SHYAM BENEGAL'S GROUNDBREAKING DEBUT

With the passing of the iconic Shyam Benegal, we revisit Ankur, his devastating debut

- Subhash K Jha

The New Wave in Hindi cinema brought its own surge of new hope. Shyam Benegal could be justly called the father of New Wave Cinema in the 1970s. Prolific in his output, Shyam Babu, as he is affectionately and reverently known, hasn't stopped making films with social relevance that touches a deep chord in the human heart.

A feudal mindset
Ankur, his directorial debut, remains to this day his most searing indictment of oppression set within an extended feudal system in Andhra Pradesh, where the Zamindari system is gone. Zamindars are no more. Though abolished, the feudal mindset lives on. Carrying forward the tradition of cinema set in the poverty of the Indian heartland, Ankur took forward the feudal fable of Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali and Bimal Roy's Do Bigha Zameen, though the language used to convey the sharp-cutting contours of socio-economic oppression in Ankur is far removed from the way Ray and Roy envisaged it.

Benegal turns the parable on poverty and subjugation into a sexually charged tale of lust, jealousy, insecurity, and brutality in a village of Hyderabad. The camera (Govind Nihalani) follows the rituals of the Andhra village closely. Ankur is rooted to the Andhra soil. That is why, initially, Benegal wanted Waheeda Rehman to play Laxmi. The fact that the role finally went to Shabana Azmi is providential.