Jana Aranya (The Middleman) inarguably the bleakest of Satyajit Ray’s films is five decades young. Looking back on its turning 50 the director shows he was in pace with the prevailing times as his anguish bursts into almost every frame.
It was the darkest hour of Indian democracy – Emergency. Jobs were scarce though the regime’s supporters claimed that trains ran on time.
Never a resident of an ivory tower, Ray instead of making a slogan shouting protest on celluloid, prefers subtleity though it drives home forcefully. The thick skinned powers that be took their time for the sharp barbs to sink in.
Neither the government of the day nor the captains of industry who claim to be job creators have little explanation when the camera zooms in on piles of job applications. The post box, old and derelict, has a gaping hole in the middle seems to be a pointer that it’s contents have no destination.
Despair and revolution emanating from it were in the air. Caught in between a rock and a hard place, Somnath, a middle-class youth armed with a graduation certificate failing and faltering in his attempt to get a job turns into a middleman escorting his friend’s sister to an industrialist’s hotel room for the latter’s sexual gratification.
His “mission” accomplished Somnath ably enacted by Pradip Mukhopadhya cuts a successful deal. He has landed the contract for supplying chemicals and bartered his conscience en route to prosperity.
Paradox of personal freedom and the existing social unrest are the twin themes running through this film. Holding it on to a tight frame are Somnath’s father , Mr Banerjee, the hero’s elder brother Bhombol who does a high salaried job, his wife Kamala, Somnath’s friend Sukumar, Kauna who is Sukumar’s sister and whom Somnath escorts to the hotel room, Bishu Bose who introduces Somnath to the world of business read the realm of the middleman and last but not the least Natabar Mitter who passes himself as a consultant but is in so many words a pimp..
The film opens with a scene of “mass copying’ during an examination. Somnath does not copy and is rewarded with marks which below his expectation and his degree does not help him land a job.
He gingerly enters the world of business and finds himself in a vicious world where he has the freedom to either pawn his conscience and earn his living or remain without an income.
Earlier, Somnath had lost the girl he loved whose parents decide to marry her off to a doctor. He chooses to cover up his grief with sarcasm when he asks the girl to keep the handkerchief he has given her to wipe away her tears as she would need it on the bus.
As for social unrest, when Somnath’s father wants to get in touch with the vice-chancellor to remedy his son’s poor results, he is told tjat the VC is under siege (gherao, a term which came to vogue then) by students. The characters of this film walk the street in a backdrop of posters and wall graffiti, another pointer to a society frayed at the edges and on the verge of s breakdown and the significance of the title of the film Jana Aranya (Human Jungle) is driven home.
But Somnath does make choices when he turns down a marriage offer whose dowry includes the job of the manager of a cement shop owned by his prospective father-in-law. He sticks to his guns sans ammunition only succumbing to an offer of supplying “goods” which is neither good or honest.
Mitter enacted by Robi Ghosh in a performance which bares the underbelly of the city offers an escape route. He explains to Somnath that unless he does what is against his conscience, for all his middle class values it is a walk down a blind lane.
Somnath braces himself for the plunge into the murky dark depths even as the rotting fabric of the ”70s society calls out to him. It was called “Muktir Dashak” (the decade of liberation) but the liberator for Somnath is Natsbar Mitter, a pimp.
It is he who helps Somnath to cross over. At last when the big moment has come the middle class young man makes his choice with difficulty.
Ray is unrelenting in his exposure of the society around him. It is done on celluloid but the audience feels an operation on middle class conscience is on sans anaesthetic.
It was no cakewalk to take a swipe at the establishment then. The then chief minister, one of the architects of Emergency being one of the childhood friends of Ray did not make his job easy.
Music one of the high points of all Ray films is minimal in this film. The director cuts music short in his depiction of societal despair.
There has been enough focus on Somnath. What about Kauna who sells her body to sustain her family?
She calls herself Juthika in the profession of her choice. She refuses to let Somnath call her Kauna and also the money he offers her.
She shuns the money she has not earned. Arguably, she is the toughest character in this film
Be it Sarbajaya in Pather Panchali, Charu in Charulata or Karuna in Kapurush, Ray has had string woman characters in his films. Kauna joins their ranks.
A lucrative deal clinched, Somnath returns home and informs his father whose desparation turns to jubilation. Blissfully unaware his son has become a predatory denizen of the human jungle his face breaks into a slow smile.
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And Somnath breaks down as he walks into the darkness of his room like an carnivore slinking into the undergrowth with his “kill”. But he is weighed down by his deed which is an indication of lack of pessimism of Ray in innate goodness of human nature.
