractor in a brickworks) may have required a more tough and objective realism because they came across a bit loosely staged and acted. In short, the film is more on a surer footing when the scenes are about domestic and subjective reality but comes across a bit loose when it confronts external social situations.
Rima Das’s sensibility as a filmmaker is largely influenced by contemporary ‘world cinema’. For her, the idea of cinema is a universal means of human connect as it is evidenced by her selection and very gentle treatment of human stories located in the region’s ethos yet which transcends its barriers. Her humanistic vision is facilitated by her own unique independent film aesthetics which try to capture the everyday and the ephemeral as it passes by us unnoticed.
In a globalised world, international film festivals by their very nature and politics demands varied voices from across the planet. Film critic and scholar M. K. Raghavendra examines this matter in one of his latest books ((Locating World Cinema: Interpretations of Film as Culture). He states that ‘the politics of the film festival circuit…will influence the course of art cinema. As an example, there will evidently be films made — which will appeal directly to festival audiences — without passing through a local cultural filter in the home space.
The ‘look’ of many films, it may be anticipated, will gain importance over the local (political/cultural) purposes that the films serve’. In this context, it can be noted that Rima Das is a representative independent filmmaker of Assam and Northeast India who is by now a regular at a few prestigious international film festivals (Toronto International Film Festival has identified her ‘as a filmmaker to watch out for’), and at the same she is trying to reach out to the local and national market.
What is implied here is the question of extent of the probable influence of the film festival circuit on filmmakers like Das. It seems, they are pulled in two different directions, firstly of making films which are truthful reports or accounts of that part of the world where the story is set (which are first viewed at festivals where the crowd is drawn from multiple nationalities).
Secondly, in the light of a very limited market space for independent cinema locally (like here in Assam), filmmakers like Das are liable to be feel the pressure of a disconnect with the local audience with regard to the fact that they are cultural ambassadors of their regions. Establishing a connection with the local public whose tastes are principally moulded by commercial fare is a very challenging task for a director like Rima Das.
Commercial release of her films in the theatres of Assam has been largely a by-product of her success at the festival circuit. At a time when many independent filmmakers of Assam have struggled to release their films locally in theatres, it is great news that Tora’s Husband have ran for three weeks in many theatres across Assam. It means that her film, which is inherently an independent film made largely for a festival audience, has been able to establish a real connect with mass audiences. It is a rare feat for any independent filmmaker operating from Assam or elsewhere, and is proof that a genuinely good film often transcends barriers of many kinds.