A River Called Titas (1971)

God bless Martin Scorsese. It has been a long time since he has made a real masterpiece, but the work he is doing to preserve world cinema must be commemorated. One of his World Cinema Foundation's most recent restorations, A River Called Titas, is the second-to-last film by the brilliant, but self-destructive Bengali filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak. Prior to seeing this film, I had only seen his 1960 film, The Cloud-Capped Star, a work of emotionally devastating beauty. This work, considered by many to be his masterpiece, is one of those films of such gravity that I wish I could watch it again with virgin eyes. Taking place in a land that feels almost outside of time, the film is an exploration into the lives of a rural fishing community situated on the bank of the Titas River. Mythical is the best word that can describe this. Veering from earthy realism to expressionistic flights of fantasy, Ghatak is less concerned with narrative than he is with evoking the feeling of a place. Few films so situate and envelop the viewer in the setting more successfully than this one. The narrative is rather dreamy and fractured, with events and characters floating in and out of view, and time skipping along without much indication. It is easy to compare Ghatak with the greats like Tarkovsky and Vláčil, but Ghatak is in a league of his own, he crafted his own style, and never kowtowed to audience sensibilities. The new restoration is gorgeous, and hopefully, Criterion will release this outside of Hulu Plus so that more people will be able to see and fall in love with this masterwork.