How Ritwik Ghatak reinvented cinema

I have no way of knowing if Ghatak ever saw Jacques Tati's 1953 masterpiece Mr Hulot's Holiday, but when I look at his second feature, Ajantrik, it's hard not to be reminded of it.

- Jonathan Rosenbaum

Tati discovered with that film—while introducing his most famous character, who went on to appear in his next three features (Mon Oncle, Playtime and Trafic)—that Hulot didn't even have to appear onscreen every time he was to be evoked. All Tati had to do was duplicate the sound of Hulot's car: a rattling antique and an embarrassment that very early on in the picture becomes closely associated with him, identifying him from the outset as the odd man out among vacationers at a summertime beach resort.

There's a similar association made between Bimal (Kali Banerjee), the cabdriver hero of Ajantrik, and his own broken-down car. The fact that this car has a name, Jagaddal, and is even included in some rundowns of the film's cast, also seems emblematic of this special symbiosis. And it's interesting that Ghatak also uses some artificial-sounding noises on the film's soundtrack that oddly evoke science fiction, as if to express his fascination, his bemusement and amusement, with Bimal talking to and more generally treating his 1920 Chevrolet as if it were both a living creature and an extension of his own personality. (In interviews, Ghatak stated that he spent many years thinking about the philosophical implications of this relation between man and machine—a relation that seems especially pertinent to the technology of cinema itself.) And offscreen as well as onscreen, the various sounds that Ghatak uses to characterise this vehicle through various stages of health and fitness are a major aspect of the film's tragicomic tone—as important as the music or the sound of Bimal weeping when Jagaddal finally and irrevocably breaks down. The sound of this wreck being pulled away in the final scene is especially harsh and poignant, yet the sound of the detached car horn still wheezing and honking when an infant squeezes it allows the hero some sense of triumph and joy in the film's final shot.