Colonial revolution in Mrinal Sen’s Interview

Mrinal Sen was pursuing a career as a medical representative, happy with his job, his life and hoping that it would stay that way. This was around the year 1943. Sen was dabbling into a lot of reading, be it the works of Karl Marx, or Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzche. While he was hunting through the shelves of the now National Library in Kolkata, he accidentally came upon a book, titled Film by a certain Rudolf Arnheim. As Sen himself puts it, it was a “gem of a book,” and it was convincing enough to get him hooked onto the aesthetics of cinema. Suddenly things took a turn for him and he went on to direct his first feature, Raat Bhore (The Dawn). What must be remembered to evaluate Sen’s works, are that they were not just tales in motion on a grandeur backdrop. This was also the time, when the Communist Movement in Bengal was slowly taking shape. Young minds like Sen were greatly moved by the idea of a new socialism which meant equality for all and this theme always ran in the movies that he made thereafter. There was always the idea of revolt prevalent in his films – revolt against the bureaucracy in Bhuvan Shome or the revolt against the post-colonial tendencies that were embedded in the subconscious minds of the people in his Interview.

A spurious take on the avant-garde style of film-making, Interview basically in a nutshell deals with an interview - a day in the life of the protagonist, Mr. Ranjit Mullick. The movie begins in the morning and goes on through his quest for the interview during the day and ends in the night. What is this plot around an interview one may ask? It deals less with the actual interview, but more with the decorations that the candidate has to prepare for himself to clear the first hurdle. And what could be the decorations? A suit! Why suit? Because the company is still steeped in the colonial tradition of having English aspirants at their door …

The movie begins, quite literally from Ranjit Mullick (Ranjit Mullick) getting up in the morning, and reciting for the nth time to his mother, the specifications of the new job – “Double of what I am getting now, plus commission, plus something, plus something, plus something …” His mother repeatedly asks him to stop using that refrain – typical Bengali middle class superstition, fearing that it might wear out otherwise – but as Ranjit puts it to her, everything has been taken care of through interior channels, all that was now required, was a suit! Does he now have the suit? No, he had given it to the Dry Cleaners three months back and withdrawn from the reclamation that it would be eaten up by moths in his house. All that he needed to do was go get the suit and arrive at the office on time for the interview.

Where are the shoes? In a trunk, kept safely! The trunk turns out to be a Pandora’s Box, which with time had graduated to hold all unwanted junk that had collected in the house – including the pair of shoes. What finally comes out of it is anything but a pair of shoes – completely worn out and dilapidated. However, Ranjit immediately delegates his sister to get the cobbler to operate on them and make them usable. Now for the suit. Where is the bill? Along with all the bills that the mother has had the fortune to collect – it’s like searching for a needle in a haystack. However, like the shoes, even that is found. Now Ranjit is off to collect it from the cleaners. But he can’t do that! Not today … The Dry Cleaning Union in the city has called for an indefinite strike. All shops will remain closed due to their involuntary association with the same. The suit is then lost for the time being.

Ranjit moves around from place to place, pondering on his possibilities. Where could he get a suit from? He goes to his fiancée’s place and repeats his jargon, “Double of what I am getting now, plus …” Kites are flown, and she helps him decorate their future apartment. She even tries to help him get a suit. But luck fails him on all accounts. Another friend now hits upon an idea. One of their common friends from college is a ‘sahib’. He was sure that they could get a suit from there. So, with a little help from Lady Luck, a suit is obtained. All his troubles are over. He is on his way back home with the suit in hand, in a local bus, when he suddenly sees a man pinching a wallet in the vehicle. The socialist ideal in the idealistic youth is aroused and he tucks away his packet in one corner of the bus to catch him red-handed. The plot thickens here, but the suit remains in the bus.

Now when he is finally free from the Police Station, he remembers about this long lost suit. Its only a few hours away from his interview. There is nothing that he can do, to improve on the situation. He goes to the interview in the traditional kurta and dhuti. Needless to say, he doesn’t get the job.

The contact in that office lands up in his house and ventilates his frustration on the boy. He argues that he already has a job and as he continues with his thesis, the music rises to a crescendo and his dialogues are faded out. Did the director mean to say that he was talking rubbish? That he was actually furious at missing out on the interview because of a suit? The camera finds Ranjit, sulking away in the evening in some desolate corner. A nameless and faceless bystander questions him as to what was bothering him. Ranjit evades the questions, he tries to run away and then when finally, the viewer’s questions regarding the suit and “double of what you get now, plus commission …” gets to him, he does what he must have wanted to do for a long time – he pelts stones at a Suit shop, tearing apart the suited mannequin at the window.

The actual movie Interview begins with the demolishment of the English statues at various landmarks in Kolkata, something that had really happened in the early 1970s. It was an impulse to defy the post colonial sentiments that had actually gripped the city, the establishments in the city and as the story unfolds before us, we see how the sentiment actually existed. It is the inability to appear before the company in a suit that denies him a job opportunity, not his abilities and qualifications. It is a psycho-analytical concept that Sen defies. The suit stood for the “propah” English mannerisms that an Indian boy was required to exhibit. It was killing the ambitions and opportunities for the youth. The interview is not dependant on the physical capabilities of the aspirant, not on his mental abilities, but on a suit – a heritage that we have unknowingly acquired from the English during their Raaj in the country. We may not know it, but we do possess it in our sub consciousness and are quite proud of it too. What is wrong with Indian outfits? Just that they are not British?