Pratidwandi/The Adversary (1970): A fascinating film about the conflict between a man and his city.
Pratidwandi/The Adversary (1970) is a fascinating film. A film that deals with and talks about the city of Calcutta (now known as Kolkata). It is the first film in Satyajit Ray’s Calcutta trilogy. Ray brings in the perspective of corruption, unemployment, a pot boiling revolution taking place in the city and much more to the limelight and how a 25-year-old college graduate seeks to find meaning and aspiration in all of this.
Siddhartha Choudhary is a college graduate and is jobless, so he tries to seek a job and at the beginning of the movie we see him being interviewed for a post at a governmental Botanical Survey office. Here the establishment of his character is made where he is a truly honest man and does not pander to the superiors in order to get a job. An example is when the interviewers ask him a question about “What do you regard as the most outstanding and significant event of the last decade?” for this he contemplates a while and tell him that the Vietnam war is the most significant event and not the moon landing. He regards that at the end it is not the matter of technology but plain human courage.
His seeking of something meaningful in the city causes him to hallucinate and a pressure cooker starts to boil inside him. But not only the environment of Calcutta but also at his house he must deal with the relationship of his siblings. He is stuck in a dichotomy between his younger brother and sister. While he is not able to connect with his brother because of his activism and tendency towards revolution, he cannot comprehend his sister because she is the opposite of Siddhartha. A very progressive, career oriented, beautiful, hard-working woman. This causes conflict because she is the one that creates some financial stability for the family but there come apprehensions towards her because of rumours created between herself and her boss leaving Siddhartha questioning her position and actions. During all of this his only source of inspiration and happiness is a bird call from his childhood, and he tries to find meaning through it.
The adversary referring to the city of Calcutta and its deep corruption, crumbling infrastructure, unrest, bustling heat throughout, and political and social revolutions. Ray captures it beautifully. Taking place at a time when there was the liberation war of 1971 and how the state of West Bengal got affected by it. And later we get the nationwide emergency in India in 1975. All these factors get captured through this film and how it gets impacted amongst a man who is trying to find a path in his life. Something very universal but grounded through the mind and lens of Ray.
But the adversary is not only the city, but I believe it also refers to each adversarial situations Siddhartha goes through. And with each situation he must face an adversary towards his morality, integrity and political ideology. For example, when he gets into conflict with his sister toward her career and choices. Or his discussion of politics towards his brother. And how he tells his hostel roommate on not to steal money from a charity box that was tended for the red cross. He keeps manoeuvring around these situations in order to find meaning and a path. This kind of layered writing is what makes this film so fascinating and sometimes chilling to watch even today. The character is relatable. It is a situation that can even happen today in most parts of the world and Ray managing a universal subject with cultural aesthetics is what makes him one of the greats of cinema.
There is this one scene where Siddhartha and his girlfriend are at the top of the terrace at the highest building of Calcutta and here Ray establishes the discomfort and detachment of Siddhartha as he showcases the bustling city with its gathering of many people and the unrest that takes place. Always deciding and obstinate on not leaving Calcutta for his entire life get an irony of sorts towards the end.
What Ray manages is creating a character where he is the only person who does not have a clear state of mind and keeps wandering around the city while everyone else around him are clear cut and precise on what to do. This is beautifully showcased in a scene between Siddhartha and a bunch of hippies where they say that everything around them looks beautiful and scenic.
Pratidwandi is a fascinating film about the conflict between a man and his city. A film that grows as time goes by and a film that can still be relatable today. I highly recommend this film not only for the subject taken at hand or the fantastic writing but also for its great cinematic language and it showcases how Satyajit Ray is a master on capturing the emotions of a common man so profoundly on screen.
A scene from the movie below: