To understand why Ritwik Ghatak’s Titas Ekti Nadir Naam can feel difficult to explain, filmmaker Mani Kaul offers a useful way in: watch it as an epic that expands toward nature, history and ideas, rather than as a drama driving toward one decisive resolution. That is Kaul’s interpretation, not a definitive formula for the film, but it gives viewers a way to notice what its loose narrative is doing.
Kaul’s distinction: a story can converge or expand
In an interview with Nasreen Munni Kabir, Kaul contrasts dramatic form with epic form. As he describes it, drama tends to move through conflicts and arguments toward an outcome: its elements converge, and the story builds toward resolution or climax. Epic form moves differently. Its narrative can remain loose, broadening as it takes in nature, history and ideas.
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Kaul applies that distinction to Titas. If a viewer expects every scene to advance a central conflict toward a clear payoff, the film may seem hard to follow. In his account, that difficulty is connected to the film’s method: it spreads out rather than narrowing toward a single answer.
What the images add to the story
Kaul points to boats, rain, nature and the mother figure as elements that enlarge the film beyond an individual character’s journey. He identifies Bhagvati as a mother archetype. These images and figures matter in his reading not just as details in a plot, but as ways the film opens onto a wider world.
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That perspective offers a practical viewing approach: notice when the film’s attention shifts from a person or event to the surrounding landscape, weather, or community. Instead of treating those moments as digressions from the “real” story, consider how they widen its scale.
Why a neat explanation can miss the film
Kaul calls Titas difficult to explain because its narrative thread is loose and its dialogue enigmatic. He hears the dialogue opening onto ideas about nature and a dying culture, rather than simply clarifying what happens next. He also resists making “melodramatic” a complete description of Ghatak’s achievement: in Kaul’s judgment, Ghatak uses melodrama as a medium, and reducing the film to one theme would flatten its complexity.
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Kaul reads the river’s drying and re-emergence as an image of continuity beyond the death of a particular community or landscape. He sums up that interpretation with the line, “a civilisation never dies.” It is his reading of the film’s imagery, not a claim that loss within the story is unreal or reversible.
Where the interview comes from
Kabir’s interview with Kaul was published by Scroll.in on September 15, 2016. The article says the conversation originated in an extensive interview on Ghatak filmed for Channel 4 TV in the UK. It also describes Kaul as one of Ghatak’s students at the Film and Television Institute of India in the 1970s and identifies Ghatak as one of his mentors. In that context, Kaul’s comments are a filmmaker’s considered account of how to approach a difficult work, rather than a neutral or uncontested definition.
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Scroll’s article situates the interview within Channel 4’s 2006 Ghatak season, which included Meghe Dhaka Tara, Subarnarekha, Komal Gandhar and Titas Ekti Nadir Naam. The interview is available at Scroll.in.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.The novel and the restored film
Ghatak adapted the film from Adwaita Mallabarman’s novel. Readers interested in the source can look for English translations published as A River Called Titash; editions and current availability vary. The film’s restoration is documented by Sabzian and The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project. The restoration account says the original camera and sound negatives held by India’s National Film Archive were incomplete, while a complete positive print was supplied by the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv. The project was completed in May 2010 at Cineteca di Bologna’s L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, producing a new 35 mm internegative. These records establish a restoration, not current availability on disc or streaming.
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Film records differ on the year: Scroll describes the film as a 1973 Bangladeshi co-production, while the 1997 Singapore International Film Festival retrospective catalogue lists it as a 1972 film, 123 minutes long. The catalogue also describes its focus on a fishing community beside the River Titash in East Bengal. Without an authoritative archive record resolving the discrepancy, it is more accurate to leave the year open than to present one as settled.
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