A young artist relocates to coastal Bangladesh to practice his art, but
in doing so up-turns the local community's age-old customs and
taboos.
Review by
Musanna Ahmed
Directed by: Rezwan Shahriar Sumit
Starring: Titas Zia, Fazlur Rahman Babu, Shatabdi Wadud, Tasnova Tamanna, Ashok
Bepari
I used to work in the field of artist residencies and let me just say, I
never imagined that a film about an artist residency would be so
interesting until I saw the Bangladeshi drama
The Salt in Our Waters. All it took for me to realise that was looking beyond the European
art scene, as Rezwan Shahriar Sumit’s debut feature flourishes
due to the distinctive cultural lens through which he examines the
cross-section between art, nature and religion.
Curly-haired, bespectacled artist Rudro (Titas Zia, who holds a
passing resemblance to India’s Vicky Kaushal and may have his own Masaan
here) is a sculptor with an interest in depicting women (among the
several busts he carries in a crate is one of his mother). He arrives
from the city to a remote coastal fishing village and finds his
live/work space in a small hut, rented for an indefinite period of time.
It doesn’t take long for trouble to begin. The local community is headed
by a tough man referred to as the Chairman (native star
Fazlar Rahman Babu), who resents Rudro for his influence over the
children, who divert their attention from the Chairman’s life lessons to
spending time creating with Rudro. The Chairman and Rudro have their
equivalent of the first meeting between Bruce Greenwood and Ian Holm’s
characters in The Sweet Hereafter, in which the fiercely conservative village leader makes it clear that
his people aren’t just some bumpkins who Rudro can put the big city
hustle on. He states that Rudro’s artwork is impermissible because it
represents idolatry, one of the biggest sins in Islam.
Rudro can handle the polarising reception to his artwork but is more
distraught about the environmental concerns plaguing the village. Due to
climate change, the flux of ilish fish threatens the community’s
survival, for they have few other ways to obtain food. The dichotomy
between humans and nature in conservation practises is a topic deftly
explored in the documentaries
The Islands and the Whales and
Of Fish and Foe. Those documentaries saw such village people pitted against human
rights activists, who were typically from cities and therefore quite
ignorant to the fact that such citizens didn’t have access to the same
resources.
In The Salt in Our Waters, the judgements on an insular lifestyle are a little more nuanced, at
least. When things go wrong, it’s seen by some villagers as the curse of
Rudro, whereas the artist himself believes it’s just the course of
nature. It just takes one good - or bad - day for either theory to be
disproved in the eyes of everyone. Only one thing is palpable throughout
the wars between the Chairman’s hive mind and Rudro’s global warming
preachments and that’s that the weather cycle has no prejudices or
preferences towards anyone. While I think the filmmaker is on Rudro’s
side, I’m convinced that there’s a broader political implication
regarding the subcontinental fishing industry that unfortunately isn’t
given room to explore.
It all makes for immersive drama, anchored by the gripping performances
of the cast and a naturalistic approach to filming by cinematographer
Chananun Chotrungroj, who affords to give a day off to filters
because nature does all the heavy lifting. The filmmaker’s writing is
sturdy and pointed, and he’s written three intriguing characters in the
protagonist, the Chairman, and the latter’s daughter Tuni (Tasnova Tamanna). The quietest person in the male-dominated sphere, Tuni’s persona is
effectively brought to the foreground when Rudro takes residence, as she
falls in love with him but understands the distance needed to be kept.
She expresses her history and her hopes fairly easily to Rudro, though
she also warns him that she will not be just another subject of his
sculpting desires.
The odyssey of Rudro and the fishermen gives into the occasional
storytelling cliché but to have created a fascinating drama rooted in a
deep cultural context, and to thoughtfully consider the big questions
around the traditions of the old world versus the concerns of the new
world, feels like a breakthrough moment for this emerging filmmaker.
The Salt in Our Waters played as
part of the BFI London Film Festival 2020.
