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| Nirad Mohapatra: ମାୟା ମିରିଗ / Māyā Miriga / The Mirage (IN 1984). Manaswini Mangaraj as Prabha. |
ମାୟା ମିରିଗ
IN 1984. Prod.: Lotus Film International.
Director: Nirad Mohapatra. Sog.: Nirad Mohapatra, Bibhuti Patnaik. Scen.: Nirad Mohapatra. F.: Rajgopal Mishra. M.: Bibekananda Satpathy. Mus.: Bhaskar Chandavarkar. Int.: Bansidhar Satpathy (Raj Kishore), Manimala (la moglie di Raj), Binod Mishra (Tuku), Manaswini Mangaraj (Prabha), Sampad Mohapatra (Tutu). 114’. Col.
Loc: Puri, Odisha, India [Eastern India, on the Bay of Bengal in the Indian Ocean].
Language: Odia.
Not released in Finland.
DCP with English subtitles from Film Heritage Foundation
Restored by Film Heritage Foundation at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in association with the family of the director. Digital restoration by Digital Film Restore Pvt. Ltd. Scanning by Prasad Corporation Pvt. Ltd. Restored from the 16 mm original camera negative preserved at Film Heritage Foundation and a 35 mm print preserved at the NFDC – National Film Archive of India.
Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2024: Cinemalibero
Introduced by Shivendra Singh Dungarpur (Film Heritage Foundation) e Sandeep Mohapatra [son of the director]
Viewed with e-subtitles in Italian by L'Immagine Ritrovata at Cinema Jolly, 27 June 2024
NIRAD MAHAPATRA OFFICIAL: SYNOPSIS
" ‘Maya Miriga’ is concerned with the gradual and irreversible process of disintegration in a middle class joint family living in a small town in Orissa. "
" Raj Kishore Babu, an elderly head master in a school, lives modestly in a joint family. He has five children: Tuku, the eldest son, who is quiet and dutiful, works as a lecturer. Prabha, Tuku’s wife, is expecting their first issue and is dedicated to the running of the household. Tutu, the second son, is the great hope of the family. Following his brilliant academic career in Delhi, he is assured of a prestigious Government job. The third son, Bulu, clings to the family for his emotional security and is quick to see himself as a failure despite Tutu’s encouragement. The fourth son, Tulu, is the defiant one, ready to challenge the established family norms. Tikina, the youngest one is still at school. The family’s emotional centre is the gentle and worldly-wise grandmother. It is, however, Raj Kishore Babu who lays down the rules. His wife merely wields control over her daughter-in-law, Prabha. "
" When Prabha gives birth to a daughter, family expectations are let down. But soon enough, Tutu’s final selection for a prestigious I.A.S. job more than makes up for everything. As his newly acquired status demands, he marries above his social milieu. The house is transformed with modern gadgets and new furniture after Tutu’s marriage. Irritations arise, which reflect the beginning of changes in the joint family household. Tutu’s city-bred wife will not follow in Prabha’s footsteps as a traditional daughter-in-law, the role that is expected of her. On the flimsy pretext of her mother’s sickness, she declines to stay with her in-laws while her husband is away on training. Prabha resents the preferential treatment given to the new couple. Soon after the couple leave, the grandmother suffers a stroke and dies the same night. "
" Prabha’s sense of oppression, resulting from the joint family system, increases. She sees others who are better off because they do not need to share their income. Prabha can only express her resentment gradually to her husband, Tuku, as she realizes the deep sense of dedication her husband has towards the joint family. "
" Raj Kishore Babu retires from his work as headmaster. He is depressed and only finds solace in the company of another retired official. The latter pins all his hopes on the return of his only son who lives in America. "
" Tulu, the defiant one gets a first class graduate degree. He wishes to follow his brother’s footsteps and study in Delhi. Bulu, the ‘failure’ of the family, realizes that he will be all alone and left completely on his own. The family persuades Tulu to await the return of the successful brother Tutu, who is due to visit the family on the way to his first posting. His wife accompanies him only to collect her dowry possessions. She insists on doing it despite her husband’s embarrassment at her material preoccupation. "
" Tutu expresses reluctance to help finance his younger brother’s education in Delhi. The father comes down heavily on his favorite son and reminds him of the sacrifices they made to educate him in Delhi. Finally, Tutu, in shame, gives in. The eldest son chooses this moment to slip in the news of his deputation to a post in the State capital. "
" The disintegration of the family is by now apparent. An uneasy silence follows. In the quietness of the night, and in the privacy of their rooms, the family members recollect the warmth of their togetherness, yet are painfully aware of the impossibility of staying together. "
" Next morning, Tutu and his wife leave with their dowry items. Prabha, for the first time, declines to light up the oven feigning sickness. The mother has to take on the responsibility of the family. Reflecting on the state of affairs, Raj Kishore Babu ironically asks his two year old grand child: “will you too leave us”. "
ABOUT THE FILM
" The making of ‘Maya Miriga’ was an exciting experience of improvisation within the broad framework of a written story. The film was shot at Puri, a seashore town in Odisha. With a small crew and a team of non-professional artistes, we pitched our tents months in advance to dress up an abandoned house including its courtyard, which was to be our only set. We were lucky to have this house at our disposal and to have the best of both the worlds – a set on location. "
" I intended the film to be long and compassionate look at its characters, watching the members of a family inexorably progress towards their break-up. I belong there, to the small-town middle class joint family and have been fascinated by its dreams and agonizing nightmares. In it, I see a lot of warmth, fellow-feeling, sharing of experiences and a sense of responsibility. But I also see the tight-rope walking of the married sons, the bitterness of its locked-up daughters-in-law, their need for freedom, economic or otherwise, the maladjustment in marriages and above all, selfishness that can damage its very fibre. "
" At one level, it is the emotional attachment to the family as against freedom for oneself that provides the mainstay of its conflict. At another, the conflict arises from the social reality of the middle class: its economic status as related to higher education, better jobs and higher positions in the social hierarchy. But ultimately the film is about certain emotional bonds which make up a way of life and the painful realization that they can not last. " Nirad Mohapatra Official © 2024, Nirad Mohapatra All Rights Reserved
Shivendra Singh Dungarpur (Bologna Catalogue 2024): " Restoring Māyā Miriga has given us immense satisfaction. We literally raised the film from the grave, having found the negative in a very poor condition abandoned in a warehouse. Through its unhurried gaze set to the haunting soundtrack composed by Bhaskar Chandavarkar and remarkably subtle performances by the non-professional cast, this many-layered film, which tells the moving story of the disintegration of an extended middle-class family in a quiet town still has resonance in the India of today four decades since the film was made. "
" “I belong there, to the small-town extended middle-class family and have been fascinated by its dreams and agonising nightmares,” wrote director Nirad Mohapatra [1947-2015]. “In it, I see a lot of warmth, fellow-feeling, sharing of experiences and a sense of responsibility. But I also see the tight-rope walking of the married sons, the bitterness of its locked-up daughtersin-law, their need for freedom, economic or otherwise, the maladjustment in marriages and above all, selfishness that can damage its very fibre.” "
" Māyā Miriga has been referred to as the most feted film in the history of Odia cinema, which propelled a lesser known regional cinema into national and international recognition at the time it was made. However, since that time both the film and the filmmaker faded away from the landscape of feature films in India. Noted film critic Maithili Rao termed the vanishing of Nirad Mohapatra from the movie-making scene after such an “exquisitely elegiac, immensely moving first film” as one of Indian cinema’s greater unanswered questions. "
" Having three world-class restorations to our credit of hidden gems of India’s regional cinema – Aravindan Govindan’s two Malayalam films Kummatty and Thamp and Aribam Syam Sharma’s Manipuri film Ishanou – we felt that Māyā Miriga was almost an obvious choice for our next project. This is not just for its beauty and the fact that it was in danger of vanishing, but also because it was a very important film from Odisha, whose restoration would serve to bring Odia film heritage back into the limelight. " Shivendra Singh Dungarpur (Bologna Catalogue 2024)
AA: In his live introduction before the film, Shivendra Singh Dungarpur told us that the true strength of Indian cinema is in regional cinema such as this - regional cinema makes 80% of Indian cinema.
"The original 16 mm camera negatives, found abandoned in a warehouse in Chennai, were severely compromised and had to be manually repaired over several months before they could be scanned in Bologna." The result is one of the miraculous resurrections that we can witness in Bologna. The result may be soft and look duped at times, but the noble devotion to the rescue operation, die Errettung, has given us a restoration that carries its patina with grace. There is a subtle, refined watercolour ambience in the colour world.
Most importantly, a gentle, sensitive atmosphere has been sustained, the sense of being shot on this very location. We can sense the air, the atmosphere, the breath, the wind, the birds, the sounds of nature, the enchantment of quotidian life.
In his sole fiction feature, Nirad Mohapatra created an ensemble piece, a family movie, a multi character study, not story driven. It is a portrait of a moment in family history where they have already left their ancestral home they still own but nobody can find the energy to sustain it. In their transitional home they live in a joint family of three generations. The sons feel the draw to move to the big wide world.
The patriarch keeps the discipline, but the heart of the movie belongs to Manaswini Mangaraj as Prabha, a young mother who suffers from the gender discrimination, and doubly so when she registers the disappointment when her baby turns out to be a girl. The baby is weak and almost dies at birth but receives lots of love and the special devotion of the grandmother. With her alert gaze she turns into a source of joy and laughter and makes everyone radiate with happiness.
Mohapatra composes his ensemble piece following family dynamics and clashes of generation, class and gender. He registers shifting tensions and conflicts of family solidarity vs. individual expectations. A fundamental change is from collectivism to individualism.
Mohapatra's models include Ozu and Ray, and Maya miriga belongs to the same level of ambition and achievement. This is cinema about the fullness of being, a cinema of presence. It is not a glorification of tradition. We can sense the stifling pressure of tradition, and the irresistible pulse of life struggling towards freedom. There is at moments a lack of intensity, a sense of stagnation, perhaps because such is the reality on display.
Bottled up sadness and unrest is the ultimate impression from the viewpoint of Prabha. What is the mirage in the title of the movie? An illusion of family union based on the sacrifice of women like Prabha?
The music is exceptional. The enchanting sitar score becomes Prabha's soundtrack - soultrack - of her love, solitude and torment. Prabha is even shown as the sitar player. In reality the instrument was handled by maestro Bhaskar Chandavarkar, who had studied under Ravi Shankar and Umashankar Misra.
I grant Maya miraga my award for the best score of the films I saw in Bologna.
ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ: ମାୟା ମିରିଗ
ମାୟା ମିରିଗ
https://or.wikipedia.org/s/p6
ପୃଷ୍ଠା
ଆଲୋଚନା
ପଢ଼ନ୍ତୁ
ସମ୍ପାଦନା (Edit)
ଇତିହାସ
ଦେଖିବେ
ଉପକରଣ
ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆରୁ
ମାୟା ମିରିଗ
ନିର୍ଦ୍ଦେଶକ ନିରଦ ମହାପାତ୍ର
ପ୍ରଯୋଜକ ନିରଦ ମହାପାତ୍ର
ସଂଳାପ ନିରଦ ମହାପାତ୍ର
କଳାକାର କିଶୋରୀ ଦେବୀ, ସମ୍ପଦ ମହାପାତ୍ର, ମନସ୍ୱିନୀ, ମଣିମାଳା
ସଙ୍ଗୀତ ଭାସ୍କର ଚନ୍ଦାବରକର
ଚିତ୍ରଗ୍ରହଣ ରାଜ ଗୋପାଳ ମିଶ୍ର
ସମ୍ପାଦକ ବିବେକାନନ୍ଦ ଶତପଥୀ
ମୁକ୍ତିଲାଭ ତାରିଖ ୧୯୮୪
ଦେଶ ଭାରତ
ଭାଷା ଓଡ଼ିଆ
ମାୟା ମିରିଗ, ୧୯୮୪ ମସିହାରେ ମୁକ୍ତିଲାଭ କରିଥିବା ଏକ ଓଡ଼ିଆ କଥାଚିତ୍ର । ଏହି କଥାଚିତ୍ରଟିର ନିର୍ମାଣ କରିଥିଲେ ନିରଦ ମହାପାତ୍ର ।[୧] ଏହି ଚଳଚ୍ଚିତ୍ରଟିର ଜାତୀୟ ପୁରସ୍କାର ପାଇଥିଲା ।[୨]
କିଶୋରୀ ଦେବୀ, ସମ୍ପଦ ମହାପାତ୍ର, ମନସ୍ୱିନୀ, ମଣିମାଳା, ବିନୋଦ ମିଶ୍ର, ବଂଶୀଧର ଶତପଥୀ, ସୁଜାତା ଆଦି କଳାକାରମାନେ ଏହି କଥାଚିତ୍ରଟିର ବିଭିନ୍ନ ଭୂମିକାରେ ଅଭିନୟ କରିଥିଲେ ।
ଅଭିନୟ
କିଶୋରୀ ଦେବୀ
ସମ୍ପଦ ମହାପାତ୍ର
ମନସ୍ୱିନୀ
ମଣିମାଳା
ବିନୋଦ ମିଶ୍ର
ବଂଶୀଧର ଶତପଥୀ
ସୁଜାତା
ଗୀତ ଓ ସଙ୍ଗୀତ
ଏହି କଥାଚିତ୍ରଟିର ସଙ୍ଗୀତ ନିର୍ଦ୍ଦେଶନା ଦେଇଥିଲେ ଭାସ୍କର ଚନ୍ଦାବରକର ।
ଆଧାର
ହାଲି, ଦିଲୀପ (1 August 2006). "୭୦ ବର୍ଷର ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଚଳଚ୍ଚିତ୍ରର ଏକ ପର୍ଯ୍ୟାଲୋଚନା" (PDF). ଉତ୍କଳ ପ୍ରସଙ୍ଗ. Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 March 2020. Retrieved 28 August 2018.
ହାଲି, ଦିଲୀପ (1 January 2008). "ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଚଳଚ୍ଚିତ୍ରର ଭବିଷ୍ୟତ" (PDF). ଉତ୍କଳ ପ୍ରସଙ୍ଗ. Archived from the original (PDF) on 26 March 2020. Retrieved 28 August 2018.
ବାହାର ଆଧାର
ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟ ମୁଭି ଡାଟାବେସରେ ମାୟା ମିରିଗ
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IMDb User reviews:
"A beautiful, lyrical and poignant film."
Maya Miriga - the Mirage was the first and the only feature film directed by Nirad Mohapatra. The film was highly acclaimed and has won several awards in India and internationally. It certainly is a milestone in Odia cinema and a period piece that captures the breakdown of a joint family in the mid 1980s. For me, the mark of an excellent film is when you watch it, you forget that it is a film! Only a few directors can do that and Nirad Mohapatra has done that with Maya Miriga. When I saw it for the first time while I was in Zurich, I forgot that I was in Zurich! For 115 mins, I was back in my childhood with my family in my country.
It is a simple story that depicts the family dynamics in a joint family where three generations live under one roof. Raj Kishore Babu (Satpathy) is a school headmaster on the verge of retirement who lives with his mother, wife, four sons and a daughter in Puri (a small coastal town in Odisha). His eldest son Tuku is married to Prava (Manaswini) and they have a baby daughter. The second son Tutu (Sampad Mahapatra) gets a prestigious government job and his marriage is arranged with a spoiled and selfish daughter of a rich family (played by Sujata). Sujata is unwilling to stay in the joint family and so begins the fragmentation of the joint family of Raj Kishore Babu. Tutu and his wife leave and the eldest son Tuku also plans to leave home soon with his family for a better job in another city. At the end of the film, in a particularly poignant scene, Raj Kishore Babu, while playing with his granddaughter asks her "will you too also leave us".
The loneliness of elderly parents abandoned by their adult children is also heartrendingly portrayed as the friend with whom Raj Kishore Babu takes walks tells him about his son in America who keeps telling him that he is coming back to visit him but never does!
Mohapatra has great compassion for the characters as he addresses the conflict, as well as the love and closeness that exists in a joint family. The cinematography by Raj Gopal Mishra is outstanding in capturing Nirada Mohapatra's vision for the film. Every scene is like a vintage painting: the saris drying on the clothesline, the eldest daughter in-law lighting the coal fire, the safety pin in her bangles, the government calendar and the clock on the wall, mosquito netting over the bed, the earthenware jug for water on the wooden stand, the lounge chair on the veranda, the weathered yet stately house painted in ochre! Mohapatra has taken ordinary household scenes and made those extraordinary and unforgettable.
None of the cast had ever acted before except Manimala (the mother) who was a renowned stage and screen artist. Particularly notable is the role of the grandmother played by Kishori Devi, who was 75 at the time! Manaswini is flawless in her role as the ideal eldest daughter-in-law of the house. Not only she is exquisitely beautiful, but also emotions wash over her face like rainwater on the windowpane. The direction by Mohapatra is so subtle and the acting is so natural that one would never realize that the actors had never acted before!
Nirad Mohapatra as a director belongs in the same pantheon as Satyajit Ray and Ingmar Bergman! This film brings back memories steeped in nostalgia. This is a beautiful, lyrical, and poignant film directed by the creative genius Nirad Mohapatra! Although he made many documentaries after Maya Miriga, it is such a pity that he never made another feature film! He has made a film that is so great in its simplicity that it is amazingly stellar!
joymansinha
Jan 11, 2021
IMDb
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THE SEVENTH ART
JUST ANOTHER FILM BUFF
June 29, 2024
Maya Miriga (1984)
Posted by Just Another Film Buff under All Posts, Cinema of India, Review | Tags: Bansidhar Satpathy, Film Heritage Foundation, Maya Miriga, Nirad Mohapatra, Restoration, Shivendra Singh Dungarpur |
Forty years after its original premiere, the Odia film Maya Miriga (1984), a touchstone of the Parallel Cinema movement, will be presented in a restored version at the Cinema Ritrovato Festival in Bolonga, Italy, in June. Directed by Nirad Mohapatra (1947–2015), Maya Miriga was part of the Critics Week at the Cannes Festival in 1984, alongside such titles as Billy Woodberry’s Bless Their Little Hearts and Leos Carax’s Boy Meets Girl. The film has been restored by the Film Heritage Foundation (FHF) at the L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in Bologna, in association with Digital Film Restore and Prasad Corporation in Chennai.
A graduate of the 1971 batch of the Film and Television Institute of India, Mohapatra made numerous documentaries, television series, industrial and educational films across his three-decade career, but Maya Miriga remained his sole fictional feature. “I had conceived the idea [for the film] in one of my intense moments of loneliness and deep depression and it had undergone several changes in various phases.”, notes the filmmaker. Shot by Rajgopal Mishra in a warm, sober colour palette, the film demonstrates a great feeling for the interplay of harsh natural light and deep shadows — a sensuous quality that can be appreciated fully in the pristine new version.
Set in the town of Puri, Maya Miriga is the saga of a joint family driven to disintegration by ambition, opportunity, festering resentment and, simply, changing times. A stern but honest headmaster on the brink of retirement, Raj Kishore Babu (Bansidhar Satpathy) lives in a fairly capacious house with his elderly mother, wife and five children: the dull and reliable college lecturer Tuku, the IAS hopeful Tutu, the self-doubting MA graduate Bulu, the rebellious and cricket-obsessed Tulu and the only daughter Tikina. While the men pore over files or hang out on the terrace, Prabha, Tuku’s wife, bears the burden of the upkeep of the house. The apparent stability of the home comes undone when Tutu cracks the civil service examination.
The narrative spans many months and proceeds by substantial leaps in time. We witness Tutu becoming a bigshot who marries into money, Prabha suffocating under the patriarchal order of the house, Tulu trying to break out on his own, Bulu imploding when surrounded by high achievers and Raj Babu grappling with post-career emptiness.
Through gradual buildup of dramatic detail, the film shapes into a poignant tragedy of a middle-class family torn apart by its own cherished values. The father’s insistence on academic excellence, the pressure on the sons to find respectable jobs, the irreconcilable expectations of wealth and traditionalism from the daughters-in-law — all turn out to be ticking time bombs for the household.
We also learn that the family has property back in their ancestral village that no one takes care of, suggesting that Raj Babu is himself a migrant who left his landlord father for greener pastures in Puri. Mohapatra’s film thus captures a crucial moment in Indian social history between two generations of labour migration, one giving rise to joint families inhabiting independent houses in towns and the other producing nuclear families looking towards metropolises.
Maya Miriga is a veritable compendium of middle-class mores and codes of behaviour: how do individuals get their decision ratified by other members of the family, what are one’s duties when returning home after a stroke of success, how should guests comport themselves when visiting? With finesse and grace, Mohapatra’s film illuminates the gendered division of labour, the intergenerational etiquette and the power hierarchy that holds sway in an undivided family.
An abandoned site spruced up for the film, the house itself plays a central role, exercising a gravitational pull that the characters struggle to escape. Actors move in and out of its dark recesses, as though consumed and spat out by the structure. Its imposing pillars, its bright courtyard and its open terrace all seem extensions of the power relations binding its inhabitants.
Maya Miriga is certainly a melodrama, but on a subtler register than seen on most Indian screens. The influence of Satyajit Ray, especially of a work like Mahanagar (1963), is discernible here, but Mohapatra’s film also shares lineage with the innumerable family dramas of contemporary theatre and popular cinema across the country. “The balance that I ultimately wanted to achieve”, the director remarks, “was between realism and simplicity on the one hand and my preoccupation with a certain cinematic form on the other.”
An admirer of Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu, Mohapatra strips away his material of all dramatic fireworks. The non-professional actors are all filmed in mid-shots, and never in close-ups, in a way that integrates them with their surroundings. Their emotions are muted; the dialogue, music and reactions whittled down to a minimum. A sense of serenity reigns over the film, which progresses with relative equanimity through both joys and sorrows.
“The question, to my mind is an ethical one – to excite the senses to the point of disturbing their rational thinking is a certain sign of disrespect to the audience.”, writes Mohapatra, proposing that filmmakers must leave the viewers “a margin to move closer to the work and have a more active participation, a greater sense of involvement in the process.” “I believe, freedom is alienated in the state of passion.”, he adds, “One should not therefore seek to overwhelm the audience.”
Maya Miriga represents the FHF’s second restoration project this year after Shyam Benegal’s Manthan (1976), which had its premiere in the Classics section of the Cannes Film Festival in May. Carried out in association with Sandeep Mohapatra, the filmmaker’s son, the restoration process was long and arduous. The original 16 mm camera negatives, found abandoned in a warehouse in Chennai, were severely compromised and had to be manually repaired over several months before it could be scanned in Bologna. The results were complemented with material from a 35 mm print of the film from the National Film Archive in Pune, which also served as the source for the soundtrack. With the revival of this seminal film, Odia cinema promises to draw much needed attention from the rest of the country as well as the world.
[First published in Mint Lounge]
https://theseventhart.info/2024/06/29/maya-miriga-1984/
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