IN TODAY'S PAPERFront PageNationCalcuttaBengalOpinionInternationalBusinessStocks Live SportsCricket LiveAt LeisureSudokuCrosswordNew!JumbleNew!GalleryHorse RacingWEEKLY FEATURES KnowhowJobsTelekidsProperTTEtcWeekendLookCITY NEWSLINES Front Page > Calcutta> Story Top of Form Today?s story in yesterday?s colourRituparno Ghosh is back with a contemporary tale of many shades but told in black-and-white. Dosar, about marital fidelity, finds the directorexperimenting with his idiom while exploring relationships, says Reshmi Sengupta After Chokher Bali, Raincoatand Antarmahal, you are finally returning to a contemporary urban milieu with Dosar? Well, it wasn?t a conscious ordeliberate decision to make a contemporary film, but afterChokherBali and Antarmahal, and with Saheb Bibi Ghulam coming up, I had got a little tired of period films. In Dosar, I am on familiar territory. In fact, the idea of the film ? about this coup le that Today's Edition | Thursday, Apr il 06, 2006 | Advert (Top) Prosenjit and Konkona, who play man and wife; (below) Rituparno discusses a shot with his leading man
Rituparno Ghosh is back with a contemporary tale of many shades buttold in black-and-white. Dosar , about marital fidelity, finds the director experimenting with his idiom while exploring relationships, saysReshmi Sengupta
After Chokher Bali ,
Raincoat and
Antarmahal , you
are finallyreturning to acontemporaryurban milieu with
Dosar?
Well, it wasn?t aconscious or deliberate decisionto make acontemporary film, but after Chokher
Bali and Antarmahal , andwith Saheb BibiGhulam coming up,I had got a little tiredof period films. In Dosar , I am onfamiliar territory. In fact, the idea of the film ? about this couple that
Today'sEdition
| Thursday, April 06, 2006 |
(Top) Prosenjit andKonkona, who play manand wife; (below)Rituparno discusses ashot with his leading man
gets caught ? was there within me for some time. It?s inspired from areal-life incident where the straying husband and the woman he has anaffair with die in an accident. And his wife comes to know about therelationship only at that point. I was curious to know what could be theresolution to such a problem had one of them been alive.
You have touched upon the theme of marital infidelity in some of your films ? Utsab, Chokher Bali, Raincoat...? but does Dosar
explore it in greater detail?
I had a role model for Utsab in Shakha Proshakha where there is afamily unit and there are several subplots. But for Dosar , I didn?t haveany model to fall back on.
And Dosar is a film not on marital infidelity, but rather about maritalinfidelity. I haven?t shown any big affair happening between the twomain characters. It?s more about one incident influencing other incidents and the aspect of infidelity being caught through many
couples. There are two families ? of Prosenjit and Chandrayee ? andthere is a series of events that unfolds. Then there?s Parambrata andPallavi in a relationship... The issue of infidelity has been seen fromvarious perspectives.
I decided to tell the story from the perspective of Chandrayee?s eight-year-old son. Chandrayee is the other woman in Prosenjit?s life whodies in the accident. We shot the accident scene in Raichak and thecrowd which had gathered to see the shooting became part of theaccident scene.
Why did you opt for black and white to make Dosar ?
I didn?t find the need to use colour in this film. In fact, I didn?t think Ineeded to use colour for some of my other films too. The use of black and white in Dosar is not a gimmick. Creatively, black and white gaveme the umbrella colour to join all the incidents and disparate elementsin the film. The film begins with one relationship, keeps progressingwith many relationships and then comes back to the first relationship.
What kind of problems did you face while working in this colourformat?
Working in black and white is a tough proposition as the positives arevery expensive and not easily available. Besides, most of us don?t havethe eye to see things in black and white. In the Dosar team, only Abhik
(Mukhopadhyay) and Prosenjit have had some experience with black and white before.
And working in black and white needs a lot of thought. For instance,knowing the kind of texture and colours that would come out properly.So, we would shoot the interiors and costumes in back and white andsee how it looked.
Did you find any change in Konkona the actress from the days of
It?s Konkona?s second film with me and also her next Bengali filmafter Titli. And I must say she has grown a lot. She has matured as anactress and has developed a directorial eye.
Both Konkona and Prosenjit have done an excellent job. Prosenjitactually sat with a doctor and worked out the details of his healingstages. I feel that if you can motivate them a little, actors can do a fine job.
Is there any background score for Dosar ?
Yes there is and the music is very different. The background music has been done by a band called 21 Grams. They have also done the musicfor my next release Khela.
A senior corporateexecutive with aloving wife at homefalls for a colleaguein office. But his best-kept secret slipsout the day thelovers meet with anaccident ? she dies, but he survives. Dosar , RituparnoGhosh?s urbane tale
of infidelity and itsramifications on amarital relationship,starts at thecrossroads of anuneasy past and afractured present inthe wedded life of his star actorsProsenjit andKonkona Sen
Sharma. And all in stark black and white.The director had his reasons for choosing the B&W idiom, while heand his technical team went through the trial and error of creating aworld without colours.
Abhik Mukhopadhyay, the man behind the camera, didn?t want a retromood to rule the film. ?This film is about a modern relationship seenfrom a modern viewpoint. So, one had to give the impression that it
wasn?t a dated film. Black and white has a straightforwardness about it.Colour creates a lot of associations with things, while black and whiteis more abstract, which helped in the story-telling of Dosar ,? feelsAbhik, the only technician in the crew to have worked in black andwhite (in his FTII days).
As the costumes and art direction needed a lot more thought than usual,the crew shot costumes and interiors with a Handycam, converted itinto black-and-white and checked out if the results were satisfactory.
Producer Planman Motion Pictures had a trying time organising the rawstock. ?We looked everywhere in the country but there wasn?t enough black-and-white stock to complete a film. So we placed an order withKodak which procured the stock for us from Japan. There was a repeatof the problem during post-production as there were hardly anylaboratories fully equipped to handle a black-and-white film. Finally, itwas done at a studio in Mumbai,? says Subho Shekhar Bhattacharya,CEO, Planman Motion Pictures. The Delhi-based company led by
Arindam Chaudhuri had earlier backed Bengali projects like AnjanDas?s Saanjhbatir Roopkathara and Faltu.
For the past few days, the billboard-plastered cityscape, normally a riotof colours, has an interesting addition ? stylised blow-ups in black andwhite. The visual campaign for Dosar offers novelty in every detailing,from text to the texture. The carefully crafted campaign series has beenconceptualised by Response.
?When we saw the first cut of the film it struck me that it was a veryunusual Rituparno Ghosh film. It?s a wonderful urbane film which doesnot tell an elaborate story. So we decided to blend the emotions. For the
billboards, we had carefully chosen black-and-white shots of crucialemotional moments that hinted at the complex relationships. To break the monotony, we devised the vertical format. The font for Dosar inBengali has been converted from the English font Gill-sans,? saysArindam Nandy, chief creative officer. That apart, the publicity blitzconsists of road shows and a black-and-white photography exhibition atThe Park hotel.
The film, to release on Poila Baisakh, also stars Chandrayee Ghosh,Shankar Chakraborty, Parambrata Chatterjee, Pallavi Chatterjee,Saswata Chatterjee and Tota Roy Chowdhury.
