For decades, filmmakers have used Durga Pujo celebrations as motifs or as backdrops for key events in their narratives. Visuals from the festive season have often lent themselves for the creation of dance numbers, memorable scenes and sequences, replete with symbolism.
Writer-director of the Bengali film, Mahalaya, Soumik Sen says, “The pujos have been used as motifs in Bengali cinema very often. Utsab, Joi Baba Felunath, Bishorjon (2017), Nayak (1966) and Bela Seshe (2015) are some examples of how differently and beautifully the festival has been merged into the story. In Hindi films, Kahaani and Devdas come to the mind when one thinks of weaving in the celebrations of Durga Pujo into the story. The difference lies in the way the festival has found its place across popular cultures from the West to the East.”
Bengali movies
But of course, Bengali movies over the years have underlined the spirit of our main festival Durga Pujas through their stories.
Sayajit Ray's Pather Panchali (1955), Devi (1960) and Joi Baba Felunath (1979) all have Durga Puja as the central theme.
Based on the novel by Indian eminent writer Bibhutibhusan Bandyopadhyay, ‘Pather Panchali’ (1955) shows the mundane life of a poverty-stricken village family. Durga is the name of the elder sister of the protagonist of the film. The scene of her running through a “sea of fluffy whiteness” – field of Kaashphool (accharum spontaneum is the scientific name of this flower) is permanently etched in Bengali consciousness as a representation of autumn. Durga Puja celebration in the village gives the duo excuse for merriment before tragedy befalls the family in the form of Durga’s death. Pather Panchali had won India’s National Film Award for Best Feature Film in 1955. It also received the Best Human Document award at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival.
For Feluda fans, ‘Joi Baba Felunath’ (1979) is special for reasons more than one: not only is it set against the backdrop of Durga Puja, it also introduces one of the most iconic villains in Bengali fiction – Maganlal Meghraj. The story revolves around the affluent Ghoshal family, which is gearing up to celebrate Durga Puja at their ancestral home in Varanasi. A few days before the festivities, a family heirloom goes missing from the house – a precious gold statuette of Ganesha, the Elephant God. Feluda is entrusted with the responsibility of recovering the antique. As the case unravels, Feluda, along with his two constant companions – Topshe and Jatayu (a.k.a Lalmohan Ganguly) encounter a shrewd businessman by the name of Maganlal Meghraj. In order to solve the case of the missing god, Feluda will have to outwit Meghraj, unmask the traitor within the Ghoshal home and restore the heirloom to its rightful place – all before Durga Puja.
‘Devi’ (The Goddess) tells the story of a girl Dayamoyee (played by Sharmila Tagore - read her interview here) who was forcefully married to Umaprasad (played by Soumitra Chatterjee). Dayamoyee takes care of his father-in-law Kalikinkar Choudhuri who believes Dayamoyee is actually an incarnation of Goddess ‘Kaali’ and she has to be worshipped. The whole village also worships Dayamoyee. Her husband Umaprasad, a school teacher outside the village, can’t convince Dayamoyee because she also starts to believe the ‘incarnation of Goddess’ story. But her so-called belief soon becomes a tragedy.
Rituporno Ghosh also has revisited Durga Puja in three films - Hirer Angti (1992), Utsab (2000) and Antarmahal (2005)
Rituporno Ghosh’s debut and possibly his least known film ‘Hirer Angti’ (1992) is based on a novel by Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay. As the opening credits roll, the voice of Birendra Krishna Bhadra reciting Mahisasuramardini plays in the background. It is the immortalized dawn-radio program that is synonymous with the day of Mahalaya for Bengali people. The craftsman working on Devi Durga’s unfinished idol, the chandelier in the courtyard and the sound of the dhaak – the sights and sounds bring out the festive mood in the house of the protagonist Ratanlal Babu, played by Indian popular actor Basanta Chowdhury. A story about a joint family, an heirloom and dacoits and imposters, a smart kid and a pet dog, the film is reminiscent of Ray’s works for children.
'Utsab' (2000) has been one of the most important films by Rituparno Ghosh which received Golden Lotus Award for Best Director. On the backdrop of Durga Puja, the film is a nice commentary showing many emotional currents passing among a family and relatives. Some of the industry’s big names like Madhabi Mukherjee, Mamta Sankar and Prosenjit Chatterjee played key roles alongside Rituparna Sengupta. The story starts with the Durga Puja celebration in an elderly lady's spacious, ancestral house but the fragmentation of the joint family soon changes the scenario. Rituparno used Durga Puja as the ideal peg on which hangs the film. Read a fantastic article on this movie here.
Largely based on Tarashankar Bandhopadhyay's popular short story 'Protima', Rituparno Ghosh directed ‘Antarmahal’ (2005) is a poignant tale of misogyny and oppression with religion being a metaphorical aspect. It’s a bold story intertwining the disturbed personal lives of an elderly zamindar (Jackie Shroff), his two wives (Roopa Ganguly and Soha Ali Khan), and a potter (Abhishek Bachchan) assigned to craft the Durga idol in the image of Queen Victoria. But the potter gets attracted to Jashomoti (Soha Ali Khan), and makes a durga idol with Jashomoti's face on instead.
Other films
‘Antony Firingee’ (1967) starring the Bengali Superstar actor Uttam Kumar; is based on the life of Hensman Anthony, a Bengali language folk poet of Portuguese origin. In the screenplay, religious fanatics attack the Christian man who dares to organize Durga Puja in his home. His house is burnt down by them. His wife, played by Tanuja (a prominent actress of the Indian Film World), is grievously injured in the fire. However, in real life, despite the odds of the society, Anthony and his wife lived happily and died natural deaths - read more here. (Jaatishwar, a 2014 adaptation directed by Srijit Mukherji, depicted Anthony’s life in retrospect but with a modern-day context.)
‘Debipaksha’ (2004) directed by Raja Sen, is all about Haimanti (Rituparna Sengupta), a survivor of a brutal sexual assault who courageously decides to stand against her molester when her younger sister's safety is also threatened. Transformed by the violence of the evil moment, Haimanti finally lifts the trident of her priest father's presiding deity, and manages to plunge it into the tormentor. It’s symbolic to Shakti prevailing over evil once more. Decimation of Asura lifts the spirit of Maa Durga also.
The plot of ‘Bodhon’ (2015) revolves around a family crisis that starts on Mahalaya (the very first day of the Puja fortnight) and encapsulates Ishaani's (Arpita Pal) inner dilemma about motherhood and its boundaries. ‘Bodhon’, directed by telecom engineer turned filmmaker Ayananshu Banerjee, is an ideal tribute to all those caring women in our lives. The title Bodhon refers to the invocation of Goddess Durga which takes place on the sixth day: shahsthi.
Kaushik Ganguly's 2017 hit ‘Bishorjon’ has received several prestigious awards including the National Award for the best Bengali cinema. The audience loved the characters played by Abir Chatterjee, Jaya Ahasan and Kaushik Ganguly. The story of the film revolves around a Muslim man from India and a Hindu widow and it’s a cross-border love story. Ganguly's character Ganesh no doubt adds the cherry on the cake. The film gained such popularity that it convinced Ganguly to make a sequel titled ‘Bijaya’.
Srijit Mukherjee’s ‘Uma’ (2018) sets the story up in Kolkata (East India); where the city comes together to fabricate a fake Durga Puja, to fulfil the dreams of a young girl, Uma. Uma, by the way, is another name of Goddess Durga. A director with a failed career creates an alternative reality spanning across the city; cleverly showcasing all aspects of the carnival. The frenzied crowds hopping pandals, illuminated streets, roadside snacks and rituals across the five days of the festival, right up to idol immersion. The screenplay is inspired by the incredible story of the people of the town of St. George, Ontario, Canada. They had recreated a false Christmas for a terminally ill seven-year-old boy, Evan Leversage in October 2015.
Dhrubo Ghosh’s ‘Durgeshgorer Guptodhon’ (2019), features Subarna Sen or Sonada (Abir Chatterjee) with Aabir and Jhinuk embarks on his new adventure, a quest that takes them to the legendary Durgeshgor. The journey reveals that the Debroy family, the erstwhile zamindars in their princely mansion hold the key to a presumed rumor of a treasure connected with Plassey. With an amazing vibrant backdrop of Durga Puja in the princely Debroy mansion where the trio is invited for the occasion, one after the other clues are revealed testing Sonada`s wit and grit one more time leading towards the discovery of one of greatest treasures Bengal has ever witnessed. (Incidentally unlike other Bengali detective-adventure films, treasure hunter Subarna Sen or Sonada is not a literary creation. He is a composite of Indiana Jones and fictional sleuths Feluda, Kakababu and Arjun.)
Written and directed by Pavel Bhattacharjee, ‘Asur’ (2000) is an action-thriller. A tribute to the sculptor Ramkinkar Baij, the film explores the relationship between three friends through the making of the world’s largest Durga idol. The sculptor, who is one of the three friends, fails to understand the importance of relationships while giving his life to his art and his masterpiece.
Other Bengali films that feature Durga Puja include Tista Ekti Nadir Naam (1973) and Durga Sohay (2017 - photo above) are a couple more films where important parts of the narrative have been woven around the festival. Filmmaker Ramkamal Mukherjee’s short film Season’s Greetings (2018), a homage to filmmaker Rituparno Ghosh, uses a motif of children visiting parents for the Durga Puja in his film — something Ghosh’s Utsab also employed. Ramkamal says, “The festival has different meanings and style of celebrations across the country. For Bengalis, it’s about Maa’s homecoming, symbolically depicted as a mother, daughter, wife or a sister in films. I’ve shown this in my film, too, to doff my hat to someone who crafted bold stories and broke all taboos — something that Maa also embodies.”
Durga Puja in Hindi Films
In Bollywood, Amitabh Bachchan and Rakhee’s 1981 Bengali-Hindi bilingual Anushandhan, made in Hindi as Barsaat Ki Ek Raat, used Durga as the metaphor of triumph. As a police officer, Amitabh is seen investigating an evil father-son duo. He is even seen playing drums during Durga pujo and beating Amjad Khan at a competition.
On the other hand, is Shakti Samanta’s Amar Prem (1972), featuring Rajesh Khanna, Vinod Mehra and Sharmila Tagore. The film had a brief, but an extremely powerful depiction of Durga pujo, which appears at the end of the film. While Nandu (Vinod) takes Pushpa (Sharmila), his foster mother, home, we see protimas of Maa Durga being taken to pandals, hinting at mahalaya. The symbolic reference to Maa’s homecoming was hard for anyone to miss.
Raj Kapoor's film Ram Teri Ganga Maili too, had a short but immensely pertinent scene that depicted Durga Puja. The beautiful Ganga waiting for her lover to come back to Gangotri, has just given birth to a baby boy and her local guardian, Post-Babu, is elated. He beats a steel plate in order to proclaim his happiness about becoming a grandfather. That faint plate noise is merged with the thunderous music of drums being beaten at a Durga Puja celebration in Kolkata, when Naren (Rajiv Kapoor) is being coerced by his family to forget about Ganga and get married to the shrewd businessman, Bhagwat Chowdhury's daughter. Naren, who can neither speak up against his family, nor express his feelings to anyone, silently stares into the Goddess' eyes and conveys his heartfelt anguish to her, all in a gaze.
With the emergence of the new generation of Bengali directors, Durga Puja has featured in many hindi movies in the new millennium. Pradeep Sarkar’s Parineeta (2005), adapted from the eponymous Bengali novel by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, uses Durga Puja as a backdrop on two crucial occasions — once to show the love and care Lolita (Vidya Balan) has for Shekhar (Saif Ali Khan) and then to show Shekhar’s jealousy towards Lolita’s friendship with Girish (Sanjay Dutt). The film also uses the traditional dhunuchi dance as a tool for the narrative.
The filmmaker shares, “Durga Puja has often been used as a backdrop in films or as a part of the story. It only makes sense to include the festivities when there is some meaning to it. During pujo, you meet people and interact with them, and relationships also blossom. That is how we also used it in the film.”
Sujoy Ghosh’s Kahaani (2012) features one of the most well-recalled, and what is considered to be one of the best amalgamations of Durga Puja into a story. The film unfolds in Kolkata, which is gearing up for the pujo, and culminates on dashami (last day of Durga puja), drawing parallels between the festival’s message — the victory of good over evil — and the story, as Bidya Bagchi (Vidya Balan) defeats her husband’s murderer.
Bring this up and Sujoy says, “The thought behind the sequence was to highlight the strength and will of a mother. I’m a huge fan of Maa Durga, because in this form of hers, she’s always with her children. For Bengalis around the world, she’s a mother — we equate her to a human being. In Kahaani, I wanted to depict that Maa arrives once a year, she listens to you and solves your problems. We threaded in a lot of stuff. The build up-to the story is pretty much like the build-up to Bijoya. The climax blended beautifully with the culmination of the pujos.”
Shoojit Sircar’s Vicky Donor (2012) shows a Delhi-Punjabi boy Ayushmann Khurana (Vicky) fall in love with a Bengali girl Yami Gautam (Ashima). The two varying cultures are depicted not just in the way their families are, but Sircar also shows the celebration of Pujo by Delhi's Bengali community, as it briefly takes the audience pandal-hopping during Durga Puja in Delhi, to show the growing proximity between Vicky and Ashima.
The Ranveer Singh, Arjun Kapoor and Priyankar Chopra-starrer, Gunday (2014) set in the backdrop of Kolkata has a tragic scene set during Durga Puja. As the lady waits for her beloved in the Durga Puja pandal, her lover finally arrives to complete the rituals of the Puja. But the entire sequence ends up on a tragic note with Priyanka getting hit by a bullet. The movie also shows the two actors sway to beats of dhols against the backdrop of Durga puja in the song Jashn-e-Ishqa.
Vikramaditya Motwane’s Lootera (2013) opens in a traditional zamindar’s baadi celebrating Durga Puja. Sonakshi Sinha, as Paakhi, is seen enjoying a jatra with her friend in the house. Here, the celebration is more of a backdrop to show how festivals were seen as symbols of power and prestige in society those days. Elaborating on it, writer Bhavani Iyer, who wrote the screenplay, shares, “I don’t think one really sets out to put a festival into the story. A lot depends on the milieu or the household you set the story in. Maa embodies vengeance and righteous anger, and if that fits into a story, then, Durga Puja could become an ideal motif. We used pujo to define the Bengal of the 1960s when zamindari was breathing its last. The jatra that Sonakshi is watching in the film, depicts her family’s power and stronghold in a fast-changing society. It was metaphoric.”
While not really having a Durga Puja scene, Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s screen adaptation of Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas (2002) shows Paro (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan) and Chandramukhi (Madhuri Dixit-Nene) meeting and even dancing together. Paro is seen at Chandramukhi’s kotha, asking for mitti of her aangan to make an idol of Maa Durga for her baadi. This marks the beginning of a crucial turn in the story when Paro is forbidden from stepping out of her house. Though in the novel Chandramukhi (Madhuri Dixit) never meets Paro (Aishwarya Rai), the custom of ‘Punya Maati’ (soil from the lands of prostitutes), for which they meet for the first time, still prevails. Coming back to the film, the breathtaking dance-off, Dola re... between Paro and Chandramukhi is nothing less than a pure visual treat for the audiences.
Other references to Navratri / Dusshera
Raveena Tandon played a victim of marital violence in Kalpana Lajmi’s Daman (2001). Her character Durga vanquishes her patriarchal tormentor on dashami, freeing herself from bondage. The story of Akshay Kumar’s Bhool Bhulaiyaa (2007) peaks in the thick of Navratri in a village in North India. The film’s climax, which sets off on ashtami, underlining the theme of good winning over evil, shows Vidya Balan as the revengeful dancer Monjulika, who is seeking protishodh (revenge) for her lover’s death.
In Kurukshetra (2000), Sanjay Dutt, who plays an honest cop, is seen wiping out evil politicians, while Dussehra firecrackers drown out the sound of gun-shots, symbolising the defeat of modern-day Raavans. Ram Leela, which is an integral part of Navratri celebrations, was also used effectively in Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s Delhi 6 (2009). While depicting the glorious celebrations at Delhi’s Ramleela Maidan, the narrative also delves into frictions within men from the neighbourhood.
Ashutosh Gowariker’s Swades (2004) also featured a Ramleela performance by debutant Gayatri Joshi. Here, it was a philosophical discourse — a conversation between Raavan and Sita that tries to highlight the difference between the evil and good. In a face-off sequence in Rajkumar Santoshi’s Lajja (2001), Madhuri Dixit-Nene, while playing Sita, refuses to go through an agnipariksha to prove her chastity.
More recently, Akshay Kumar, revealing his upcoming Laxmmi Bomb avatar, put out a picture with the backdrop of Maa Durga, embodying power and anger. Talking about the reducing number of instances of films using the festival as a motif, writer Bhavani Iyer says, “Kahaani was one of those films that integrated the festival so beautifully into the story. Even Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s ritualistic semblance of the celebrations in Devdas was a sight. Storytelling, in the last few years, has changed. The pujas are extravagant celebrations as opposed to the lives that we lead today, which are so clinical. We’ve also begun to write our stories in a more realistic manner. That doesn’t always allow us to merge festivals and rituals with the stories.”
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Sources:
https://silverscreenindia.com/movies/features/from-utsab-to-uma-durga-puja-in-10-bengali-films/
https://travelogueofkuntala.com/essence-of-durga-puja-in-films-indian-diaspora/