Puratawn movie review: Sharmila Tagore delivers the performance of a lifetime as woman losing her grip on memory

Puratawn review: In what is her return to Bengali cinema in two decades, the veteran actor is unforgettable as a woman living with the memories of her past.

Puratawn (The Ancient) movie review

Cast: Sharmila Tagore, Rituparna Sengupta, Indraneil Sengupta, Brishti Ray

Director: Suman Ghosh

Star rating: ★★★1/2

Sharmila Tagore has always been such a radiant presence on screen. As an actor she has dabbled between mainstream commercial roles in the 70s and stood her ground in critically acclaimed films with the likes of Satyajit Ray. The camera loves her unconditionally, a feature that is evident more than ever before in Suman Ghosh's Puratawn (The Ancient)- a film that confronts the actor with a sharp and wondrous gaze. Sharmila brings in a lifetime's worth of experience and precariousness into this role, and delivers a performance that feels like a career-high.

At 80, Sharmila Tagore brings in a masterful display of subtlety and grace in her portrayal.

The film positions her as an octogenarian who is slowly losing her memory and grasp over things. Does she have dementia? Why is she so scared of being reminded of the present? Rather than clinically observing the details of the breakdown of her health, Puratawn chooses to focus on the relationship with her daughter Ritika (Rituparna Sengupta). Even as she is pragmatic about her work and life, Ritika is at unease after the recent breakdown of her marriage with estranged husband Rajeev (Indraneil Sengupta).

A woman living in the past

In Puratawn, she is a woman who might be suffering from Alzheimer’s- constantly forgetting and doubting what's in front of her. The film begins with a frantic search filmed in a single-shot, as the house help Heera (an able supporting turn from Brishti Ray) runs around the rooms, corridors and finally reaches downstairs with the a sudden storm rustling up all the dead leaves in the garden. She finds the woman standing attentively, waiting for her daughter to arrive. As the film progresses, the viewer will find this woman in extremes- either she is calmly seated inside her room or she is in search of something- her wedding jewelry, her old letters, or that photo album.

The way Sharmila Tagore essays her, she is a woman who is trying not to lose touch with a lifetime of memories. In one heartbreaking scene, she accuses the house help of stealing her jewellery, only to find it hidden in the cupboard moments later. When Ritika calls her out for the wrong accusation, she has this vanishing blank expression- what did she do wrong? She can't remember. Tagore plays out this moment with exemplary clarity and precision.

A parallel track charts the history of Ritika's relationship with Rajeev. From the initial conversations to a certain maturity that develops in their bond, Ghosh establishes the trajectory of Ritika's past along with her visit to her ancestral home in Konnagar to celebrate her 80th birthday. Ritika sees her mother disintegrating from a painful distance. How can she help her? What will make her feel better? At times, the parallel track feels a little too stretched out and underlined, slowing the momentum of the film. Rituparna adds a finely attuned turn as the voice of reason, and shares a wonderfully muted chemistry with Indraneil, particularly in the dinner-table scenes.

A companion to Anthony Hopkins' The Father

The film expands and grows when Sharmila occupies the frame. In many ways her performance is in conversation with Anthony Hopkins' turn in The Father. In the 2020 release, Anthony Hopkins' character has similar disorienting time slips and emotional outbursts, as witnessed by his daughter Anne (played by Olivia Colman).

In Puratawn, the gradual deterioration of this woman happens with less rigid, surface-level alteration. A subplot involving a decades-old family dynamic is placed here wisely, as Ritika tries to recollect what happened in her childhood. "She was never a woman of mysteries," says Ritika about her mother. But she was also a wife before a becoming a mother, as well as a woman taking care of her family's well being. Ritika can only know her mother from a distance, never fully.

The body bears witness

One of the most arresting images in the film are the merciless closeups of the veteran actor's bare skin. Ravi Kiran Ayyagari’s camera lingers on the wrinkled skin on her arm as she takes an afternoon nap, tracing the lines with a sense of submission. These images are juxtaposed with the decaying walls of the ancestral house she resides in, expertly pieced together with the editing work by Aditya Vikram Sengupta. The body bears witness, tracing a lifetime worth of seasonal changes and revelations. Puratawn insists that the viewer pay attention to these details, as the screenplay threads the remnants of past incidents into the present, and the personal with the socio-political. It leaves the viewer with a renewed sense of responsibility and hope for the present generation to never lose touch with their roots.

Tagore, as luminous as ever when the camera comes to face her, never loses her sense of composure and attention. There's an inexplicable shift that her character goes through, losing herself bit by bit, wounded by the incapacity of her dear ones to understand her fully. The actor has hinted that Puratawn might just be her final Bengali film given her health conditions, and if that is the case, then what a beautiful swan song of a performance this is! Her face- weathered with age and time, exudes a sense of vulnerability that arrives with the proof of having lived a life. It is a remarkably brave and moving portrayal, where Tagore seems to draw everything from within her- where there are secrets and despair, but she lets them out only in little flickers of submission. Puratawn wants to hold on to these moments, it wants to say that life holds meaning in all its inconsistencies and mysteries.

Puratawn is playing in theatres nationwide.