"An excellent way to connect to the audience is to present the story to them like a mirror; thus, it reflects various aspects of their life." Although most of us might agree with the opinion of director Mejbaur Rahman Sumon, how stories of our culture can be portrayed on screen has remained a concern. But, after watching the film 'Hawa,' it becomes clear as the man showed us how to do that. With a great story, Sumon presented the excruciating details of the life of local fishermen as valuable elements of the film.
How 'Hawa' blew
In his recent interview with The Financial Express, director Mejbaur Rahman Sumon shared his experience and journeys in making the film 'Hawa.' While narrating this film's inspiration and back story, Sumon mentioned his close observation of the culture, traditions, and festivals of the life of sea fishermen for a long time. Besides, he explored relevant literature, folktales, and research to comprehend their culture and activities in depth.
The film starts from a natural position but ends with a bit of illusion in the turn of events. Sumon said he preferred creating that illusion because it helps tell the story in a way where the audience will think about the story themselves. The audience may find the use of the concepts of realism, magic realism, and absurdity in different contexts. Observing the various scenes will give the audience intriguing points to think about.
With an amalgamation of magical realism to realism in its narrative, the film seemed to have some connections with mythologies. However, the story went deeper when asked why that combination was necessary for making a film about sea fishermen.
"Actually, one of the purposes of the story was to portray the absurdity of life in the sea by giving nature more priority over the human will. That is why this use of magical realism symbolically questioned our ability to perceive."
Folklores come into play
"At the film's beginning, the dialogue, 'In this world, there is no science,' which worked as a prelude to the rest of my story, expresses that our ability to understand nature is limited, let alone control it. In most scenes, you will see the 'blue sea' in the background, which is an absurd aspect of this film because at the end of the day, we are helpless to nature. The blue sea is a personification of nature as the ultimate controller in my story," explained Sumon.
However, then comes this question of the difference between comprehending absurdity in the tradition of our culture compared to the west. Sumon seemed ready for the answer, "First of all, the way to perceive absurdity in our culture is entirely different from the west due to cultural background. Say, for example, we talk about a scene from 'Rupban,' a popular folktale of ours. We see that in the jungle, Rupban is asking for the life of the king's 12 years old son from a tiger by saying, 'Khayo na, khayo na, Bagha' the situation is absurd. Still, the audience is not perceiving that in that way."
"Because people in our region never went through that industrialization to emotionally connect to the story of Kafka's Metamorphosis, where, after waking up in the morning, Gregor Samsa suddenly noticed that he had turned into a cockroach."
Shada Kala - Shada Kala
At this point of the discussion, it was impossible to delay the topic of 'Shada Shada Kala Kala,' a song that became popular even before the film's release, and the backstory behind using that music in the movie. While talking about that, for a moment, it seemed Sumon returned to his student life at Fine Arts and how he used to sing that song on campus with his friends.
"I had a good relationship with the song's writer, Hashem Mahmud, during my student life. I first listened to the song in the 1990s as a student. In 2017, as part of this film project, we visited locations in the sea for the second time with some local fishermen. Some boats got together in the evening. They had their dinner with us. After that, they told us some of them could sing."
"From our side, my friend Shiblu sang a song. Then some of them sang a couple of their local songs by using oil drums and many other things like that as instruments. In my film, there was an actual scene where several boats from different fishermen get together. That's how this idea came into my mind about using this song in that scene," said Sumon.
The making
Having many big names in the casting line-up of the film, it was a matter of curiosity to the audience about Sumon's way of dealing with actors. In reply, he emphasised the pre-production part of his film, where there was a six-month-long rehearsal before shooting.
"Actually, the pre-production works of our film were done in a detailed manner. So while we were on the spot, we just needed to decide little things like how the blocking of any particular scene should be and this and that. All of them were serious about their craft from the very first day; they took most of the responsibilities on their own after having the descriptions of their characters," Sumon explained.
As the story of 'Hawa' was unique, naturally, the query was there to the ordinary people of what could be the other sources to explore in our culture to portray different stories on screen. The director was straightforward by saying that most aspects of our culture are still unexplored in films. The reason is our tendency to be influenced by outer culture. It is not like he denies the necessity to watch foreign movies. However, he reaffirmed that our audience will only connect with a film when it tells something about their lives; thus, they see a reflection of them in the narrative.
Sumon asserted, “If we look at the western tradition, we see that with development, they reached a situation in their culture where most of their stories have been told. Now, the source of attraction is the culture of Asia. So, it is high time we go back to our roots and explore our own culture.”
Our film industry has been at a low ebb for a long time relating to several cultural, social, political, and economic factors. However, Sumon seemed to have confidence in our future generation. With the mention of the recent revival of audience interest in Bengali Cinema, Sumon remarked,
“I want to be optimistic. Our country has no dearth of talent. The propensity to do creative work is high among the new generation. This is expected to increase the use of our indigenous stories and content in films. However, in the absence of sufficient patronage and coordination, many good works are not done. In this case, we can take collective action by identifying the obstacles.”
We, too, want to be hopeful, like Sumon, that there will be a positive change in the Bengali film industry in the future, with 'Hawa' being a step forward to that.
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