What turns a man into a rapist?: Director Aparna Sen on her latest film

Aparna Sen, 76, just received the Icon Award at the London Indian Film Festival for her contribution to cinema. Her latest film, The Rapist, a complex look at how a rape impacts the perpetrator, the survivor and her husband, has been winning awards and accolades across Indian and international festival circuits.

Sen is the daughter of the acclaimed film scholar Chidananda Dasgupta and designer Supriya Dasgupta, who founded the Calcutta Film Society in 1947. She debuted in Satyajit Ray’s Teen Kanya (1961) while still in school. “I was not allowed to watch mainstream cinema until later in life,” she recalls. “My friends would watch the Suchitra Sen-Uttam Kumar starrers and describe them in great detail. I had not seen a single Bengali film until then. Of course, I was taken by my parents to watch Ray’s Pather Panchali (1955) and cried copiously. My taste was formed by those kinds of films. My parents were aghast when I decided to do mainstream cinema, but if I were to wait for Ray or Mrinal Sen to cast me, it would not be much of a career.”

After two decades of starring in Bengali cinema and a handful of forgettable Hindi films, Sen was nudged towards filmmaking. “During the shooting of Immaan Dharam (1977), I was waiting for another star, or for the light to be set up or something, and I thought to myself, ‘I don’t want to be doing this for the rest of my life — acting in cinema I don’t believe in’. I knew I could write. I started writing what turned out to be 36 Chowringhee Lane (1981).”

Even for a star, it was not easy to find a producer for an English film about a lonely, elderly Anglo-Indian woman, modelled after some of her own school teachers. “I was prepared to go door to door. I met this guy who was in charge of spending 20th Century Fox funds in India. When I narrated the story, he said, ‘What are you trying to sell here? Violence? Sex?’ I said ‘Thank you very much’ and ran from there. It was a story of a little old woman. I was terrified I would be asked to put in sex or violence.” Eventually, Shashi Kapoor produced the film. His wife, Jennifer Kendal, played the teacher, Violet Stoneham. It remains one of her most widely-watched and admired films.

By the early 1980s Sen, along with Sai Paranjpye, Vijaya Mehta and Prema Karanth, found themselves part of a novel set – women filmmakers. The industry, she says, expected them to make small-budget films about women’s issues. “It is so stupid for women to be making films about women,” Sen says. “36… could well have been a film about a man, except that I didn’t know anything about boys’ schools.”

If Sen finds it hard to fit into pigeonholes, her films do too. Sati (1989) draws from a Kamal Kumar Majumdar story of a mute orphan who is married off to a tree because her horoscope suggests that her husband will die. Mr and Mrs Iyer (2002) is about a Tamil-Brahmin woman saving a Muslim man from communal violence; The Japanese Wife (2010) is about the pen-friendship between a Bengali man and a Japanese woman. “A lot of them are about loneliness, but they traverse different paths.”

A major reason for such diverse themes could be Sen’s stint as the editor of the Bengali women’s fortnightly magazine, Sananda from 1986 to 2005, “It could not be just about cookery and fashion. Women are not apart from humanity; we are also interested in sports and politics and what is happening around us. So I did stories on remuneration for housework, on Medha Patkar and the Narmada dam, the problems of zari workers. I was up-to-date on current affairs.”

As a filmmaker, she’s turned news, facts, headlines, even tales by Shakespeare and Tagore, into, ultimately, sensitive stories about humanity. Actress Shabana Azmi who has worked with her on four films says that her greatest regret is she let Sen down in her portrayal of the orphan, Uma, in Sati. “I had thought of Uma as a bull and Aparna had imagined Uma as a fox!” Azmi says. “She was very patient with me and went so far as to let me do one take my way and then do another take her way. She even showed me the rushes. I knew she was right, but I just wasn’t able to do it. Mercifully, in later films like Picnic, 15 Park Avenue and Sonata it worked out fine.”

Sen says that her most recent film, The Rapist, is the most objective of them all. “I have not taken sides,” she says. “I had this question in my mind: At what point does a man become a rapist?” Even here, her focus on humanity eclipses formulaic solutions. “There are questions more than answers,” Sen says.

She’s not done yet. Sen’s wishlist includes a film about the painter Amrita Sher-Gil, in which she would like to cast Alia Bhatt; and episodes of the Mahabharata, in English, Game of Thrones style. “I am very surprised that I am still living,” Sen says. “Just joking! When I said to my husband that I think I should call it a day, he asked why. Clint Eastwood is still making films at 92. I want to die with my boots on.”

QUICK TAKE

Aparna Sen’s career as a director spans 16 films, from her breakthrough debut 36, Chowringhee Lane (1981) to The Rapist, which has been touring festivals since its release last year.

Sen has also starred in more than 70 films. She was offered Ankur (1974), which went to Shabana Azmi and launched her career. “I am glad I didn’t do it,” Sen says. “I would not have been as good as Shabana.”

Are Shabana Azmi and Konkona Sen Sharma her alter egos in the films she directs with them? “Not exactly. But they have a lot of trust and faith and respect for me. Likewise, it is easy to work with somebody who believes in your work.”