Bangla avant-grade director Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s death has affected Mithun Chakraborty profoundly.“As you know I don’t speak to the media at all nowadays. Not because I don’t respect the media. But because I’ve nothing to say. But Buddhadeb Dasgputa’s passing away prodded my memory of working with him.So when you called I had speak to you. I have to tell my film with him Tahader Katha where I played a freedom fighter was a unique learning experience for me,” says Mithunda about the director who seldom approached actors in Mumbai for his cinema.
“With me he knew he could come any time. He had that much confidence in me. I was a superstar in Mumbai when he approached me. There was no money in doing Tahader Katha.I did it for peanuts.We all stayed together in a circuit house in a small town . The charge per room was Rs.6.But there are some films one does for reasons other than money,” says the actor emotionally.
Dwelling on the uniqueness of working with the Maestro,Mithunda said, “He shot his film in a style I have not seen in any other filmmaker. His camera range would include long-shots, mid-shots and closeup sometimes in the same scene so that we were looking at a frame not as cinema but how it looked in life. His use of wide-angle lenses to encompass all the characters and their emotions in one frame was something I never saw again in any filmmaker.”
Sighs Mithunda, “I wish I got to work with Buddhadebda more. But such is life. I’ve always shared a unique relationship with the Bengali masters be it Mrinalda(Sen), Buddhadebda or Rituparno Ghosh. My God!I’ve worked with best of them in Bengal except Satyajit Ray who passed away before I came in. Buddhadebda always said I was a brilliant actor. It was gracious of him to see me as capable of communicating his vision. I won my second National award for best actor for Tahader Katha. I had won my first National award for Mrigayaa which was also directed by a Bengali master Mrinal Sen.”