Representation of Metropolitan Psyche in Zahir Raihan’s Minimalist Film Kokhono Asheni

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Zahir Raihan vanished on 30 January 1972 while trying to find his brother, the prominent author Shahidullah Kaiser. On 14 December just before the end of liberation war Pakistan army and /or their local collaborators arrested and killed Shahidullah Kaiser. Zahir went to Mirpur after an anonymous phone call told him that his brother was alive and might be found at Mirpur.

Research Methods

Textual analysis

Textual analysis is a structural approach of analyzing a film. Textual analysis of film requires observing and questioning all the elements that create meaning within the piece, such as acting, directing, lighting, cinematography, mise en scene etc (Understandingfilm.wikifoundry.com). As well as observing the specific elements that produce a film’s connotation, textual analysis also covers understanding on how the movie fits into the larger framework of its social, historical, cultural and political setting. So, textual analysis correspondingly needs investigating a film’s genre, viewers, as well as its historical, institutional, and socio-cultural significance. It’s only in combining both that we can create a thorough understanding of the film.

The sample includes a feature film by Zahir Raihan entitled Kokhono Asheni. There are several reasons behind select this movie. This movie contains the time and space of a part of a new born state with utter differences which is East Pakistan; this movie made during the first fifteen years of Bengal partition and early days of East Bengal as a counterpart of West Pakistan. The sampled movie also reflect the then state or mindscape of the society. Due to neo-realist, minimalist style of making, this movie contains numerous socio-cultural tropes all over the narrative. Through the textual analysis process it is possible to locate the then historical and socio-cultural phenomena and opportunity of mapping social psychology.

Theoretical Framework

The sampled film was analyzed on the basis of a solid theoretical ground of narratology (Bal and Boheemen, 2009), film semiotics and minimalism.

Narratology refers to both the theory and the study of narrative and narrative structure and the ways that these affect our perception (Putatunda, 2012). Narratology is used as the theory and the research technique simultaneously. Metz (1974) offered the ‘grandesyntagmatique’, or fundamental syntagm of narrative film – in which he pointed out six major autonomous components: scene, sequence, alternative, redundant, descriptive syntagma, and autonomous plane. (Gayen, 2015) As the focus of this paper is to explore the construction of socio-cognitive reality in Kokhono Asheni, the theory of narratology can contribute the most towards examining the representation of society in the film of Zahir Raihan.

As Ferdinand Saussure defined language in the book Course in General Linguistics, “language is ‘a system of signs’ that express ideas” (Saussure, 1959). Like any other art form, film has its own system of language. Many early film language specialists defined the principle or syntax of film. Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein compares “the shot to a word and the filmic ‘montage phrase’ to a sentence (Nöth, 1990). In the pre-semiotic period French philosopher Jean Mitry deals extensively with film language analogies. He describes film as a language, “a system of sign or symbols which permits designating the things by naming them, to signify ideas, to translate thoughts” (Mitry, 1997). It is understandable that a user of the film language needs certain (film) literacy so he can attain macro or micro socio-psycho reflexivity through sight and sound on screen.

The theory of (film) semiotics works at the core to the auteur theory and representation theory. Filmic semiosis (term) is the “psycho-semiotic impression of a reduced difference between the filmic signifier and its referential object. The illusion of immediate reality, which is stronger (in cinema) than in theater or photography, is the source of a high degree of empathy and psychic participation on the pan of the spectators” (Nöth, 1990) (long quote). Apart from this, in Roland Barthes interpretation, “filmic signifiers are not screenic images, but rather elements of filmic representation, such as actors, costumes, set, landscape, gestures, and music. These signifiers are characterized by heterogeneity (since they are visual and acoustic signs), polyvalence (they have multiple meanings) and their syntagmatic dimension” (Nöth, 1990). With the aid of these factors we will examine the social code, cultural valuesand extract how the sign of those valuesare structured in those films.

The sign of social code and cultural values can be explored as a structure, a code or convention. It signifies the philosophical meaning that “a social reality (or a ‘culture’) is itself an edifice of meaning…” (Butler, 2003) the dimensions of these meanings are “the text, the situation, the text variety, the code, the linguistic system and the social structure” (Cobley, 1996).

Film semiotics and film theory/auteur theory, when utilized in narratology, present us with insights to make us realize how social and cultural values are characterized in cinemas. However, to understand why they are represented in such ways, it is important to explore the critical political economy of representation, which is correlated with the critical approach of text analysis. “Critical Political Economy is based upon a concern with the structural inequalities of production and the consequences for representation and access to consumption. By placing issues of economic distribution at its centre, it prioritizes the relationship between the economy and forms of democratic politics” (Devereux, 2007)

For Hall, ideology and power construct the meaning of a given text. So, those who are the owners of media construct the meaning of what they represent. Hence, to understand and analyze how the given text works to sustain or change the existing socio-economic structure, critical theory is important” (Gayen, 2015). To understand the political economy of the construction of socio-politic-cultural reality in Kokhono Asheni, the critical theory works as the theoretical ground.

In the history of art, minimalism means an aesthetic of reduction or lightening. Minimalism as an ideology grabbed the attention of artists and theoreticians in the 1960’s and early 1970’s. After the Second World War this ideology was practiced and reflected in art movement mostly in American visual art. The word was first used in English in the early 20th century to describe "a