The cloud-capped star…. Review on Mithun Chakraborty

Once my friend asked me to write some sort of essay or article about our Dada. Naturally I couldn’t say “no” and promised to do that. But now I’m sitting before the monitor of my PC and realize how difficult is to try to express one’s feelings publicly. As famous Russian poet Fyodor Tutchev once said, thought that was told would become lie. There are a lot of things in our world that one can’t fix verbally. Nature, for instance. You have to be a poet to describe sun rising or summer rain or light wind swaying the spring flowers. I’m not, unfortunately. It’s impossible for ordinary person like me to catch all this cause nature is constantly changing… The only trait it preserves – it’s stunning beauty.

You are asking, perhaps, what previous extract has in common with the personality that this site devoted to. Everything is very simple! Dada’s magic, art or whatever is absolutely like nature: so alive, changing and beautiful. He is not an imitator (as one philosopher once mentioned that art is imitation of nature). He denies the very base of acting art: to copy life. He is living. That’s why it’s so difficult to talk about him with the help of “ordinary” words.

How could we “catch” him if he is so changeable and different! Johnny (GUIDIA) is absolutely not like Shibnath Mukherjee (TAHADER KATHA). Manik Mandal (CHAKA) and Ghenua (MRIGAAYA) are absolutely different, too. Dada lives so many real (not only reel) lives that it’s just impossible to define his very style or approach in acting art. At the first sight however it’s easy to follow his path – to BECOME each performing character, to LIVE his life. But alas! This way turns out to be the most hard to go…

Perhaps now I should start telling about the first Dada’s movie I’ve watched and about my impression. Here everything is quite usual. The first was DISCO DANCER by B. Subhash. I’m sure that this movie was something like “start” for almost all Dada’s admirers in Russia. And I remember my greatest astonishment when ten or twelve years ago I read in one of Dada’s interviews that he himself didn’t consider DISCO DANCER to be something really outstanding. I was even indignant: such great movie! What he’d been saying?! But the problem was with me. That time I didn’t understand that there is another cinema that demands really talented people to work in and brings real artistic satisfaction. I didn’t know life and wasn’t interested in it. I wanted only beautiful picture instead.

My real acquaintance with artist named Mithun Chakraborty happened much later when I was watching masterpiece by Goutam Ghose GUDIA. Though I was well prepared for art movies by world classic culture including literature, music, cinema, theatre and fine arts GUDIA shocked me. And at the very moment I realized what exactly Dada meant by his critics towards purely commercial DISCO DANCER and other Bollywood hits as well. After that were MRIGAAYA, CHAKA, TAHADER KATHA… SWARG YAHAN NARAK YAHAN, JALLAAD, MERI PYARI BAHANIA BANEGI DULHANIA... The only thing about Dada’s judgement I’d like to correct or add is as follows: no matter what kind of movie he is working for, commercial or art, he is always pretty honest with his viewers doing EVERY role brilliantly! And our souls’ response is quite natural and adequate cause process of LIVING before one’s eyes can’t but amuse the witness of it…

It’s true that I’m not little child anymore. But I must thank Dada for preserving in me something “childish”: the very ability for feeling surprised, exploring world’s beauty again and again.