Deep Jwele Jaai

Plot

This is a story of a nurse in a psychiatric hospital, played by Suchitra Sen. Sen's character is a part of a team exploring new therapy for patients who have suffered emotional trauma. The approach taken by the team is to offer these individuals an emotional resort, which is where Sen's character plays her part. Her role is to act as a friend and a lover for the patient, but at the same time, refrain from any emotional involvement on her own part as her role is purely that of a nurse who is helping the patient recover. She has to repeatedly break the emotional attachments that she experiences because as a nurse, she is a part of therapy.

The movie looks at the neglected emotional trauma of this nurse who is used merely as a tool in the whole process of therapy. The movie ends by showing that the Sen is being admitted to the same ward where she used to be a nurse. The last words in the movie are uttered by Sen, who whispers out "I wasn't acting, I couldn't" indicating that she indeed fell in love with her patient! Also cast among others, were Pahari Sanyal, who plays a veteran doctor eager to explore new grounds, but hesitant of the human costs. Basanta Chowdhury plays as an artist and a lover-scorned.

The music was directed by Hemanta Kumar Mukherjee, and one of the songs, "Ei raat tomar amar" (This night's just for you and me) has come to be regarded as one of the greatest and sensuous love song ever sung in Bengali.

Deep Jwele Jaai was made when cinema was mostly shot in Black-and-White. Jyoti Laha and Anil Gupta’s cinematography reveals a beautiful encapsulation of this technical mode that generates an ideal balancing act between Suchitra Sen’s magnificent close-ups and the shot-breaks that span everything from very slow panning shots to silhouetted shots to shots taken in semi-darkness, to long-angle shots and even an overhead crane shot in the opening frame of the film. Some shots show Suchitra Sen in backlight with the halo her screen image was famous for.

There is one moving scene where she imagines herself with a bindi, in a coloured sari and jewellery. Bijoy Bose’s art direction and Tarun Dutta’s editing offer solid complement to the rest. Deep Jwele Jaai has survived the onslaughts of time, technology and evolution to remain one of the best films directed by Asit Sen marking Suchitra Sen in one of her unforgettable performances in a heroine-oriented film.

Deep Jele Jai belongs to a phase in Suchitra Sen’s career where she made her powerful presence felt without her constant screen companion Uttam Kumar. The film was a box office hit without a romantic hero and the first word of praise came from her one and only closest friend Uttam Kumar, who sent a brochure on which he wrote "Roma's individual victory". It is a tender love story set against the backdrop of a psychiatric nursing home. It is perhaps one major film with a female protagonist did not offer a feminist slant on the film, the story or the character.

Cast

Crew

Remakes

However the Bengali version was successful only in cities in Bengal and a failure in rural areas. Impressed by the storyline, producer Vuppunuthula Purushotham Reddy and director G. Ramineedu remade the Bengali film into Chivaraku Migiledi in Telugu starring Savitri which was a blockbuster. The director Asit Sen would later remake the film in Hindi as "Khamoshi" (Silence) (1969), starring Waheeda Rehman, Rajesh Khanna and Dharmendra in a guest role.

In 1986 Priyadarshan drew inspiration from the English novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and the above 3 films and made Malayalam film Thalavattam. It was remade in Hindi as Kyon Ki in 2005 starring Salman Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Rimi Sen, Jackie Shroff and Om Puri.