A River Called Titas (1973)
There's a particular kind of admiration you can have for a film that sits completely apart from actually enjoying it. That tension is exactly where I spent most of my time with Ritwik Ghatak's A River Called Titas, a film I watched as part of my World Movie Cup challenge. It's apparently the most celebrated film to come out of Bangladesh, and watching it, you can absolutely understand why. You can also understand why I spent a fair portion of it checking the runtime.
What Ghatak has made here is something genuinely rare: a piece of cinema so deeply in love with its subject that you can feel the director's heart beating behind every frame. The titular river isn't a backdrop. It's the lifeblood of the communities living along its banks, the fishermen and their families who depend on it, celebrate beside it, grieve beside it, and slowly lose everything to it. There's a real passion driving this film, a desperate, aching need to preserve a culture and a way of life that was already slipping away. That urgency is palpable, and it gives the film enormous weight and dignity.
And when it clicks, it's genuinely beautiful. The acting is deep and grounded, rooted in something that feels lived-in rather than performed. Ghatak frames his shots with a painter's eye, finding the sweeping melancholy of the water and the quiet dignity of the people navigating it. You look at the screen and you know you're watching a master pouring himself out. This is proper art-house cinema, the kind that demands your respect and earns it through craft and commitment rather than spectacle.
But here's the rub, and it's a significant one: the pacing is glacial. I mean properly, punishingly slow. I can absolutely get behind a slow burn when the film earns it, when the stillness accumulates into something that hits you like a wave. There are moments here where that happens. But there are also long stretches where the narrative simply drifts, much like the river itself, and it tests your patience to the limit. Admiring the craft and actually enjoying the ride turned out to be two very different things for me, and I'll be honest about that rather than pretend otherwise.
It's a strange position to be in. I respect this film enormously. I can recognise what Ghatak achieved, the emotional honesty, the cultural urgency, the sheer quality of the filmmaking on display. But respect doesn't equal enjoyment, and for long passages I found myself waiting for the story to find its momentum rather than surrendering to it. That disconnect matters when you're sitting with a film for this kind of runtime.
I've been exploring Bangladeshi cinema through the World Movie Cup, and it's been a fascinating corner of the world to visit. I loved The Padma Boatman (1993), which shares some of that same river-community spirit but hit me in a much more immediate way. If you're curious about this world, I'd suggest checking out my thoughts on Dhanmalhi (1993) too, as another angle on what Bangladeshi cinema can do.
A River Called Titas is a monumental, deeply passionate piece of work that I'm genuinely glad I've seen. The craft is undeniable, the emotions are real, and Ghatak's vision is crystal clear throughout. For hardcore cinephiles and fans of world cinema, it's an essential watch, and I'd recommend it without hesitation to the right audience. But it's not one I'll be rushing back to. Three and a half stars.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 1973 | Watched: 2026-06-09
Where to watch
Watch in the US
Stream: Criterion Channel
Physical: Amazon US
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