Subarnarekha tells of the dramatic life of Bengali refugees near Calcutta in the aftermath of the Partition of Bengal in 1947. Born an orphan, Sita is brought up by her elder brother Ishwar. As the story unfolds, Sita is forced to take up prostitution. By a strange twist of fate, she is one day confronted by the reality of her drunk brother turning up at her brothel as her client. “To Ritwik Ghatak, cinema was medium he chose not for the simple love for film, but more because he realized its power in communicating to the millions in India. However, his conscious cinematic style shows an understanding of the medium which could showcase the Bengali waters and wide, open spaces Ghatak so loved. Nature was brought to life with Ghatak's use of wide angle shots. Deep focus photography, the placing of characters within the frame, the mise en scene with its novel use of space and volume, the variations in the pitch and tone of the soundtrack used to such controlled effect to counterpoint, no harmonise with the image, are essential trademarks of Ghatak. Most of all his films focused on the problems that confronted those turned into refugees by external events. His own family was driven out of East Pakistan when the Partition of India divided Bengal into two. The sense of loss and uprooting he experienced influences most of his work.
“... The film depicts its archetypal image that has been haunting us from a remote past and that is today confronting us all over the world. You may call it by many names: the Hydrogen Bomb, or Strategic Air Comman or De Gaulle or Adenauer, or some other name you would not like to mention. It is the power of Anniihilation, the ability to destroy.”
Ritwik Ghatak Retrospective. Cinemaya The Asian Film Quarterly. 35 (1), 62-63, (1997).