‘Anything of Indian origin fascinates me’

Ismail Merchant believes that The Mystic Masseur, inspired by V S Naipaul’s debut novel, is one of his best films

PRADIP BISWAS

Ismail Merchant’s latest film, The Mystic Masseur, was screened at the recently concluded 7th Kolkata Film Festival. This was the film’s first screening in India. Based on V S Naipaul’s debut novel, it deals with the second half of the 19th century, after slavery had been abolished in the British Empire and labourers from India were brought to work on the sugar plantations in Trinidad in the southern Caribbean.

According to Ismail Merchant, who was present during the screening, the film allows us “a rare insight into the warmth and humour” of the Indian community in Trinidad. The film explores the growing prosperity of the community through the eyes of Ganesh, the central character, whose passion for writing helps him touch base with the truth outside oneself.

Why did he choose this novel? Mr Merchant explains, “Anything of Indian origin fascinates me. Anything quintessentially Indian haunts me, chases me and I feel relieved when I really address it. So it was with V S Naipaul. I got absolutely swayed by his narrative quality, naive but bold, and the diction embedded in his works. His genuine touch and feel for humanism are twin qualities that no sincere director can bypass or ignore.”

However, in comparison, according to this critic at least, Merchant’s The Bostonians and Howard’s End are far superior films, whether in terms of thematic revelation or aesthetic treatment. But Mr Merchant strikes a note of dissent and says, “I am glad you have liked those films more than this one. Those are surely great films in their own right. But to be frank, The Mystic Masseur is a motif about an ordinary Indian living in Trinidad, which is so rare. It is not be seen everywhere. It is a special story about the Indian community rising above the sale of self in the British dominion. This is one film where I have tried to achieve a universality that transcends the cultural specifics. Here, nothing is schematically structured. What you see is no illusion.”

Doesn’t he think space is made too stuffy with verbose linkages, leaving no room for aesthetic relief? “Well, I don’t feel so,” he says. “To judge the film, you have to bestow stress on other aspects of its making. Indian life as led by Ganesh and his community is very quotidian and enjoys no frills. It is full of acts studded with humour and sarcasm since it is a life depicted during colonial rule. So it deserved a different treatment.”

That The Mystic Masseur has been a different kind of experience can be gauged from what Mr Merchant’s script writer, Caryl Phillips, has to say. Says Mr Phillips, “As a writer, working on The Mystic Masseur, was a privilege. A wonderful novel, a beautiful island with an enthusiastic and supportive populace and a film company that was prepared to woo me, not with false promises, but with the assurance that they would include me in all key decisions along the way.” Does it get any better than this? “Ismail Merchant did not offer me the world and I did not lose the tiniest piece of my soul” he says.

It is interesting to note that eminent critic Roger Ebert of Chicago Sun-Times has praised the film thus: “The Mystic Masseur warmed the souls of its audiences and sent them blinking and smiling back into the mountain sunshine.”

Mr Merchant is now getting ready to start his new film on the great French scholar, writer and philosopher, Romain Rolland. And as one can remember, Rolland could not and did not live without the intimate association and cultural significance of Rabindranath Tagore. It was Tagore who played a big role in shaping the cultural mind-set of Rolland on the issue of oriental philosophy and its vast impact on European civilisation. Mr Merchant tells us: “Rolland has been a great literary force of the 20th century. A great scholar and philosopher, a visionary in his own right, Rolland set the pace for raising the universal voice against the dark period of fascism and many global injustices and wrongs.” What is of high interest is that the great actor, poet and theatre personality Soumitra Chatterjee, ‘Ray’s one man stock company’, has been roped in to portray Tagore in Merchant’s film on Rolland. Explains Mr Merchant, “Soumitra is a great friend of mine and we have known each other since 1961, when Satyajit Ray came to compose music in my early films in the 1960s.

He is the right person to portray Tagore as his knowledge of the poet is immense and immaculate and I want to avail of it thoroughly.”