Meghe Dhaka Tara - Overview

Overview

This film was directed by alternative filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak in Kolkata (then Calcutta). In contrast to many Bollywood films made in Mumbai, India's main film center, Ghatak's films are formally elaborate and somber, and often address issues related to the Partition of India. Although Partition is never explicitly mentioned in Meghe Dhaka Tara, it takes place in a refugee camp in the outskirts of Calcutta, and concerns an impoverished genteel Hindu bhadralok family and the problems they face because of Partition.

The film is perhaps the most widely viewed film among Ghatak's works; it was his greatest commercial success at home, and coincided with an international film movement towards personal stories and innovative techniques (the so-called 'new wave'). After Ghatak's death, his work (and this film in particular) began to attract a more sizable global audience, via film festivals and the subsequent release of DVDs both in India and in Europe.

In a confirmation of the popularity of Meghe Dhaka Tara, a recent survey by a leading Indian news group reported that the concluding line of the film, "Dada, ami baachte chai" ("Brother, I want to live") was the most well-known line of any film.

Meghe Dhaka Tara is strongly melodramatic in tone, especially as concerns the sufferings heaped on the protagonist. As in many of his other films, Ghatak also uses surrealistic sound effects, such as sounds of a lashing as the heroine suffers yet another tragic twist of fate.

In 2002, Meghe Dhaka Tara was ranked at #231 on the Sight & Sound critics' and directors' poll for all-time greatest films. The movie is also listed in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, which praises "the grace of Ghatak's mise en scène, his expressionist sound design, and the enormous sense of loss."