To mold himself into the lead character in Saumya Sengupta's Bengali film 'Mrityupathojatri,' which follows the last 12 hours of a death row convict's life, actor "Rahul" Arunoday Banerjee had stopped talking to anyone at home for 15 days before shooting started.
The actor also went through study materials that were given to him by the director and talked to a number of prison officials to get into the psyche of a man who is destined to die by hanging. “In most cases, people don’t know when they will die. But here, the man knows that his life will come to an end after 12 hours. It is difficult to comprehend,” Banerjee told PTI.
The character knows there is neither romance nor honor in such death and there is none to give him emotional support during the last hours of his life. "I stopped talking in my house 15 days before we started filming. My director Saumya is very well-researched. He provided me with a lot of study materials," he said.
'Mrityupathojatri' is an experimental film, according to the filmmaker. Sengupta developed the plot and script with the help of certain books on real-life jail convicts and consultations with advocates during the pre-production stage. "I wanted to show the audience what the last 12 hours of a death row convict can be. I think the audience needs to know how much guilt a person has to go through at this time, emotional turmoil and fear of death," Sengupta said.
The director spoke with death row convicts and police officers, including IPS officers, who had dealt with such men in Alipore and Dumdum Correctional Homes, to have a better understanding of the thinking of a man about to be hanged. In independent India, he also went over jail manuals, IPC sections, the jurisdiction process, and various capital punishment cases.
Sengupta said, “If films can be made about love, if films can be about life, then why not a film about death?”
'Mrityupathojatri' is his first feature film. Earlier, he had made a few short films. Kan Singh Sodha, the producer of the film, said, "Mrityupathojatri is very close to my heart as it makes me ponder about life, the stress we go through, and how everything goes in vain in the end."
‘Mrityupathojatri’ is now running in theatres.
[With Inputs from PTI]
