However, despite such direct criticism of the state, the film won three national awards—Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Screenplay—in the 19th Bangladesh National Film Awards in 1994, a prestigious event for local cinema. The awards show that instead of getting embarrassed by the film’s harsh criticism, the state appreciates the film. Whereas the film-within-the-film receives such coercive censorship, the actual film seems to fit well with the current state ideology. Contrary to the ‘reel’ state, the real state appears to be modern, secular, and democratic by being able to accommodate and acknowledge such a ‘dissenting’ film. A dubious position is thus created outside the film’s narrative world.

This dubious role may be further explained through Lotte Hoek’s valuable insights about the role of the Bangladesh state, specifically, of its film censorship board. Hock offers a rigorous engagement with the rise of ‘obscenity’ in FDC films in the late 1990s-2000s. She shows that the ‘modern’ state, instead of dealing with the issue of sexually explicit scenes more effectively and respectfully[6], [open endnotes in new window] rather enjoys its gatekeeper role on behalf of urban civil society, led by a middle-class intelligentsia with conservative outlooks. Hock postulates the state seems to benefit from such ‘obscene’ vs. ‘healthy’ discourses as through these it creates legitimacy for its own existence. Instead of offering productive contributions to the production and distribution of such films,[7] the state is more eager to participate in the public discussions, which often engender a process of otherization for these films.[8] Deshpremik’s national award seems attest to this state interest to create ground for its cultural legitimacy.

Several other contradictory issues within the film’s narrative world further contribute to the impression of a dubious state. First of all, the film critiques the government, politicians, and state system of the previous decade, with a setting sometime in the early 1980s.  In the 1990s a parliamentary democracy under an elected political party was hard-gained by a mass uprising against the military autocracy under Hussain Muhammad Ershad that had ruled the country from 1982-1990. [9] Thus, the film shows that the harassment Alam and his film faced came from the bureaucrats, politicians, and the police of an earlier political regime, whereas the present political regime (both its government officials and its politicians) seem sincere and pro-people. Therefore, the film apparently poses no threat to the current government. Rather, by incorporating the finished film into the dominant state ideology through prestigious national awards, the political regime took the chance of declaring itself as modern, secular, and democratic (i.e., respecting freedom of speech). Whatever the past state looks like in the film, the present state hardly looks dubious if it offers such an overt reading of the film.

However, the film’s narrative techniques open up several covert layers within this apparently propagandist interpretation. First, the script plays with a delayed-revelation technique. Information is withheld from the audience till the last moment so that the audiences have little clue as to whether they are watching a film within the film or a story of past or present society. An early hint of such a technique is given in the opening sequence of the film. We see a politician shot while delivering a speech in a public gathering. As the attacker runs away, a policeman fires a pistol into his leg, and he is arrested. The shooter, then, in dramatic direct address to the audience, claims that he killed two of his friends upon instructions from that corrupt politician and asks people to be aware of the evil intentions of such leaders. Only after this, do we see a director saying, ‘Cut,’ and then understand that we have seen a film-within-film, a film sequence just shot by our filmmaker Alam. What this opening sequence does by withholding information about the film-within-film is to create confusion between fiction and reality. It makes a strong statement against politicians’ malpractice but also neutralizes it by claiming it is mere dramatic cinema. The film plays another round of this tactic in the middle as well.

The same car models represent the different periods of the narrative world.
The same FDC director’s office represents the different periods of the narrative world.

There is almost no clue in the film that the first 35 minutes of the film are actually events of the last decade. The film did not play with narrative chronology (e.g., using flashbacks, etc.) and only when Alam is sent to prison and is released from there after 10 years does the audience come to know that what they have seen so far were events from the past. The differences between the mise-en-scene of the 1980s and 1990s are also very minimal—whether or not due to production limitations. The consequence of this delayed revelation is that the severe criticism of the political regime in the first 35 minutes of the film may be ‘misunderstood’ by many as a criticism of the current state and its malpractices. That is, instead of the personnel of the past regime, the police, bureaucracy, and politicians of the present regime may seem to be critiqued in the initial 35 minutes of the film. Whether this ‘misunderstanding’ is carefully crafted or not, it certainly creates confusion.

In the contemporary part of the film (the part that starts after Alam’s release), the film continues its criticism of contemporary society but this time in a more surreptitious way. Instead of social confrontation with the dominant status quo, the film uses allegory to convey its message. In this case, the script activates an often-used melodramatic trope in South Asian cinemas of the disintegration and reintegration of a family to convey the message. It focuses on Alam’s pain of separation from his only daughter, an event that can be seen as an allegorical representation of the pain he suffers for not being able to complete his dream film.

When Alam is imprisoned, his wife with their only daughter, Baby, leave the country. Alam’s wife then dies in a road accident in the UK, and he is denied any further communication with his daughter by the evil maneuvers of his arrogant father-in-law. Upon release from prison, Alam fails to find his daughter. He lacks the consolation of family. Moreover, he has also lost any zeal to fight the system and takes refuge in drink. Both the unfinished film and the lost daughter make him deeply pessimistic about life.

Here, melodrama invites audiences to feel the pain and suffering of a father for his lost daughter, and through that, they are also provoked to feel the pain of a filmmaker who cannot complete and release his ‘child-like’ film. It can be noted that several times in the film Alam has proclaimed that an artwork is an offspring of its artists while emphasizing an affectionate spiritual connection between the art and the artist that goes beyond mere materialism. Thus, Alam’s suffering for not being able to complete the film—subtly presented through his alienation and pain from missing his daughter—becomes an allegory of the lack of freedom of speech under the present state system. It can also be read as a critique of the neoliberal policies and ‘illiberal democracy’ of Bangladesh[10] which cannot measure things beyond their material significance.

Altogether, there is hardly one stable image of the state in the film. Establishing the meaning of the state seems always an ongoing process. Whereas the film seemingly ‘praises’ the status quo and gets praised and awards in return, an unpacking of its cinematic techniques reveals several layers within the film where each layer seems to cancel the other. We find an oscillation between past and present, between appearance and reality, and between what is appreciated and what is critiqued, the result of which, as I argue, depicts a dubious state. Like most other popular cinema, the film ends with restoring the equilibrium—the alcoholic, lonely father finally dies an epic death—but the pain he has endured lingers as a criticism of whatever has happened so far. Alam completes his film, and it becomes an instant success. Instead of harassing him for the film, the current reel government appreciates it very much by providing it with logistical support and sending it to international festivals to represent the country. Making the character even more tragic, the script has Alam die on the very day of receiving a foreign accolade for his film. Audiences are invited to leave the film feeling sorry for this suffering fighter-artist. Thus, the ending, too, offers a double-sidedness.

Shanto Keno Mastan (Why Is Shanto a Hooligan?)

Whereas Deshpremik critiques the state machinery, it arguably tries to align itself with the urban, middle-class intelligentsia of the country. The central characters, good or bad, are formally educated, speak in ‘standard’ Bangla language, dress well like city people, and are motivated by high cultural practices (e.g., they listen to Tagore songs, a middle-class favorite). The need for an award from an international film festival to prove the caliber of Alam’s film at the end further extends this middle-class fantasy. The film tries to speak for the masses while carefully distancing itself from them on cultural high grounds. In the film, when an unsophisticated alcohol seller asks Alam about his paper files, Alam replies that the seller could not understand their value. Alam also corrects that man’s wrong tune of a popular song. In the film, he seems to be a self-appointed guardian of the ‘helpless’ masses of Bangladesh. He fights for them. The film thus reasserts a middle-class intellectual leadership over the masses in Bangladesh; and the real national award for the film further attests to the hegemony of this leadership in the local politics and state machinery.

I would now like to address a film which more openly speaks from a marginal position to further look at cinematic representation of the state. Shanto Keno Mastan (Why is Shanto a Hooligan? 1998), a remake of the Bollywood film Ziddi (1997), is an example of an ‘extreme action genre’ film. This is a genre that Raju has identified as resulting from the massification of the industry in the 1990s. The film was a huge box-office success, and in it is a ‘hero’ who willingly abandons a compromised middle-class life accepting the status quo and becomes a violent, working-class leader. Comparing the two films, we see a shift from Alam’s intellectual dissent to Shanto’s violent rebellion. The state’s sovereignty is challenged through Shanto’s self-proclaimed right to commit violence as resistance and to run his own state within the State.

The film’s script introduces Shanto as a young man who refuses to keep quiet in the event of any crime and injustice and who resorts to violence as his way of protesting. His father, a middle-class lawyer and dutiful citizen, tries to derail Shanto from this dangerous habit which sets up a father-son conflict. That intrafamily conflict then allegorizes a ‘law vs justice’ theme, where discrepancies between the existing laws and the real requirements of justice can be shown. In that way, the film can critique the modern state and its failure to rescue people in distress, especially the working-class masses.

Shanto kills a local goon who tries to sexually harass his sister and is convicted to four-year imprisonment. But upon returning from prison, unlike Alam in Deshpremik, he decides to be an outlaw and consciously picks a path of violence to ensure justice for some slum-dwellers whom the state has failed to protect. In the film, we see Shanto dealing with many dishonest businessmen and goons: a real estate businessman who tries to grab land coercively from the migrant workers, a drug lord and adulterer who mixes harmful elements in baby food for more profit, and several male sexual assaulters. At the same time, with the consent of the local people, he runs his own court in the slum and metes out retributive justice. Thus, very much like the narrative worlds of Godfather or Nayakan, we see Shanto running a shadow state within the state of Bangladesh.

Despite having a directly subversive message, the film was not hindered by the state agencies like the censorship board. Though this film did not receive any awards, it was a record hit in the history of Bangladeshi cinema. It must be mentioned that, like most other cinemas, the film ends with restoring the equilibrium. The Bangladesh police arrest Shanto at the end, and a suggestion is made that he will go through due legal proceedings. Not only that, within the film’s narrative world, we see ‘sincerity’ from the desks of the Home Minister of State Affairs and the Inspector General of Police, and through them, a suggestion is made that the corruption shown in the film is more due to individual cases than a fault of the entire state system. The judiciary too seems to work properly following legal procedure. Thus, the plot does not risk any overt confrontation with the entire state system.

However, the film poses its criticism by offering a bottom-up view of the state, a look from the margins. Though top state officials are shown as ideologically committed, the film shows that the marginal people (i.e., poor, slum-dwelling working class of the city) hardly get the benefit of such commitment. By showing the oppression and violence done to them along with the failure of state mechanisms (i.e., the police) to protect them, the film depicts the precariousness that these people face in their everyday life. It not only questions the effectiveness of the trickle-down mechanism of the neoliberal state but also attempts to generate empathy for counter-violence as a form of protest. Thus, in the film, we see that the slum-dwellers themselves request Shanto to be their savior and pledge all kinds of support for him. Shanto, on the other hand, becomes a one-man army for this vulnerable community, fighting against all evils in the absence of any effective state mechanism. The state here becomes ‘dubious’ through its simultaneous presence from a top-down view and absence from a bottom-up view, and the suggestion of a shadow state run by Shanto further complicates its legitimacy.

Upon release from the jail, Shanto is not accepted in his family home anymore. However, the slum dwellers request him to be their protector.