突然有一天 (1989)

A retired professor, Lagoo, suddenly disappears one day. His family is worried especially when he doesn’t return after months, and then years. His wife, children and friends, then try to remember him through reconstructed memory, providing the film’s flashback structure. Some critics saw this as Mrinal Sen’s most personal film. As Sen said: “Life didn’t stop even for a moment. It carried on. But his family – his wife, his children – keep looking back, into the past. Each constantly reconstructs the man in their own minds, aided by fragments of memory. That man and I, that man and you, that man and the rest of us…one among many. “…Believe me, irrespective of who you are and how talented you may be, you are possessed of mediocrity. The minute you are conscious of this within you, your ‘crisis’ deepens. This is the thought that prompted the film. And perhaps the greatest tragedy in man’s life is that he has only that one life.” Winner Best Supporting Actress, President’s Award, India, 1989