Ritwik Ghatak''s THE CLOUD-CAPPED STAR (1960)

 "Neeta, you're the only one who really appreciates me."

But who appreciates Neeta, like actually loves her? Not much appreciation!

also: "I never protested the wrongs done to me, that's my sin. The truth is I shouldn't have been so ordinary." Preach!

Cloud Capped Star is such a captivating film entirely for its execution. On paper it might seem like another Neo-Realistic kind of story or even a tragedy, as Neeta has to do what she can for her struggling and small-minded family (Neeta played by Choudhury, one of the most beautiful actresses of that era and with a look that can pierce you for how emotional while still so very very tired of everything around her she makes Neeta appear to be). There's one moment around the halfway mark when she has an interaction with a man who has decided to take a job.

This is not good, at least for what she has hoped for him (he's had his own dreams and aspirations, no need to get into them here you should watch the film and see for yourself). But she's hoped for much more for him, and at this news, as he also can't really look at her she just stares away from him, she gets up and walks out without a word, and director Ritwik Ghatak holds on a shot of Neeta descending some stairs, like each step she takes hurts her, as she closes her eyes and looks like she is about to fall over and suffer even more. But she doesn't; she goes into the composition for a full close up, and her hand goes to her throat and she sort of strangles herself for a few beats like she is completely lost and in total despair.

This may give the impression that the film then is melodramatic, and at times it certainly is. The point is that Neeta's journey, one where dreams are deferred and she has to put the needs of her family (particularly her oppressive and overbearing and, one could argue, selfish mother) above what she wants and needs for herself. 

Cloud-Capped Star is also partially at least a Musical, but not, to be sure, filmed like what we picture the far more energetic Bollywood modern Musicals go be; Ghatak keeps shots long and steady, sometimes pushing out and then pushing back in, like when Neeta gets to sing in that night time scene, largely in darkness. The songs feel less like fun frothy things than real necessarily valves for the characters to release such deeper wells of emotion that have built up over the story.

By the time she gets the news from this person that he has decided to also go for a job instead of his passion (music, of which Gitwak fills from start to finish and is quite good, too), this is just another in a string of disappointments. There's more to come, but what's fascinating is how Ghatak takes what is already so harrowing and dramatic in Neo-Realism (though these performers seem to have more training than non-professionals or even who Ray hired for Pather Panchali) and pushes it into almost abstract degrees.

There are times when he will show a space and leave it there for a period that should almost verge on too much, but it isn't. When Neeta sees what's happened to her father and his accident (I believe that was the scene), there's this shot of a stairwell and the camera is looking up and staying on it for a period that seems close to a minute (not that long... or was it longer). It stands out because it feels so ominous and dark, like a John Alton lensed film noir. Yet this shot ends as soon as Neeta enters the frame on the bottom edge and then it cuts to a more normal shot. Why hold on this image for so long? Maybe we are waiting for something? Is Neeta waiting for something? Maybe the point is nothing that will come and all we are left with is this abstract, unnerving setting. Alienation and isolation is all.

There are few choices where Ritwak is experimenting with the frame and even what we are hearing and didn't work quire as well for me, like when the family gets the news about the son's injury and he includes a sound effect that's like from a 1950s science fiction movie (isn't that buzzing sound like when a spaceship is about to land) and the dad's reaction ("This was expected!") and is so uncanny that it took me out of the scene (I generally liked his performance and character, he eas the only one in the family who seems to feel more for her daughter than anyone else). The sounds get even more discordant in the final reels, and there's already enough on the screen that the audio feels like overkill (on my first viewing, I should note, maybe a second time around and not at home would help better).

Beat for beat, however, and shot for shot, Ritwak can hold his own as innovative and boundary-pushing as any filmmaker of the early 1960s. I'm most amazed by how he shows us relationships and characters in the frame, how Neeta has to keep looking away and how sometimes she is out of focus and someone else is (ie talking to her mother when their relationship has hit near rock bottom and she is sick as hell); there's something mesmerizing in general about Ghatak's direction and how he tells this story of a young woman losing her soul and inner warmth that we surely see early on. And while this is a story about the divide in cultures at this time with Bengali and East Pakistani peoples, it could be a film set in other cultures the world over and still resonate because it speaks to free will (and the lack of it).

And that ending... I don't know what that means, but the preceding ten minutes is just about the saddest and most melancholy ten minutes in all of world cinema.