Buddhadeb Dasgupta has established himself as one of India’s finest filmmakers and won international acclaim for his thirteen feature films. His works are characterized by technical excellence and artistic beauty and are noted for their extraordinary originality in both style and substance. The themes of his films are as varied as they are many, but there is an abiding concern for the individual in isolation or alienation, for the misfit, the rebel, and the lonely. The films cherish pity as a creative emotion and value innocence and simplicity as constructive virtues. Heroism sometimes consists in honesty and dedication to a cause, although many of Dasgupta’s heroes, given his profound sense of realism, are sadly obliged to bow to circumstances. In this work, every one of the feature films is discussed in detail – the films about the vulnerability of dedication, the struggle against poverty, the integrity of the modern day artist, notions of sanity and insanity and falling out of history, the transcending of human society and its various constraints on creativity, and the triumph of beauty over the ugliness of violence. Dasgupta is also a highly esteemed poet in Bengali, and there is a concluding chapter on the relationship between his poetry and his cinema.
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