It angers me that Hollywood is seen as a template for cinema
Joydeep Sen Gupta
Veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah speaks on working with the late Soumitra Chatterjee
Two thespians Soumitra Chatterjee and Naseeruddin Shah came together on celluloid for the first and the last time in Saibal Mitra’s Debotaar Grash, or A Holy Conspiracy, a bi-lingual courtroom drama, in Bengali and English, and an adaptation of the play, Inherit the Wind, by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee.
Made into a film, which was directed by Stanley Kramer, starring Spencer Tracy, in 1960, Inherit the Wind is a parable that fictionalises the 1925 Scopes “Monkey” trial as a means to discuss McCarthyism in the United States. It was written in response to the chilling effect of the McCarthy era investigations on intellectual discourse. And the echoes of the Monkey trial are evocatively captured in A Holy Conspiracy, which reflects the harsh ground realities and home truths of contem