I've mentioned a couple of times over the past few months that I've got a bunch of foreign movies on my YouTube TV DVR that I won't necessarily get around to watching before they expire, for any number of reasons. One that I did, however, make a point to watch before it expired is the Bengali-language movie A River Called Titas.
The movie is really two films in one, with a couple of characters in both halves, with an extra character being the river Titas itself (now in Bangladesh; at the time the novel on which the movie was based was written it was still East Pakistan and the events in the movie are set over enough time that many events are definitely East Pakistan). In one of the villages along the river -- at least along the river for now; it forms channels which apparently dry up and change course over decadal time frames -- the villagers eke out a living by fishing, and by making jute from the appropriate plants from which they can make their nets as well as other things when they have excess fiber. Kishore is a young man in the village, who has a friend Subla. Basanti is a younger girl who, in a world without arranged marriages, might well grow up to marry Kishore. But Kishore goes off to a neighboring village where there's a festival going on, and there he's introduced to Rajar Jhi and summarily married off to her. He's going to bring her back to his village, but on the way back, river bandits waylay their boat and kidnap Rajah Jhi, who later escapes but floats to the river bank where she's found by unknown locals.
Kishore returned to his home village and, assuming that his wife was killed, goes mad. He doesn't know that his wife was found alive, or that he had impregnated her on the one night they were married. Fast forward 10 years, and Rajar Jhi has a son. As a widow she's seen as damaged goods, and she's taken to another village where hopefully they can find useful work for her. Coincidentally, that just happens to be the same village where Kishore and Basanti still live, Basanti being a widow too. Also somehow amazingly, neither Rajar Jhi nor Kishore seem to recognize each other. Well, Rajar Jhi seems to have some idea that she just has to be the soulmate for the poor benighted Kishore, although she doesn't let on why. Eventually Rajar Jhi and Kishore suffer a tragic fate.
More time passes, and Rajar Jhi's kid went off to a big city, where he was raised in polite society. The villagers, with the course of the river changing, are making less money from fishing. As a result, they're falling ever deeper into debt. The cooperative company which holds the debt, and which seems to be run by Muslims while the villagers are Hindus although this theme isn't explored in any depth in the film, wants to call in the debt, take over the village, and use the land for farmers. This takes up the entire second half of the movie, and seems to be an almost completely different movie from the first half although Basanti is still there.
A River Called Titas is a movie that was very well photographed, and would probably look really good if all of the original film elements had stayed in good condition. The bad news, however, is that the movie is all over the place in terms of plotting and pacing, with it in many ways feeling like it really should have been planned as two movies even if some of the characters appear in both halves. Stylistically, it fits in the tradition of Italian neo-realism, or perhaps Agnès Varda's La Point Courte, the latter being about a fishing village and having a clumsy tacked-on plot as well. Still, A River Called Titas probably should be seen once despite its flaws.
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