Last Updated:
Rituaparno Ghosh’s cinema invited viewers not just to watch characters but to overhear their most private thoughts and, more than a decade later, his films still find new viewers
Indian film director Rituparno Ghosh at the Kolkata Fashion Week in April 2009. (Image: AFP/File)
Rituparno Ghosh was born in Calcutta on August 31, 1963, at a time when the city was still living in the shadows of its intellectual and artistic past.
The son of documentary filmmaker Sunil Ghosh, he grew up in a household where stories, images, and conversations were part of daily life. After studying economics at Jadavpur University, he first entered the world of advertising.
His lyrical copywriting and eye for detail gave him a reputation long before he began directing films. That grounding in sharp messaging and rhythm would remain visible in his cinema, where even the silences seemed deliberate.
THE ARRIVAL OF A DISTINCT VOICE
His directorial debut, Hirer Angti (1992), was modest, but two years later he stunned audiences with Unishe April. The story of a dancer mother and her estranged daughter, the film unfolded almost entirely in conversations and pauses, yet carried an emotional power that was undeniable. It won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film and almost overnight made Ghosh the new hope of Bengali cinema. At a time when mainstream Bengali films were veering toward loud melodrama, his restraint and quiet observation felt like a return to the subtle traditions of Ray and Sen, though his voice was already uniquely his own.
MAPPING FAMILIES AND THEIR FAULT LINES
What followed was a series of works that mapped the intricacies of family life. Dahan (1997) told the story of a woman who intervenes in a public assault and finds her courage questioned by society.
Asukh (1999) dealt with illness, care, and the unease of generational roles. Bariwali, released the same year, painted a heartbreaking picture of a landlady who rents her house to a film crew, only to be left lonelier once the cameras leave.
In Utsab (2000), he used the setting of Durga Puja in an ancestral home to explore nostalgia, conflict, and the unspoken tensions between siblings. These films rarely moved outside living rooms and verandas, yet the emotional stakes were immense. His strength lay in showing that the most ordinary spaces could hold the deepest dramas.
WOMEN AT THE CENTRE
It is impossible to speak of Rituparno’s cinema without noticing the centrality of women. His films consistently gave female characters the freedom to be flawed, desiring, uncertain, or strong.
From the fractured bond in Unishe April to the solitary landlady of Bariwali and the widowed Binodini in Chokher Bali, he returned again and again to the lives of women negotiating both tradition and autonomy. These portrayals were not intended to be heroic or idealised; they were attempts at truth, however uncomfortable. For a generation of viewers, this insistence on the inner worlds of women felt radical, and it is one of the reasons his films continue to invite discussion today.
DIALOGUES WITH TAGORE
Rituparno’s deep engagement with Rabindranath Tagore was more than a matter of literary adaptation. It was a dialogue across time. Chokher Bali (2003), with Aishwarya Rai in the lead, took a nineteenth-century narrative of love and widowhood and infused it with new intimacy.
Later, Noukadubi (2011) and his documentary on Jiban Smriti extended this connection, showing how themes of memory, identity, and desire in Tagore resonated with his own preoccupations. In many ways, Tagore gave him both a vocabulary and a canvas, but Ghosh’s interpretations always bore his distinctive personal signature.
STEPPING BEYOND BENGAL
Although his reputation was built within Bengali cinema, Rituparno ventured into Hindi and English with the same sensitivity. Raincoat (2004), starring Ajay Devgn and Aishwarya Rai, was essentially two people in a room revisiting the paths their lives had taken. The simplicity of the setting, borrowed from O Henry’s classic tale, revealed how much he trusted performance and dialogue to carry a film.
The Last Lear (2007), made in English with Amitabh Bachchan as an aging actor, blended theatre and cinema, exploring memory, ego, and fragility. These works showed that his quiet, chamber-like style could hold audiences beyond Bengal without losing its intimacy.
SPEAKING OF QUEER LIVES
From the late 2000s, Ghosh’s work turned decisively towards questions of gender and sexuality. His performances in Arekti Premer Golpo (2010) and Memories in March (2010) gave Indian cinema rare portrayals of queer identities treated with dignity and care.
His own directorial venture Chitrangada (2012), inspired by Tagore’s play, was at once personal and universal, probing identity, desire, and transformation. Off screen, he became an important voice for queer visibility, refusing to be confined by rigid categories and instead speaking of fluid, lived experience. His public presence, his evolving appearance, and his frankness made him an icon whose impact extended well beyond film.
A STYLE OF HIS OWN
If one looks closely, the formal elements of his cinema were as important as the themes. Rituparno relied heavily on interiors — the living room, the bedroom, the courtyard — as sites of memory and conflict. He trusted silence, letting a pause or a glance carry as much meaning as dialogue.
In some ways, he could be placed alongside Jean-Luc Godard, who in Europe broke apart conventions to capture the rhythms of daily life. Ghosh too bent form and pace, often trusting silences and enclosed spaces more than spectacle. The difference was that while Godard’s experiments leaned towards the abstract and political, Ghosh kept his gaze fixed on the personal and the emotional.
The comparisons with Satyajit Ray were inevitable, but Ghosh’s voice was different: more confessional, sometimes raw, always intimate. His cinema invited viewers not just to watch characters but to overhear their most private thoughts.
AN UNFINISHED CONVERSATION
More than a decade later, his films still find new viewers. They are screened in classrooms, discussed in film societies, and streamed on digital platforms. Their resonance lies in their ability to address the timeless — family, memory, desire — while also bringing forward the urgent, such as gender identity and queer representation.
Remembering him on his birthday is less an act of nostalgia and more an acknowledgment that his conversation with Indian cinema remains unfinished, carried forward each time one of his films is watched again.
(Prashanto Bagchi is writer and an International Relations scholar at JNU. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views)
Read More
