However, Chatterjee’s microscopic examination of the film—it’s almost as if she’s placed it on an analyst’s couch—throws up some fascinating insights into this essentially rather dark film that turns around the nature vs nurture debate. Chatterjee’s book not only looks at this film in isolation (text, subtext et al) but also situates it in the socio-political-historical context in which it was made. More importantly, she discusses the film in the light of popular Indian cinema, and cinema at large.
When Chatterjee first published this book in 1992 (Penguin’s brought out this second edition with a new preface) she was one of the rare writers on film to accord popular cinema the place it deserves. The little book is a must for all lovers of Indian cinema: her analysis of the nine-minute dream sequence is perceptive. I only wish she hadn’t got carried away by Freudian psychoanalysis: giving an Oedipal spin to some of the relationships is stretching it.
