Titash Ekti Nadir Naam

Titas Ekti Nadir Naam
Poster for Titas Ekti Nadir Naam
Directed by	Ritwik Ghatak
Story by	Ritwik Ghatak (screenplay) Adwaita Mallabarman (the original novel)
Produced by	N. M. Chowdhury Bacchu Habibur Rahman Khan Foyez Ahmed
Starring	Rosy Samad Kabori Choudhury Rowshan Jamil Rani Sarkar Sufia Rustam
Cinematography	Baby Islam
Edited by	Basheer Hussain
Music by	Ritwik Ghatak (music theme) Ustad Bahadur Khan
Release date	27 July 1973 (1973-07-27)
Running time	159 mins
Countries	Bangladesh India
Language	Bengali
Budget	৳824,000 (US$7,700)
Box office	৳123,000 (US$1,100)

Titash Ekti Nadir Naam (Bengali: তিতাস একটি নদীর নাম), or A River Called Titas, is a 1973 Bangladeshi film directed by Ritwik Ghatak.^[1][2] The movie was based on a novel of the same name, by Adwaita Mallabarman.^[3] The movie explores the life of the fishermen on the bank of the Titas River in Brahmanbaria, Bangladesh.

Rosy Samad, Golam Mostafa, Kabori, Prabir Mitra, and Roushan Jamil acted in the main roles.^[4] The shooting of the movie took a toll on Ghatak's health, as he was suffering from tuberculosis at the time.

Alongside

and Mrinal Sen's Calcutta 71 (1972), Titas Ekti Nadir Naam is one of the earliest films to resemble hyperlink cinema, featuring multiple characters in a collection of interconnected stories in the style of The Rules of the Game (1939), predating Robert Altman's Nashville (1975). The film topped the list of 10 best Bangladeshi films in the audience and critics' polls conducted by the British Film Institute in 2002.^[6]

Plot

A fisherman by the

, Kishore, marries a young girl, Rajar Jhi, on impulse when he visits a nearby village. After their wedding night, they head for Kishore's village on his boat the following night. Rajar Jhi is kidnapped on the way by bandits as the fishermen sleep but jumps into the river and is rescued by fishermen from another area. She is too ashamed to return to her home village, as they would suspect her of having been abandoned by or having deserted her husband. Unfortunately, she knows little about her husband, not even his name, though these were recorded in her home village. The only thing she remembers is the name of his village. Kishore in turn does not return for her as the shock of losing her has driven him mad and he assumes that the bandits have taken her to an unknown destination.

Ten years later, Rajar Jhi attempts with their son to find Kishore to give him a father. Some residents of his village refuse to share food with them because of imminent starvation but a young widow, Basanti, helps them. Later, it turns out that Kishore and Basanti were childhood lovers.

Director Ghatak appears in the film as a boatman, and Basanti's story is the first of several melodramatic tales.^[7][8]

Cast

• Rosy Samad
  as Basanti
• Kabori Choudhury
  as Rajar Jhi
• Rowshan Jamil
  as Basanti's mother
• Rani Sarkar
  as Munglee
• Sufia Rustam as Udaytara
• Prabir Mitra as Kishore
• Bonani Choudhury as Morol Ginni
• Chand as Subla
• Golam Mustafa as Ramprasad & Kader Milan
• Ritwik Ghatak as Tilak Chand
• Fakrul Hasan Bairagi as Nibaran Kundu
• Shafikul Islam as Ananta
• Chetana Das
• Farid Ali
• Abul Hayat

Reception

Critical response

Dennis Schwartz, who gave the film an "A" grade, wrote: "It's a passionate film made with great conviction, that features a marriage ceremony with the only sounds heard being the bride's heavy breathing. The pic is filled with traditional music, tribal customs, an abduction, a murder, a suicide, an insanity and starvation. In the end, it signals the demise of a long-standing culture because of various reasons, such as the inability to change with the times, the fractured nature of the village and their inability to deal with outside forces like money-lender schemers. It's a haunting and unforgettable film about the joys, anguish and rage of a community that was unable to survive. Ghatak clearly uses the story as a tragic analogy of what happened to the Bengali people as a result of the Partition of Bengal between British India and Pakistan in 1947."

Conversely, Mike D'Angelo of The A.V. Club, who gave the film a "C−", called it "clumsily melodramatic tale of the fallout that occurs after bandits kidnap a pregnant bride...Leaping forward in time without signposts and continually wandering off on pointless digressions, the film is somehow both overly plotted (coincidences and conveniences abound) and dramatically shapeless, with its lauded anticipation of “hyperlink” cinema—abrupt shifts in focus from one character to another—often coming across as random. What’s more, Ghatak has enormous difficulty simply establishing a coherent tone; the story’s most tragic moment is so broadly played that it threatens to inspire laughter rather than anguish." Despite this, he lauded its "breathtaking black-and-white images on the banks of the titular river" and recommended Meghe Dhaka Tara, "his consensus masterpiece", as a better introduction to his filmography.^[14]

Screenings in different festivals

• 2017: Ritwik Ghatak Retrospective UK, at Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee, Scotland, UK, Programme curated by Sanghita Sen, Department of Film Studies, St Andrews University, UK ^[15]

Accolades

In 2007, A River Called Titas topped the list of 10 best Bangladeshi films, as chosen in the audience and critics' polls conducted by the British Film Institute.^[16]

References

External links

• Titash Ekti Nadir Naam at
  IMDb
• A River Called Titas: River of No Return an essay by
  Criterion Collection