Satyajit Ray | গণশত্রু (Gônoshotru) (An Enemy of the People) / 1989

the honest suffer most

by Douglas Messerli

 

Satyajit Ray (screenwriter and director, based on the play by Henrik Ibsen) গণশত্রু (Gônoshotru) (An Enemy of the People) / 1989

 

In the small Bengali town of Chandipur Dr. Ashoke Gupta (Soumitra Chatterjee) is troubled. Several of his personal patients and others in the hospital in which he works have been suddenly contracting hepatitis and other respiratory diseases most often connected with polluted water. Often a writer for the city’s major liberal newspaper, he calls in the paper’s editor, Haaridas Bagchi (Dipankar Dey), to tell him of what he suspects, that the pollution is occurring at the point in the river where the city is most populated, near where the town officials and industrialists have built a holy Hindu temple that attracts thousands of tourists each year. When a test confirms that the pollution is coming from the temple itself, Gupta reports the facts to his younger brother, Nisith (Dhritman Chatterjee), head of the committees running both the hospital and the temple, believing that—although his brother is far more conservative that he—that he cannot but demand the temporary closing of the shrine so that the “leak” or “break” in the plumbing can be fixed.

       Although both Gupta’s wife and school-teaching daughter warn him that Nisith may not see it that way, the doctor is shocked by Nisith’s refusal to take action and his insistence, along with the temple official, on denying that it could be possible, since the water served there contains a certain plant that is “known” to purify the water, part of the Hindu tradition. There is obviously no scientific fact behind the religious superstition.

      Gupta’s response is to write an article for the newspaper about the issue so that the people can perceive the danger and action be taken. But the newspaper editor finally also determines that he cannot publish the essay, that publishing it will result in protests that will bring the under-subscribed paper to financial ruin.

      Gupta determines, accordingly, that he will have to take up his cause with the people directly through a public speech. Nisith quickly makes it impossible for him to rent out any of the major public speaking halls, and Gupta is forced to rely on his intelligent and friendly future son-in-law, Ronen (a character who does not exist in the Ibsen play), who as head of a theater and poetry group, controls the availability of a separate venue.

       Naively, Gupta invites his enemies as well as his supporters to attend, but when his brother shows up, it is clear that he, the newspaper publisher, and its editor will control the proceedings in an attempt to disrupt the speech. Although the attending theater actors and poets loudly plead to hear Gupta’s arguments, others drown them out, and once more he is sabotaged, described in local graffiti as an “enemy of the people.”

 

     Soon after, Gupta’s daughter, Indrani (Mamata Shankar) is asked to resign from her teaching position, and Gupta’s chagrined landlord tells the family that he must ask them to vacate their house. A telephone call from the hospital tells Gupta that, unless he recants, he no longer has a position there. When the newspaper editors show up to also ask him to rethink his views, he demands they leave.

      Seemingly beaten by his entire world, except for the members of his own loving family, Gupta has no choice but to concede defeat, crying out to his wife, Maya, in existential despair: “I have done nothing wrong. Why is this happening to me?”  We truly understand in these scenes one of the play’s stated tenants: “The honest suffer most.”

      That the director Ray is a true believer in human good has always been apparent in his works, and is particularly evident in this film as he transforms Ibsen’s work from a somewhat cynical tragedy into a kind of darkly comic shift of power, particularly when the newspaper’s assistant editor, the wise and intelligent Biresh (Subhendu Chatterjee) visits Gupta with Ronen, explaining he has left his position at the newspaper and as a freelancer will do an interview with Gupta to be published in Calcutta. A few minutes later Ronen announces that he has printed up Gupta’s speech and that he and his theatrical group will distribute it personally to homes. In the background we suddenly hear voices proclaiming their support of Gupta as a hero, the theater group marching upon the city.

      Unlike Ibsen’s play, accordingly, Ray’s film ends with what several critics have described as an unbelievable ending. And, on the surface, Ray’s deus ex machina closing does seem somewhat absurd. The very idea of art coming to the defense of science seems ludicrous in a world where we have lost the ability to perceive the integration of the two. But isn’t that precisely what Ibsen was attempting in his play, to bring through his drama the sheltering wing of protection to a truth-teller such as Doctor Stockmann—or in this case, the perplexed Ashoke Gupta and his family?

      Ray, sick with heart problems for several years before this film, was told by his doctors that he should not do any “location” shooting. And the film, bound to a stage-set, has been criticized by other critics as being non-cinematic. In fact, like several of Hitchcock films (most notably Rope and Dial M for Murder) this work, shot in tight quarters, demonstrates Ray’s cinematographical artistry by focusing his camera on the surfaces and doorways of his rooms and, most importantly, upon his actor’s faces, as they react, sometimes in controlled shock, at other times in total disbelief of the events that transpire between them. Ray’s work reminds us, in fact, that actors do indeed have faces—to restate the comment of Billy Wilder’s Nora Desmond. Yes, Ibsen’s play—even in Ray’s reinterpretation—is, at times, an intellectual exercise—but what a glorious enterprise it is: perhaps even enough to help us drop our absurd superstitions and embrace what knowledge of the vast unknowable world we can claim.

 

Los Angeles, February 10, 2104

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (February 2014).