Why ‘Hawa’ reminded me of Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’

Like most other viewers anticipating the release of Hawa (2022), I stepped into the movie theatre at Shimanto Shombhar with a box full of pop-corn and a large cola, eagerly waiting for the delight that was to come—absolutely ignorant of the hidden treat that the film has in store for poetry lovers. 

With every scene, I started to realise how Mejbaur Rahman Sumon, the director of the film, has beautifully picked up elements from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's longest major poem, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", first published in his and Wordsworth's poetry collection Lyrical Ballads (1798). 

The boatmen's merriment 

The "bright-eyed Mariner" in Coleridge's poem starts off with a positive outlook quite similar to the excitement and passion we see in Chan Majhi (played by Chanchal Chowdhury) in Hawa's initial scenes. The fishermen, in the beginning of the movie, are preparing for their fishing voyage to an unknown destination. 

The song "Shada Shada Kala Kala" seems almost like a visual rendition of "the merry minstrelsy" that breaks out in front of the bride as red as a rose. Each rhyme projects the authenticity of its respective folk culture, depicted in the visuals, the reverberations of local instruments and, in the case of the Bangla song, a voice that radiates the essence of Bengali folk tunes. 

Birds, myth, and mirage 

While shooting the albatross dead brings about huge misfortune for the Mariner, Chan Majhi—in a scene that has brought much legal and media attention to the film—is also seen to imprison and kill a shalik bird in Hawa. 

In "Rime", the myth of the albatross tells us that the bird is a seaman's friend. Killing it will bring upon a curse.  From the moment the poem sets this curse in motion, all that appears before the Mariner is the illusion of land. 

In Hawa, with fear and anxiety clouding their sense of judgement, the boatmen, Urkes (Shohel Mondol) and Parkes (played by Rizvi Rizu), become similarly confused between reality and mirage. 

The men begin blaming Gulti (Nazifa Tushi) for the mishaps, incapable of disbelieving the widely-held myth of women bringing bad luck to fishermen if they accompany them to the sea. Gulti is no albatross, but she is flighty and resilient in a way that the shalik fails to be. 

And as the film progresses, she begins to resemble the mystery woman, "white as leprosy", who soon comes to the Mariner as the symbol of death. 

Just as the Ghost ship's woman's red lips symbolise the theme of death, Gulti's red sharee, draped around herself and around the boat throughout the film, foreshadows the violence that awaits Chan Majhi and his fishermen. 

"Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink"

Towards the end of the film, there comes a time when Chan Majhi is stuck with Nagu (Nasir Uddin Khan) and they have just a cup of drinking water left, despite being surrounded by a limitless horizon of salty, undrinkable water from the sea. 

Chan Majhi has, by now, in a way similar to the deaths blamed upon the Mariner, been seen with blood in his hands—the literal blood of men from his boat, the figurative blood of a past crime that he has committed. 

Chan Majhi's "black lips baked", the tired eyes, the rugged clothes—all seem like a direct cinematic representation of the Mariner and his crew's "parched" and "unslaked" throats in a boat "plagued" by the spirits of the ones he killed, only adding to his loneliness and helplessness.

There is no doubt that Hawa will stand strong in its viewers' minds for its unique narrative style and for projecting simplicity in its most brilliant cinematography. But its underlying treat for bookworms and poetry lovers lies in these literary allusions. If you are a reader of Romantic poetry, Hawa bears omnipresent similarities with "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and a host of other, well loved, books.