In search of Netaji
Shoma A. Chatterji
Gumnaami, directed by the National Award-winning filmmaker Srijit Mukherjee, is a Bengali film based on the Mukherjee Commission Hearings from 1999 to 2005 where the three theories about Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s death were discussed and debated. It is a dramatisation of the hearings where an investigative journalist supporting the Gumnaami Baba theory locks horns with the official lawyer who supports the plane crash theory. In their clash, the death in Russia theory also comes up.
It is a well-researched film where documentary evidence and stock shots in black-and-white dominate but carries lesser emotional resonance than it was expected to.
“I love to recreate history in my films,” says Srijit adding, “I am a blind follower of Netaji. Had been around today, he would have made a difference to the political environment here.”
Some members of the Bose family have not been happy with the film. They claimed that the theory that Netaji did not die in the plane crash and had returned as the mysterious saint Gumnaami Baba was false. But Srijit insisted that he just wished to place forth this theory and kept it open in the end.
Srijit has created an imaginative script by creating a blend of two known journalists — Aniruddha Dhar and Chandrachur Ghosh to create the character of Chandrachur Ghosh (Anirban Bhattacharya) based on Anuj Dhar’s book India’s Biggest Cover Up (2012). According to Dhar and Ghosh, Netaji went missing after he boarded the Taiwan flight and was reported dead in a plane crash on August 19, 1945.
Some years later, an elderly man, who is said to bear a striking resemblance to Bose, surfaced. He came to be known as Gumnaami Baba. Many, including some political leaders, felt that, perhaps, this man was Netaji, who it was said may have died in the crash. But Gumnaami Baba never claimed that he was Netaji. The old, balding, bearded man is, perhaps, an imagined image of Gumnaami Baba but Mukherjee has kept it open.
“I have only raised some questions without offering any answers because I do not have any. I am a filmmaker, not a politician or a historian to present things that my audience would love to know. They need to find their own answers,” says Srijit who is known for his penchant for research.
The film is more the journey and metamorphosis of the journalist Chandrachur Ghosh (Anirban Bhattacharya) who did not care for Netaji as an icon but becomes interested in him after he is commissioned to do an in-depth story on Netaji’s disappearance by his editor. He begins to look into the world of Netaji before and after Gumnaami Baba, through a pair of glasses styled after the pair that Netaji wore.
“This is the most challenging role of my career and I relied entirely on the script. I am not a Netaji loyalist myself but my work through this film has, perhaps, brought some changes within me as an actor and a human being,” says Anirban, who has given an outstanding performance barring the extremely melodramatic twist in the end when, shocked with the government’s rejection of the Gumnaami Baba theory, he burns not only the books he had collected for his research but also destroys portraits of Netaji!
Indraadip Dasgupta’s music with two beautiful songs rendered by Babul Supriyo and Sonu Nigam is the highlight of the film besides the brilliant cinematography and intense performance of Prosenjit Chatterjee as Netaji and Gumnaami Baba, who remains in the shadows as an “invisible” protagonist.
