Grihajuddha

aka Crossroads, aka The Crossroad 1982 98’ col Bengali d/sc/m Buddhadev Dasgupta pc West Bengal Govt st Dibyendu Palit c Sambit Bose lp Anjan Dutt, Mamata Shankar, Gautam Ghose, Prabir Guha, Manoj Mitra, Monidipa Roy, Sunil Mukherjee

Costa-Gavras-type political thriller continuing Dasgupta’s efforts to address the nexus between private lives and politics, evolving a kind of morality fable about sexual and comradely relationships (e.g. Dooratwa, 1978). The corrupt owner of a steel factory has his labour officer killed and then hires thugs to murder Prabir, a left-wing trade union worker. Prabir’s impoverished sister Nirupama (Shankar) loves her brother’s friend and comrade Bijon (Dutt). The journalist Sandipan’s (filmmaker Gautam Ghose) investigation is blocked by the paper’s editor (Mitra) and eventually he too is killed. Bijon, now a successful salesman in distant Nasik, finds the gulf between himself and the politically committed Nirupama too wide to allow their marriage.

Film