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reviews on
'Jibon' "Jibon : capturing pain of real life on
reel...." Times of India, 27.1.2000 "Jibon touches deep chords......"- the Assam
Tribune, 16.1.1999 "The film is commendable endeavour towards meaningful
cinema....."- Northeast Sun, feb 2000 "Inadequacy of words to convey true feelings appears to be the central theme of the poignantly beautiful and thought provoking, Jibon ......"- The Zephyer, april,2000
illness as adversity Illness has been the subject of literature and
art,where it sometimes takes the shape of a metaphor.One recalls Ingmar Bergman’s
Cries and Whispers in which a middle -aged spinster is dying ,bearing a malignant tumour
in her uterus.Her body is dry ,sterile and diseased but her grotesque,swollen belly
parodies and cruelly mocks the possibility of existence being renewed,of life begining
afresh .Bergman is a deeply religious filmmaker and the ‘mockery’ of childbirth
contained in the film also makes a refernce to the Mother and Child of christian
theology,thereby raising metaphysical question about the ‘godlessness’ of our
Universe.The employment of illness as a narative device is not necessarily metaphorical
and it is used often more straightforward:it may provide individuals with a kind of
motivtion-Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru,Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Anand :there is very
little time left and the protoganist need to do many things.A third narrative possibility
is that of individuals coming into their own through illness that afflict either
themselves or their loved ones.Narratives of this kind celebrate the courage and tenacity
shown by ordinary people in difficult times and illness is one kind of adversity that can
be triumphed over or,at least ,battled against. When illness is not employed as a metaphor ,the resulting cinema is usually subsumed under the rubric of humanism;Altaf Mazid’s Assamese film Jibon ,(life) which shiws courage in the face of adversity,can therefore be described as a humanist exertion.Jibon is a very straightforward film which its director describes neither fictional nor documentary although my own assesment is that it is closer in spirit to the latter.Jibon deals with real people .The locale is Guwahati and the subject is a twelve year old boy named Ron.He suffers from a rare ailment named Duchenne’s Muscular Dystrophy that has no cure in sight.The boy is graduaaly losing control over his muscular system;he has to be carried to school and waited on hand and foot .The film is brief -about an hour long-and does not pretend to offer solutions or catharses.Ron is sinking and his parents prepare for the inevitable ,although not entirely without hope .Jibon is handled with rare competence-doubly rare because it is a first film -but I still believe that Altaf Majid errs in his assesment what makes his subject interesting .In a film of Jibon’s kind ,the entire interst lies in the manner in which people cope with afflictions,the ramification of which they are entirely conscious. The narrative tension in such a narrative can only result from such a conflict between what could be a destiny and the manner in which this destiny is resisted. Seen in htis context, the subject of interest in jibon can not be Ron, who is not a tragic figure because he is not entirely conscious of his predicament but the people who dote on him, those to whom he means so much. It is ofcourse for a critic to suggest what an artist could have done but failed to do, but the only subject that can be of of interest in the film is not the prediccament of Ron, but Biju, his mother. Biju herself has an extra-ordinary dignified screen presenceand one is astonished by the effortless way in which she holds our attention- without even seeming to try. Where the director could have placed his emphasis on Biju's dreams before Ron's birth, upon what his birth meant to her, upon the shock of discovering the nature of his ailment and on what motherhood has finally mean to her, he focuses his attention unrelenly on Ron himself. This tends to make the film more tedious and repetitive than it need have been. Another aspect of the film that is a little jarring is the musical score. The film begins with one of the corridors of the school in which Ron studies and the music is at once emotionally manipulative. We have not even had our first encounter with Ron and the music is already attempting to move us!. The film begins by attempting to coerce us into a reponsive and we in the audience tend to resent it. After all these complaints have been made, however, it must be admitted that JIbon is highly accomplished. What is especially amazing is the ease with which Altaf Mazid's amateur 'actors' face the camera and bring gravity to their roles. Actors and actresses from North-east seem rarely conscious of the camera and this is someting that always amazes a Southerner like me. The film is not 'fiction' in so far as the actors and the actresses play themselves; no events are recreated with the intention of involving us. Inspite of these aspects Jibon cannot but touch and disturb. The story of Biju and Ron is a tragic one but the making of Jibon does help their lives achieve a certain kind of transcendence. The Sentinel, 6th march, 1999 |