Padma Nadir Majhi

aka Boatman of the River Padma 1992 126’ col Bengali d/c/s/co-m Gautam Ghose pc West Bengal Film Development Corp. st Manik Bandyopadhyay’s novel co-m Alauddin Ali lp Asaad, Champa, Roopa Ganguly, Utpal Dutt, Robi Ghosh, Abdul Khader, Hasan Imam, Sunil Mukherjee

Set in pre-Partition Bengal in 1947, Ghosh used Bandyopadhyay’s classic novel to tell the story of a man’s struggle against the oppressive forces of nature, society and of his own desires. The spectacularly beautiful banks of the Padma, functioning as the metaphor for ‘the river of life’, form the backdrop. The main character in the fishing village is the boatman Kuber (Asaad), and the episodic film chronicles his tension-ridden encounters with the wealthy Muslim trader Hussain (Dutt), who wants to transform an island in the Padma delta into a haven free from communal strife. The women in the film are mainly metaphors for the eternally mysterious forces of nature.

Film