Janala (The Window) by Buddhadeb Dasgupta maps the journey of a man and an elaborately designed window. At the centre of the film is two young urban lovers, Bimal (Indraneil Sengupta, which also is his first film) and Meera (Swastika Mukherjee) who can't look beyond each other and after some hot intimate moments, Meera gets pregnant after which they decide to get married.
Bimal a simple chap works as a caretaker at an old age home in countryside Purulia and Meera, his uptown fiancée works in a call centre in Kolkata. Things start changing when Bimal on an impulsive visit to his childhood school discovers that the window which is a storehouse of sweet memories for him is broken.
As he walks through the ram shackled building, he is saddened by the state of his alma mater and desires to gift a window with the same designed grill of two birds looking skywards as a tribute to the wonderful memories he experienced as a student of this school, although he isn't financially stable and his marriage is around the corner.
From that moment onwards in his desperate bid to do something meaningful, Bimal alienates himself from his very existence. He asks the local moneylender for money, but when he doesn’t get it, he withdraws a better part of his savings from his joint account with Meera, who had wanted to save for their yet to be born child and had taken a loan. He skips work after which he loses it altogether simply because he looks at nothing beyond the ornate design of the window.
He orders the window without the slightest clue about how he will pay the astronomical sum of Rs. 25,000, which the greedy furniture trader (Manoj Mitra) exploited from the poor man who knows nothing about the price of furniture.
The hostile Jhumurpur Boys High School headmaster who is always rebuked by the school committee members for constantly referring to his bowel movements is mired in the throes of ground level politics and village intrigues. He interprets Bimal’s gift of a window as an affront to his super ego. The school board rejects the gift with the excuse that some cash donation would have helped in developing some new centre for the school boys and refuse to let him fit the window. Ultimately his efforts go in vain and the window stands forlorn, rejected and alone, under a tree.
The film adds then a dash of humour when a petty thief (Tapas Pal) with no yen for money steals anything on which he can lay his hands on, including the gong of the school in the village. He steals the window too but fails to sell it off at the weekly haat (weekend market) because there are no takers. The villagers who are buying at the haat say they cannot buy the window even at a throwaway price because they do not have enough room even to live by themselves so where will they keep the window. The camera pans on a long distance shot of villagers trucking back home with the stolen goods they had bought from the crazy thief.
With the help of a friendly truck driver (Shankar Chakraborty), who wonders why good deeds don't matter anymore, the window and its owner Bimal embark upon a journey to find a suitable wall for his window that would 'accept' his gift. The truck driver suggests Bimal to give the window away to the local health centre. The windows of the centre are often smashed by angry families of patients who die out of negligence or wrong treatment or both. When they arrive at the health centre, they are forced to run for their lives as a dead patient’s family is already smashing the glass in the windows.
And through their sojourn, they encounter all the oddballs and misfits of society. A young couple, trapeze artists in a visiting circus is on the run for their lives by the master and his goons when they saw they wish to quit as the girl is pregnant. Bimal and his truck driver friend help them escape. When the window finds its final resting place under the tree on the borders of a forest, we witness a coiled snake making its way somewhere.
In the old-age home one inmate sadly announces that this year too, his NRI son will not come to visit as he has decided to go somewhere to Africa on a holiday. One of them flicks through the pages of a scrap book filled with pin-ups of scantily clad girls. The other oldies crowd around to have a closer look.
…
Janala isn't a mere frame of wood and iron grills, but is a metaphor for life’s many un-fulfilled dreams. The film tries to portray the modern day harsh social realities through our journey with Bimal and his window. It is an exploration of the many layers of dreams, memories and imagination of a pathetic education system, stingy health care system, old age realities, village politics, oppressive contractual labour system that flouts basic human rights, illegal timbre theft, and even the global politics of racism and discrimination.
Almost like a fable and through poetry in motion, the central character of the film, the window moves on a unique journey from its construction till its rejection and its ultimate destination, the flea market where it remains the only item unsold. Such is the tragedy of life.
There were some memorable scenes in the film where Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s masterly cinematic style blends fantasy upon fact and surrealism upon truth in an elegant narrative that is uniquely his own where he finely tries to distinguish between a young innocent lad who visualised the world and looked into his future that promised to be as exciting as the geography lessons his ears caught from and happily wetting his feet in the sea waves of the Mediterranean Sea flowing through the window during a drab geography class and doesn’t even fear of answering the same to the teacher when he gets caught and a bureaucratic headmaster who has his own set of problems and also a pragmatic girlfriend who tries to understand why he wants to spend their meagre savings on an ornate window for a long-forgotten school in a long-lost land, when Kolkata, marriage and motherhood beckons!
The film captures the declining ethos in the nation that in its journey to get modern is losing out its charm and the pride it once held for its niceties, grace and benevolence towards others. Innocent Bimal stands out as a sore thumb in the jungle of civilisation that spread around in haphazard manner and demands everything instantly. Not because he is wicked, crooked or selfish. Only because he wants to be good and do something good.
Swastika and Indraneil’s chemistry was good. Indraneil plays the part of Bimal very well and enriched the character with a blend of the man’s impulsive and irresponsible nature filled with a naïve innocence that strips him completely of any sense of guilt towards his job and towards his pregnant girlfriend. Shankar Chakrabarty is brilliant as the truck driver. Kuchil Mukherjee as the headmaster is outstanding. The character played by Manoj Mitra and others help to make it more interesting with their performances. The characters in Janala are straight out of the life and while this makes them look real.
The beauty of Buddhadeb Dasgupta's style has been in a kind of softness in his films. A portrayal of a poignant scene of on an age gone awry is smoothly juxtoposed with a gentleness through some poetic delights. Behind the camera, Sunny Joseph has been stunning in his cinematography who converts the almost arid Purulia countryside in to a beautiful landscape with his camera and tells the story as it is. Janala owes a lot to its breathtaking cinematography. Sunny Joseph allows his lens to linger upon the poetry of nature, the old dilapidated school building, and the interiors of spaces minutely detailing the significances of their own.
The colourful truck on the move with the window perched on top adds dynamism to the otherwise placid narrative. The editing is seamless, the jugglery back and forth between Bimal and Meera and also between his shots as a boy and as an adult takes the cinematographic and narrative space to the next plinth. Janala is a film that opens many windows while narrating the story of one. Biswadeb Dasgupta’s ambient music track fits into the flitting moods of the film.
A simple story, yet told beautifully and poignantly. Art film lovers will surely remember this story for a long long time to come. The film has already done the rounds of various film festivals before being released. There is a subtitled version in English if you don't understand Bengali. Janala is one of the masterpieces and perhaps Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s precious gem yet with a strong cinematic message.
Buddhadeb Dasgupta has released a film after quite a while. Now that Janala has released, hope his other two films Swapner Din (Chased by Dreams) and Aami Yasin Aar Madhubala (The Voyeurs) will also release soon commercially.
- Producer: Reliance Big Pictures
- Cast: Indraneil Sengupta, Swastika Mukherjee, Tapas Pal, Manoj Mitra, Shankar Chakraborty
- Story, screenplay and direction: Buddhadeb Dasgupta
- Music: Biswadeb Dasgupta
- Cinematographer: Sunny Joseph
- Editor: Amitabh Dasgupta
- Production design: Indraneel Ghosh
- Genre: Drama
- Date of release: 27th February 2011
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