The Golden Thread

A refugee camp of people who came from East Bengal after partition. Ishwar is raising his young sister Sita, and an orphaned boy in the camp, Abhiram, joins them. Ishwar finds work, leaves the camp and moves to a factory by a river. Years pass. Sita and Abhiram grow up and love each other, but Abhiram is of a lower caste and Ishwar will not allow it. The two run away. Then life destroys them both. Ritwik Ghatak writes and directs. The film is named after the river on whose bank it takes place. It was finished in 1962 and could not be released until 1965. It counts as the last of the three films Ghatak made about partition. The others are Meghe Dhaka Tara and Komal Gandhar; all three are about the long term effect on people of the partition of India in 1947. Against Satyajit Ray's measured realism, Ghatak's cinema is harsh and formal: the use of sound is extreme, the cutting abrupt, the framing theatrical. He was insufficiently known for a long time and was reassessed after his death. The last section contains one of the hardest scenes in Indian cinema and retrospectively changes the meaning of everything before it. Who it is for: viewers who follow the classics of Indian cinema and politically loaded drama. Who it is not for: it is heavy, the style is demanding, some passages are closed without the historical context, and the film offers no consolation.