Swedish film-maker Ingmar Bergman was known for his unique visual portrayal of life and loneliness, dreams and reality and has inspired cinema lovers all over the globe through ages. Three cinephiles — Saurav Mookherji, Antara Banerjee and Dr Purba Chakraborty — have paid homage to the maestro through their film ‘Et Tu, Mr. Gonzalves?’.
The film has taken visual and symbolic inspiration from the master and one can relate to it throughout the film. “We hope this film will take the cinephiles of the country to the greatest creations of the creator Mr Bergman and will help them explore a completely awe-inspiring notion of film making at large. We also aim to take our cinema to the eminent national and international festivals to a larger audience and hope to be remembered as prominent storytellers,” says director Saurav Mookherji.
This film has already been screened at the NFDC (National Film Development Corporation) Film Bazaar’s industrial screening section. Recently it got selected as a semi-finalist at Stockholm City Film Festival, Sweden, the home of Ingmar Bergman.
Saurav Mookherji
The film captures the loneliness of a human soul who finds residues in the presence of a plant which is distinctively known for its strange character and thorns. An incident changes the life of the man and the plant and they become two parts of one soul who communicate in a unique way. “As one experiences the film, one can understand that the initial part of the film is a dream sequence. Dreams are nothing but an amalgamation of illusions, half images and subconscious beliefs. Poetry, music and ragas are parts of our illusional experience, which tends to take us away from our reality, which we are either trying to avoid or escape. Our protagonist is a loner and dreaming is his only way out from the alternative reality. The use of music is one of the most prominent aspects of Bergman’s film. As we can see in most of his films Bergman has used the sound of melancholy in a considerably happier moment and the sound of merriment in a sad context. This aspect is very unique to Bergman and we have tried to incorporate the same in our film in order to pay a tribute to his excellence,” said Saurav.
Baban plays Mr. Gonzalves in the film. While Antara Banerjee was the chief assistant director, Dr Purba Chakraborty was the assistant to DoP Vishal Gupta.