Ritwik Ghatak’s Subarna Rekha: Ghatak’s style is different from Ray’s. It is raw and edgy, replete with repressed energy. The film has a hopeful ending but Ghatak’s depiction of the social reality hits you hard. Caste prejudice, unemployment, poverty and migration are some of the themes. These forces were very strong in independent India as they are now. People have the power to influence other people’s life by their decisions.
I also watched Ritwik Ghatak’s Megha Dhaka Tara . In Megha Daka tara, hope is a mirage for the protagonist; what is it to live, for a devastated girl, for a slave of the household whose individuality is submerged in the struggle to eke out their family livelihood. It is a sad, melancholic film which explores the void and emptiness in life. Ghatak shows how even family ties can become extremely exploitative in times of distress, adversity and poverty. Megha Dhaka Tara, the cloud capped star, toils for her family sacrificing all her desires. Her lover ditches her for her sister. Her brother leaves home. She becomes the sole bread winner of her family; her crazy father, her vitriolic mother and her incapacitated younger brother being dependent on her.
More than the physical arduousness, what she has to go through is the psychological agony and loneliness that breaks her heart. Ghatak is extremely successful in evoking the sombreness and solitude of the protagonist. She succumbs to TB in the sanatorium. Her brother who is now a successful person cannot bring back her youth and vitality. Looking at the mountains, trees and the clouds she cries out to Nature.
The final lines ‘Brother I really want to live’ are utterly poignant.