Ritwik Ghatak died a broken, ravaged man. Almost every film he made failed at the box office, and his life and family were in a shambles. He even spent time in an asylum. The same can be said of Guru Dutt, who was born a few months before Ghatak.

In an irony of sorts, a 100 years after their births, both filmmakers are being rediscovered, feted and celebrated as giants of Indian cinema while having been rejected for their crafts when they were alive. Both died young, with unfulfilled ambitions, unreleased films, craving recognition and elusive success.

Ghatak hasn’t enjoyed the familiarity and fame that his compatriots Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen have, even at that time. All of them had their world views and presented it through their trilogies – Ghatak on the Bengal partition; Mrinal Sen,the Kolkata trilogy and Ray, his Pather Panchali trilogy. But Ghataks’ films had the toughest road to redemption.

Ghatak’s grandnephew, Shamya Dasgupta’s new book Unmechanical: Ritwik Ghatak in 50 Fragments attempts to decipher the myth of the man. It is a wonderful anthology of essays, collected over time, that reflect on his films, his life and his legacy in Indian and world cinema.

The book starts off with chapters by close family members, a much accomplished lot of creative people – actors, writers, cinematographers, who unravel Ghatak’s childhood. There is general agreement that he was an unusually creative and sensitive young person who was greatly disturbed by the momentous events he was witnessing - theWorld War, the struggle for Independence, the Great Bengal famine, the communal riots and the partition of Bengal and the refugee crisis. All of this left quite an impression on the child Ghatak and formed his world view.

In a brilliant opening chapter, Ghatak’s grand nephew, actor Parambrata Chatterjee, says that even today Ghatak’s appeal is limited largely to film lovers and enthusiasts. While urbane and slick Ray is globally synonymous with great cinema, the rawness of Ghatak limited his appeal.

Ghatak’s twin sister, Pratiti, writes about the fascination she had with the miserly lives of labourers and the marginalised people, which caused him to be disillusioned with the world. He explored all mediums to try and question society’s moral compass, through poetry, short stories, theatre, documentaries and films.

The Partition had scarred him and his films portrayed his rage at the pain and anguish of the refugees, but perhaps he couldn’t connect with a people wanting to celebrate their independence and begin new lives. He unyieldingly involved his audiences attention on the price one had to pay for partition and the acute sense of loss of home, identity and character created by tortuous migration.

Ghatak had said in one of his interviews that cinema was a means of expressing his anger at the sorrows and sufferings of his people, and you can feel it in his partition trilogy: Meghe Dhaka Tara (The Cloud-Capped Star), Komal Gandhar (E-flat) and Subarnarekha (The Golden Line)

Unflinching and ruthless, alcoholic and irresponsible, an irrepressible genius and a master of the craft of filmmaking with his deep-focus cinematography, editing and sound design, Ghatak was an enfant terrible.

Ghatak’s films are preoccupied with how people cope with losing something precious, whether it’s a dream or an ancestral home or a decrepit car. The anguish of the characters in Meghe Dhaka Tara or Ajantrik are very similar. The repetitive references to the inherent risk of destroying what we value in the pursuit of success defined his films.

His only successful film, considered by many as Ghatak’s tour-de-force, Meghe Dhaka Tara’s central character is a warm, vivacious woman, the only earning member who is exploited by her refugee family till her last breath. Audiences liked Ghatak’s powerful depiction of the three women of the household evoking the sensuous, the nurturing and the destructive aspects of feminism.

Ghatak taught at FTII in Pune and his disillusionment with the system is evident in his grumpy, cheerless portrait on the wall in the college campus. With unkempt hair, stubble and thick rimmed glasses, the mural is right next to what students refer to as the Wisdom Tree. Legend has it that Ghatak preferred to teach his classes, which included luminaries like Adoor Gopalakrishnan and John Abraham, under this tree.

Since his films attacked the moral values of the middle-class bhadralok, who constituted most of the audience in Bengali cinema, he made many enemies, including in the Communist party and that affected the fate of his films.

Ghatak’s first film Bedeni never released and his second, Nagarik, was released 25 years later, a year after his death. Members of the Communist Party who had expelled him for his ideological differences had prevented the film from releasing.

Censors stalled his film Subarnarekha for three years, objecting to the film’s climax in which the drunk protagonist discovers that his sister has turned to prostitution, prompting her to kill herself. Komal Gandhar was scuppered by the Communist Party who planted people in the audience to laugh at gritty or emotional scenes and howl at the lighter moments, spoiling the reviews. 

  Ajantrik, another colossal failure at the box office is now regarded as an all-time global classic about a man in love with his car. That he was so ahead of his times is evident when you realise that the Hollywood films featuring the Volkswagen Beetle, the popular Herbie series, followed five years after.

 Actor Anil Chatterjee says Ghatak believed in the sanctity of his art and of his theories. He recalls Ghatak telling him about a distributor suggesting a different, happier ending to Meghe Dhaka Tara where the sister survives. Ghatak famously shot that ending, but didn’t use it, using the alternate ending with the film ending in tragedy instead.

 He was unwilling to compromise on his ideologies, his stories and his way of storytelling.The steady deterioration of his health and his relationships culminated in an autobiography of sorts, Jukti, Tokkoaar Goppo (Reason, Debate and a Story), his final film leaves us with his thoughts; raw and abrasive, just as he was.

Fifty perspectives on one person from fifty people can have the distinct possibility of repetitiveness, but editor Shamya does a terrific job at chiselling out similar stuff. The brevity in the narrative makes for constant freshness through the book.

If there’s one fault in this eclectic read about a maverick filmmaker, it would be the title of the book. If this was an attempt to make Ghatak familiar to the uninitiated, ‘Unmechanical’, (Ajantrik) is perhaps just not the title that’ll do it.

Unlike Gurudutt, who immortalised ‘Yeh duniya agar mil bhijaayetohkyahai’ (who cares even if you get all the glory from this world), if Ghatak was alive to witness all the celebration, he would perhaps say what Nita, a character in his film Megha Dakha Tara says, ‘Aamikintu bachtecheye chhilam!’ Or I want to live!

(Naveen Chandra runs 91 Film Studios, which produces and distributes regional language feature films.)

Check the book out on amazon.

Published on November 21, 2025