Between 1955, when Pather Panchali was released, and 1970, when Aranyer Din Ratri hit theatres in Calcutta, Satyajit Ray strode like a colossus in the non-mainstream world of Indian cinema. If he had any competition in these 15 years, it came mainly from the two other Bengali filmmakers, Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen. Still, for the cultural capitals in Europe and America, Ray was the supreme embodiment of a subcontinental cinema of heightened sensibility.
It’s not as if Ray was shaken from his pedestal in the 70s, but suddenly several new directors were making pathbreaking films. This would have been an exciting phase for any keen observer of Indian cinema.
It is helpful to be aware of this backdrop to fully appreciate the importance of Shyam Benegal’s debut feature Ankur, which was released in 1974. (This was also the year that saw the release of partition drama Garm Hava, a landmark Hindi film in its own right.)
While Ankur was different from almost all Hindi films that came before it, a similar, near-simultaneous revolution was brewing in other regional language cinemas, particularly in the southern states of Kerala and Karnataka.
Also, if we look at motion pictures from a more fundamental perspective, other first-time directors had started subverting the very language and grammar of Indian films around the same time. Most impactful among these radical new voices were Mani Kaul and Kumar Shahani. So while Benegal indeed took a leap of faith with Ankur, he did not discard the building blocks of plot, storytelling and cinematic grammar. That said, given Hindi’s dominance by virtue of being the country’s most spoken and understood language and the massive audience, Hindi cinema has Ankur hit Indian screens like a gale force. Five decades later, it retains much of its raw power.
Ironically, Benegal, who had spent his childhood in Hyderabad, initially wanted to make the film in Telugu but couldn’t find any producers to bankroll the ambitious project. After clutching at it for over a decade, he got luckier with the Hindi script. (The Hindustani dialect in Ankur borrows from the Deccani spoken in parts of Andhra.)
One of the first things that strike you about Ankur is its pace. The economy with which Benegal times his scenes is a revelation: there is very little flab between two cuts. You can almost imagine Indian audiences of the 1970s used to the more familiar Hindi film dialogue-baazi — and a sympathetic hero-protagonist who looks and plays the part — squinting in disbelief and gasping with growing discomfort at the visuals unfolding before them.
Ankur throws a harsh light on the fault lines of caste, class, sexuality, gender and the urban-rural divide. In the unravelling of Surya, from a seemingly progressive young man who does not believe in the rigidities of caste to a person capable of inhuman cruelty, the archetypical hero’s journey is turned upside down. But even as the hero falls, a space is created where society can see how unjustly it treats men and women who are the lowest in the caste and class hierarchy.
Also Read: The Sexual Appeal Of Shyam Benegal’s Early Films
One of the many challenges which Benegal throws at his audience is the idea of consent. What does consent in a sexual relationship mean, for both the giver and receiver of consent, if the power differential between them is so stark as is the case with Surya, an entitled, educated, upper caste, land-owning male, and Lakshmi–a poor, illiterate Dalit woman who cleans his house and towards whom he develops an intense attraction?
The question is further complicated by the fact that both Surya and Lakshmi are already married. Any relationship of this sort in a village still steeped in orthodox values would be doomed from the start. But Benegal succeeds brilliantly in conveying how easy it is for the man in such an equation to walk away from all responsibility when the romantic idyll shatters and leave the woman to shoulder all blame, devastatingly exposed in front of an unforgiving society.
Ankur means ‘seedling’, and there is a shift in the register at the end after Surya, plagued subconsciously by guilt, misunderstands the situation and completely loses his moral compass. The villagers gathered stare accusingly at not just his act of brutality but, it seems, at the injustice of the social order itself.
Something has changed. The stone hurled by the little boy which breaks the glass pane of Surya’s house is, in a sense, the shattering of the old-world order. But will it also be the seed for the birth of a new, more humane society? Nearly half a century later, Benegal’s implicit question remains unanswered.
Disclaimer: This article has not been written by Film Companion’s editorial team.