Padatik ( The Guerrilla Fighter )

Padatik is the final film in Mrinal Sen's Calcutta trilogy , Interview  and Calcutta '71  being the other two, films which are deeply rooted in the social, cultural and political atmosphere of the city of Calcutta , which the film's beginning  describes as "an intimidating and infernal city, unredeemed and probably doomed", during the period . 

Sumit (Dhritiman Chatterjee ) , a member of an extremist left-wing party ,escapes from police custody.  He gets refuge in the high-rise apartment of Shilpi Mitra (Simi Garewal), a divorcee, who is an executive in an advertising agency .  Isolated in his own comfortable refuge, he begins to question the actions of his party and it's consequences and also develops a friendship with Shilpi.  Padatik is Sen's cinematic critique of the excesses of the extreme left.  It was made in the time when the violent left-wing movement (naxalism) was losing it's steam under the tremendous attack of the Indian state and ideological conflicts among the various sections.  The isolation of the extreme left is nicely portrayed in Padatik when a scene consisting of a montage of a political rally is juxtaposed with a scene showing Nikhilda ( Jocchon Dostidar ) ,  the chief leader of the extremist party ,working alone in an underground press writing solid prose about the demerits of the bourgeois educational system.  Even here Nikhilda behaves like a petty 
autocrat with the workers of the press ,  thus betraying his failure to unite with the working class despite his self-proclaimed  "identification with the proletariat".  

Sen was heavily influenced by Jean-Luc-Godard.  The influence of Godard in Padatik extends not only in the overall narrative framework but also in the long use of hand-held camera , on location shooting  and freeze frames ,  all of which prevent the build-up of melodrama and force the audience to get involved not with the characters but with the contention of the film.  Most of the characters of the film are deliberately made devoid of any subjectivity , including the protagonist, with all his memories of family and his conflicts with his freedom fighter father , remains a typical example of  the Bengali middle class youth .  The only exception is Shilpi Mitra.  The film exposes her psychological and emotional vulnerabilities that hide beneath her cool appearance.  The film  generated a lot of flak from both the rightist forces and the Marxist ideologues of all shades after its release.  Sen, in a later interview, would defend himself from the attack of the Marxists by quoting the Italian Marxist  Elio Vittorini who once said, "The problem with orthodox Marxists is that they always feel they have pocketed the truth; the point is not to pocket the truth, but to chase it, to run after it." Though this is far from being a milestone but no denying that it's an important film.