Mrinal Sen: Bengal's firebrand director

new delhi: while anyone worth his salt in the film industry would eagerly give you sound bites on his next project, the legendary film maker mrinal sen comes across as a surprise in refusing to reveal his future plans. "i won't tell you what my next film is going to be about. of course i will be doing another film, possibly by the end of this year. but do not ask me the story," he told the audience during a retrospective of his films in the capital recently."we film makers are a little too pampered. i fail to understand why they keep on talking about the movie before it is made, while it is being made, and after it is made." "my film's idea is within me. you wouldn't know of it till it is made." that is mrinal sen at his candid best. a man who strode tall as one of the pioneers of new indian cinema in the 60s and 70s of the last century, says: "it is a misconception that new cinema means the bengali school. it was an extension of a culture which started in calcutta and spread out to the rest of the country. "we became some kind of a big family of film makers. i don't see any point in discussions on bengali school and non-bengali school of film making. we are being unncessarily glorified." sen loves to talk despite the doctor's order against it: "i love to chat, you know. it is difficult to stop it. my son once asked me if i could be silent for at least half an hour. i tried that and soon fell asleep...!" for all the fame that has come to him, sen comes across as a simple, straightforward man speaking out his mind with alacrity and without mincing words. a man who doesn't mind revealing he is still staying in a rented apartment; a man who confesses to being a "private chauvinist", who "collapses" with the failure of every film. "if i could reach a minority spectrum of audience in various parts of the world, then i will have a group of minority viewers. the money will come back and i will be happy as long as i can pay my rent. it doesn't matter whether i own a house in delhi or not." "in our private life, we do take advantage of being a male," he concedes unabashedly. when each of his films fail at the box office, "i collapse. but still i get up and go on." because film making is his destiny, chosen while he wrote film reviews some fifty years ago. he was an active member of the communist party and bengal's leftist cultural movement - the indian people's theatre association. little wonder, he dealt on issues of social, political and economic oppression. his second film neel akasher neechay (under the blue sky', 1958) was banned by the government. the topics came up manifesting in films like the calcutta trilogy, which dealt with alienation, urban middle class morality and the deep political unrest. the first in the trilogy, interview (1970) deals with the denial of job to a youngster as he fails to wear a european coat for his interview. calcutta'71 (1972) talks of the need to rise in protest against poverty and expolitaion. padatik (1974) explores the complex mind of a naxalite, who finally realises that the path of blood alienates him from the masses. does he continue to deal with the social issues? "i am the logical extention of what i used to be years ago. physical aspects of my films, like technology and narration may have changed." sen, the film maker who had the rare honour of being invited to the cannes international film festival, continues to call his films 'popular box-office failures': "it doesn't mean that i don't care about my audience, in fact those who say so are lying. it is a defence mechanism that directors develop." sen was always ready to experiment both in his craft and the languages he chose to work: "working in other languages is a difficult game. but then it is quite adventurous too. it requires you to understand the rhythmic nuances of each language you work on." according to him, each language is a fascinating array of expressions which sometimes have surprisingly similar threads: "for example, while working for a telugu film, we had a line 'if you walk on the trees, i walk on the leaves'. we could not find a proper telugu translation. before we started shooting the scene, an old man told us about a proverb used in telugu that was the perfect fit. when translated, it would mean 'if you walk on the sky, i walk on the clouds.' willingness to experiment also makes him do improvisations on "40 to 60 per cent of the original script": "many a time, i got praise for the scenes which were shot out of script," he says. which means a good amount of his films are just natural, neither conceited nor preconcieved. his truthfulness to his craft is what the audience loves most. like the director himself. as he says, "i always try to be truthful to myself."