Jait Re Jait Analysis

Jait Re Jait

By Aishwarya Walvekar

Abstract

“I foresee no possibility of venturing into themes showing a closer view of reality for a long time to come. The public itself will not have it. What it wants is a gun and a girl.” 
- D.W. Griffith

Long after the ‘cinema of attractions’ lost its novelty and shine, the Hollywood cinema with its ‘happy endings’ was practiced rigorously to suffice to audience’s entertainment appetite. Romantic comedies, fictions, thrillers, suspense, fairytales were the genres which were much accepted in the society. However, film movements like the Italian Neorealism and French New Wave broke the barriers of such film making practice. India, too, faced repercussions of these movements, which resulted into parallel cinema and the Indian New Wave from 1950s. This paper will talk about a film, ‘Jait Re Jait’, made during this era and analyze the narrative structure of the film, its semiotics and the portrayal of women in the film.

Introduction

“An artist is a spokesperson of present. Everything which is made today by the artists will become a source of history for the coming generation. A film cannot change anything but can make people aware of what is going on in the society.” – Jabbar Patel, Film and Theater Director.

And that is what his films and plays attempt to implement. Awarded as the best feature film at the 25^th National Film Awards, Jait Re Jait was hostile to the mainstream Marathi as well as Bollywood films made in the 20^th Century. The directorial choices made by Jabbar Patel (also a pediatrician) and the screen play by Satish Alekar (a bio-chemist by profession belongs to the new generation of Marathi playwrights), made the film an Avant Garde in times when audiences visited cinema hall just for entertainment purposes. Released in 1977, it gained popularity due to its rhythmic and unconventional songs composed by Pt. Hridaynath Mangeshkar, but failed at the box office. The musical Avant Garde is based on a novel – Jait Re Jait written by the famous Marathi writer G. N. Dandekar.

Jabbar Patel is an auteur of socio-politically charged films and plays, which compel the audience to think and criticize; be it the controversial play Ghashiram Kotwal, or his films Samna, Jait Re Jait, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, etc. Especially, in India, amidst the constantly changing political scenarios and its effects on the economy and the society as a whole, minimal attention is given to the individual’s thought and emotion. These changes also affect the social conditioning of an individual. The individual becomes more and more monotonous and falls prey to the religious beliefs and superstitions to get rid of his sins and achieve nirvana. To become punyawanta i.e. to be pure and virtuous. This is exactly the gist of the film Jait Re Jait. Patel, with his directorial picks and narratives draws out such stirring criticisms through his films. As Satyajit Ray rightly puts it ‘Cinema’s characteristic forte is its ability to capture and communicate the intimacies of the human mind.’

The plot of Jait Re Jait revolves around Nagya (Mohan Agashe), whose journey from a child to a young charismatic man is captured. He is in search of ways of being virtuous or ‘punyawanta’ as he calls it. The story is based in a tribal caste named ‘Thakars’. Their cultural and traditional lifestyle is very well projected in the film, not through a voyeuristic angle but more from a cultural angle. Nagya being the protagonist, the film also bears a ‘heroin’ – Chindhi (Smita Patil), unlikely like the mainstream cinema trends of that time and even today to some extent.

However, the film is forgotten in time. It was not a “block-buster” then, nor did the newer generations take note of it. In recent times, it is reviving to celebrate the late actress Smita Patil. Nevertheless, the techniques of narrative and films making are a milestone in Indian Cinema and a part of the New Wave.  

Narrative Structure

Being the second film in his directorial career, Patel, a successful theater director, was keen on experimenting with the new form of media he had been exposed to. In an interview to India Today, when asked about the co-relation between theater and films, he said:

“For me it's just the desire to experiment in another art form; but it happened accidentally. Ramdas Puttana (producer of Saamna) came to me after a show of Ghasiram and asked me to direct a film for him. I was a bit diffident but once I started, it was very exciting.”

Indeed, his theater direction experiences have impressions in the film Jait Re Jait too. The musical narrative style used for the play Ghashiram Kotwal written by Vijay Tendulkar, is employed in the film. The non-diegetic sound, ‘a sound that cannot be seen on screen, nor has any direct relevance’ (Urban Dictionary) but enhances the dramatic effect, is used as a tool to narrate the story and also provide a critic/ make the spectator aware of the situation, thus creating an estrangement effect (Bertolt Brecht – Epic Theater). According to the Brechtian theory, the estrangement effect lets the audience be emotionally detached from what they are watching and rather think rationally about it. However, here the non-diegetic becomes diegetic and the singers are shown narrating and singing on screen, looking at the camera. There are 12 songs in the 116 minutes long film, constituting about 40 minutes of the film. Yet, nowhere does it feel that the songs are unnecessary. That’s how well they are blend in with the narrative structure.

After a brief scene of a child Nagya, bathing himself at the sea, the two narrators start describing about Thakarwadi through a song – Dongarkathadi thakarwadi, thakarwadila jhopadchari. Bhagtacha Nagya hulladhar (Thakarwadi is situated on the plains of mountains and it has small huts. Nagya, the son of the Bhagat-chieftain, is mischevious). The song further describes the people in the community.

In the essay The Indian New Wave by Prof. Ira Bhaskar compiled in the book Routledge Handbook of Indian Cinemas, she says, “If cinematic experimentation and new forms of film narration defined one characteristic of this cinema, the other was cinematic realism, both of form and content, evident in a number of the early film… The ‘new Indian cinema’that these films inaugurated was clearly connected to a concern with aesthetics, to a seriousness of intent, and to a representation of social issues with a drive towards an understanding of reality in all its complexities, contradictions and ambiguities, necessary, it was believed, for the transformation of the society.  A missionary zeal was thus obvious in the work of a lot of Indian New Wave directors who focused on the ills of Indian society: poverty; social injustice; the inherent violence of social structures evidenced in the modalities of entrenched feudal power; the oppressive stranglehold of the orthodoxies of tradition; and the brutal subjugation and exploitation of lower castes and women.” 

Jait Re Jait focuses on the man v/s desire and man v/s society complex. Nagya, the son of the chieftain of the tribe, from his childhood is fascinated with honeybees and his father fuels his fascination by telling him about the Queen Bee. He also tells him that one who sees the queen is very virtuous. And from there the quest for being virtuous makes a void in his mind; thus, inciting a man v/s desire complex. He grows up learning to play a dhol (tribal drum), which is one of the tasks of the chieftain, and after a point it does not interest him. At the back of his mind, there is the quest and his mind planning ways to achieve it. This is the time when his father realizes that his son needs to be given responsibilities and transfers his chieftainship to him. And here, we see the man v/s society complex and his responsibilities towards it. Engrossed in his new responsibilities and still mapping his way to be virtuous, a young lady, Chindhi falls in love with him, a twist in the plot and a distraction for Nagya from his desire.

Meanwhile, while cutting wood, bees attack him and he loses his eye. His father dies due to snake-bite. Chindhi is married, and does not live with her husband. She gets a divorce and expresses her love for Nagya. Chindhi’s character is highlighted as a strong woman, who earns the bread for her family and takes decisions for herself.  They get married. Through a narrative song, their wedding and relationship is criticized. Nagya is enraged about his father dying and losing his eye, and blames it on God. With Chindhi as his companion, he convinces her and plans to take revenge by cutting off all the honey combs on the mountain of Lingoba, which the tribes believe is God. At the end, Nagya takes revenge and Chindhi dies.

The film has a steadily developing graph; however, at the end it heightens with conflicts and the director give no solution to it. It is left open ended. As characterized by the New Wave and neo-realist films, Jait Re Jait is shot on location, rather than a studio.  Influenced by Dandekar’s novel Thakurwadi, Jabbar Patel decided to shoot the film in a tribal area called Thakarwadi in Maharashtra. It uses natural lighting rather than the studio lights. The film has a linear story line, yet the flow is broken by the narrators who keep on prompting the scenes. It also uses jump cuts which helps move the film to newer ideas in scenes. It uses various symbolisms in the mise-en-scene adopted from the culture of the tribe. For instance, they eat rats. Nagya wants to be virtuous and is told by a Brahmin that he should stop eating rats.  The film has an open ended narrative and the spectator is allowed to form their own meanings. Nonetheless, the use of musical narrative through the narrators guide the spectator to look at the film from a particular point of view. This also helps in receiving the film from a non-voyeuristic spectator’s point of view. 

Semiotics:

In the essay The Advent of Structuralism by Robert Stam, compiled in Film Theory: An Introduction, he writes,

“Film semiotics must be seen as symptomatic not only of the general language-consciousness of contemporary thought but also of its penchant for methodological self-consciousness, its ‘metalinguistic’ tendency to demand critical scrutiny of its own terms and procedures.”

Semiotics is a branch of structuralism and deals with the study of signs and symbols. Film semiotics deals with and helps decode the cultural and social meanings of signs and codes used in the film. According to Christian Metz, a film theorist who pioneered the application of Ferdinand Saussure’s semiology theory to film, “The study of connotation brings us closer to the notion of the cinema as an art (the seventh art)”.

Film uses a number of tools like dialogues, gestures, frames, angles, shots, songs, music, light, visual images, its juxtaposition etc. combined to construct its narrative. Jait Re Jait, has an interestingly complicated semiotics. The cultural and social meaning is not only encoded in the visual images and dialogues, but the myths, traditions and the culture of the community is also used to encode the film’s narrative.

The story of Jait Re Jait breaks the stereotypes. On a syntagmatic axis it is a musical drama with the hero, heroin, honeybees, parents and the tribal community represented by the narrators. On the other hand, the paradigmatic axis hold the genre of the film creating drama, and showing the ethos and pathos of the film. The elements on the syntagmatic axis are the ‘signifiers’ and that on the paradigmatic axis are the ‘signified’.

The songs in the film convey a lot of cultural and social connotations. When Nagya’s father explains to him in a song that ‘everyone has their god. Trees have their god, stones have their god and likewise bees too have their god.’ Another instance, when Chindhi confesses her love to Nagya, who is ignorant of her, the narrators sing the song:

Gorya Dehavarati Kanti

Naginichi Kaat

Tujhya Roopacha Bashinga Dolyat

Tujhya wachun sunnat din-raat.

It is translated as –

A fair body is like the magnitude of brightness of stars

Cobra’s cast aside skin

Your beauty is studded in my eyes

Without you the day and night are eerie.

From the song and its metaphors, we know the symbols that the tribal relate to everyday. This song is sung by the narrators, so it also gives a comment to the situation.

Another example of connotation is the names of the hero and heroine. Nagya, means Cobra and also symbolizes with Lord Shiva from the Hindu mythology. The name is chosen appropriately to suit the ethos and pathos of the film; his desire to be virtuous; his fight with the God. Chindhi, means a rag (dirty piece of cloth). Her name too suits the tragic life she is going through and it is like a name given by the society to a woman who denounces her husband and marries according to her will.

The scene where Nagya meets the Brahmin also has encoded meaning, which are not conveyed directly. In their dialogues, when Nagya asks Brahmin how to be virtuous, the Brahmin first asks for offerings to him, and asks for beetle leaves. Brahmin maintains a physical distance from Nagya as he is from a lower caste. Another scene where, Nagya where Nagya denies his share of killed rat that the community has hunted together, denotes the community’s cultural practices of hunting together and sharing. And in contrast, Nagya’s denial shows how he wants to achieve something more than what his fellows have. 

The costumes used in the films convey the liberal attitude of the tribes. Women just wear a blouse and dhoti-like drape, with no pallu to cover their breasts. Men just drape a cloth around their waist. The culture of the tribal community is displayed through a tribal song – amhi thakar thakar, which portrays them as butterflies in the jungle and a community who have situated themselves amongst the growing urbanized population.

Women in Jait Re Jait:

The main female characters in the film are Chindhi, Nagya’s mother and the narrator woman. All three are portrayed as strong, independent women who have say in their families. Chindhi has left her husband and come back to her maternal home. However, she faces abuses of her drunkard father. But she gives him befitting replies that she earns a living for herself and also pays for her father’s alcohol. Nagya’s mother is also portrayed in the manner. The woman narrator interacts with her husband and his friends very freely. All these portrayals of women in that era were hostile to mainstream, as the women were confined to their household chores.

Also, Chindhi or no other woman in the film have been filmed with a voyeuristic erotic gaze angle. In fact, it is the male body i.e. of Nagya, which is gazed upon. In a scene, where Chindhi is bathing Nagya, the camera tilts from top to bottom of Nagya’s bare body.

Photos:

Narrators at the beginning of the film

Nilu Phule, as Nagya’s father telling him about the Queen Bee

The two narrators with Nagya with the dhol dancing a tribal dance

Smita Patil as Chindhi

Narrator woman

Nagya looking at the bees

Chindhi bathing Nagya

Conclusion:

So far, we saw the narrative structure, semiotics and portrayal of women in the film Jait Re Jait. The amount of novelty not only in the cinematic expression, but also in the content, makes the film an important milestone and epic in the Indian Cinema.