‘Script is king in any film’

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“The significance and importance of scriptwriting as a discipline have arrived much late in Indian cinema industry,” says Ranjan K. Ghosh, an alumnus of Whistling woods International and faculty member. Having co-authored the script of Aparna Sen’s next Bengali film Iti Mrinalini, Ghosh emerges as the first and only screenwriter with whom filmmaker Aparna Sen has hitherto collaborated with in her illustrious career. Based in Mumbai, this resourceful Bengali film writer has essayed his screenwriting debut with Iti Mrinalini, co-penning its story and screenplay.

“Script is the king in any given film. It forms the skeletal backbone over which things are marinated to flesh out the final output. If that goes wrong, then the entire movie falls flat. So, the quality work of a screenwriter must get its due recognition. The pathetic fact is that more often than not a screenplay writer is mistakenly acknowledged as nothing beyond a clerk or a meagre munshi in some old-fashioned government office. This narrowly-set common perception has to by far change for better with the changing times,” he says. “But things are now evolving at a faster rate and even talented screenwriters like Pubali Choudhuri, who has collaborated with Abhishek Kapoor on his path-breaking project Rock On, are also getting noticed. Slowly but steadily now scriptwriters are being taken seriously. So, what all potential hopefuls need is some sort of a validation from top-rung filmmakers like Aparna Sen, Rituparno Ghosh, Goutam Ghose or Anjan Dutta to collaborate on their ventures. The dream merchants of Bengal still believe in the archaic notion of an auteur-director. They have to shed their inhibitions of working and co-ordinating with a co-author on the sets. There’s no harm in compartmentalising a piece of task to expedite a work process and indulge in some kind of a division of labour,” he says.
Mrilani is the titular protagonist around whom, the entire plotline of the movie revolves. Be it her persona, her relationships, her loneliness, thoughts or her emotions, she remains the vital essence of this eponymous film. As the narrative thickens, the story picks up a melancholic mood only to divulge the dilemma, anguish and pangs of isolation of a top-notch Tollywood actress in her cloistered ivory-tower.
In the movie, the female lead repeatedly contemplates of committing suicide and makes ceaseless attempts to write a note to justify her act. But she fails to retain the letters that she scribbles from time to time as she doesn’t want to leave behind anything after her death that would logically form a part of her memorabilia and reach the tentacles of a sensation-sniffing media. So, her personal belongings which can posthumously become a collector’s prized asset, shouldn’t at any cost touch a depraved hand. “She didn’t wish her life to be an open book for that matter. Mrinalini, played by Konkona Sen Sharma, likes to keep her personal life close-guarded and her deep secrets closer in the core of her chest. Shyam Benegal’s critically acclaimed Bhumika or Guru Dutt’s Kaagaz Ke Phool are also loosely based along these lines. From Bollywood to Tollywood, several films have explored this theme of a solitary ‘star’ reaper or the magnified view of a film industry’s machinations,” says Ghosh.
The movie was recently selected for screening at the Mami international film festival and the Cairo international film festival, to be held between November 30 and December 5, 2011. The film is scheduled to hit the theatres with English subtitles in December-end.
Post Iti Mrinalini, Ghosh is lined up to script a film for Prakash Jha, who makes his maiden shot at producing Bengali films. The film is conjectured to be a loose adaptation of Jha’s hard-hitting National Award-winning Hindi movie, Gangaajal. Both the adapted story and screenplay have been penned by Ghosh. The yet untitled film is supposed to be a comment on the contemporary Bengal politics. “Since this is a Bengali film, so at regional level, concentrating on Bengal’s political climate would make more sense,” he says.
He further elaborates: “The sign of a probable change and the drop of the old political guard is seemingly in the offing. But we are yet to wait and watch out for the results of 2011 Assembly Elections. Besides this peg, we have also pencilled in the recent agriculture versus industrialisation feud to lend out an extra edge to the script. The chaos brewed over the forced land acquisition tussle or identifying a multi-crop farming land as a single-crop to transfer the same into corporate hands for ownership by a posse of power-hungry sharks, will all be included into the storyline. The film is scheduled to go on floors sometime in 2011.”
Content with his formal training from a reputed institute which boasts of a creme de la creme faculty staff, Ghosh informs that his four-five-year-long stint at this esteemed precinct taught him to be revolutionary in thought and approach, yet at the same time, remain rooted to the ground and treasure his values.
A passionate film buff, this Whistling Woods International alumnus has two scripts ready in his kitty. While he exchanges notes with his directors on matters of screenwriting, at the back of his mind, he nurses this deep heartfelt desire to wield the megaphone himself. “It’s still a wish in the closet,” he says.