Autograph: Srijit Mukherji, Prosenjit Chatterjee’s film was both a tribute to and a takedown of commercial cinema

Srijit Mukerjee’s feature debut Autograph recently completed 11 years of release

Srijit Mukerji’s feature debut directorial, released in 2010, was an unabashed tribute to Satyajit Ray and Uttam Kumar’s iconic drama Nayak. The 1966 film about an embattled screen idol went on to win the National Award and the Special Jury Award at the Berlin International Film Festival that year. It was also Ray’s second feature made from an original screenplay.

Nayak followed the literal journey of a superstar named Arindam Chatterjee (Uttam Kumar) from Kolkata to Delhi to accept a National Award, the shiniest chink in his armour. During his journey, Arindam meets with Aditi Sengupta (Sharmila Tagore) the editor of a women’s magazine. The conversation kicks off in the most mundane of ways, as the superstar humours yet another fan wanting her few moments of fame. Soon, he is almost enamoured by her casual dismissal of his superstardom. For the first time in years, he feels flesh-and-blood again, beyond his glossy exterior. As the walls of self-preservation and pretence wear off, Arindam reveals, one by one, his biggest fears and regrets, as Aditi jots down information that could well become the expose of the decade.

Srijit Mukherji’s film wasn’t a remake. It wasn’t a reflection of a man’s mind bogged with fears, insecurities and regrets. It was a commentary on life itself, and the challenges it throws upon the participants, only to gauge how they would navigate it. Thus, in Autograph, Mukerji doesn’t just focus on a has-been star. His film also has an enterprising director and a woman caught in a crossfire between ambition and humaneness.

The first time we meet the film’s protagonist Arun Chatterjee (Prosenjit Chatterjee), he is seen straightening the photo frame of a gigantic portrait of him smiling. He is arrogant and cocky, and is confident that despite the lull in his career, he would be able to bounce back sooner than expected. He is the face of mainstream Bengali cinema, but the producers he works with believe it is not his performance, but the films’ scope that make them money-spinners. Almost in a bid to challenge the naysayers, he ropes in a rank newcomer to direct him in his ambitious remake of Satyajit Ray’s Nayak.

Much like Prosenjit himself, Arun is also encumbered with the burden of being a commercial hero, and this film appears to be his one-way ticket to newfound stardom. When his assistant expresses doubts regarding handing a project to a newcomer director, Arun declares that he would not mind taking the director’s chair himself, creating the vanity project with just the right amount of saleability and substance.

Srijit’s metatheatrical movie has generous references to the industry he wishes to uncover.

Some of the major hat-tips to Nayak include the mention of Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, a film that inspired Ray to make the original movie. He also named his protagonist Arun Chatterjee, which many may know, is Uttam Kumar’s real name. What was significant is how Arun mirrored the same isolation Arindam suffered. They had both reached the zenith of success, and yet, they often find themselves withering away in loneliness, cocooned on a chair, inside a set swarming with people too busy to steal a glance at the man of the moment. They are at once, both the desired and the pitied.

In another self-congratulatory scene, Arun tells Shubho that he is smart, since he has approached the only person who could have essayed the role of Arindam to perfection. In retrospect, it could well have been a metatheatrical reference to Prosenjit himself, who is often hailed as one of the biggest Tollywood stars who went on to experiment with varied roles only in the latter part of his career.

Beyond Arun Chatterjee, film director Shubho and his live-in girlfriend Srinandita (essayed by Indraneil Sengupta and Nandana Sen, respectively) represented the two sides of innocence and experience. Shubho casts Srinandita as Janhavi, the role played by Sharmila Tagore in the source film. In Aditi, Ray encompassed both the blinding ambition of a person waiting for one opportunity to showcase her unbridled talent and the empathy of a fellow human being able to look beyond the razzmatazz of the cine world. Srijit split it into two characters, constantly pitting naivety and shrewdness against each other to highlight that one cannot exist without the other.

Autograph is unquestioningly more on-the-nose with its visual allegories. When a producer talks about young blood populating the TV and silver screens now, in the background can be seen two men struggling to transport a flex banner of the 2009 smash hit college drama Challenge, featuring two of the most promising Bengali then-newcomers, Dev and Subhasree Ganguly. Scenes of happy togetherness are juxtaposed with men brooding alone in the darkness. In fact, it follows the beats of a love triangle very closely, with the woman positioned as the moral centre. If one were to look closely, one would realise the happy songs Chol Rastaye and Uthche Jege Shokalgulo are both voiced by a woman (Shreya Ghoshal) and feature a giggly woman prancing around the sprawling city.

In many ways, Autograph is a much more commercial vehicle than Nayak was. And while Shubho argued that his version of Nayak won’t have song and dance numbers or a romance between his leads in the end, Autograph is exactly what Nayak would have looked like if made by a director who wanted to make a good film and exhibit it in every corner of the city. Autograph is Srijit’s version of a classic, with all the trappings of a commercial hit and as many tropes as you can spot. Yet, it is self awaredly so.

11 years after the release of the film, Autograph still proves that one can take potshots at a particular genre of films while also paying a tribute to its legacy.

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