Nishijapon

One of the fewer works of Sandip Ray outside his father's shadow. He excels in adapting Narayan Gangopadhyay's work with promise. The ensemble is great and so is their performances.

Think theatrical for this one. Six friends and relatives are isolated in country house. They bicker, they matchmake, they fall in love, they have tea, they read or sing, they bicker again. Great acting, and well shot and edited, and there's some nice relationship friction. Though everything is taken a little too far, theatrical rather than realistic. And it's all a bit trivial, I'm afraid, like light theatricals. Then something goes wrong, and they argue more seriously as nerves break and relationships are put under strain. But, it's still six characters isolated in a country house. One can think of analogies: Agatha Christie's And then there were none, but the tension here is somewhat lacking. Everyone is basically nice and one never feels anyone is in very much danger, except through their own foolishness. That being the case, the point of the thing is a little unclear - not comedy, not romance, not slice of life, not really much of a drama. If you focus on the acting, you'll probably find it enjoyable enough.

Ray excellently tells Narayan Gangopadhyay's story about 6 characters alienated in a mountain forest after an earthquake (or landslide). The characters include Das (Soumitra Chatterjee), his two sons (Sabyasachi Chakravarthy) and (Parambrata Chatterjee), his friend (Dipankar Dey), his daughter in law (Rituporna Sengupta) and her sister (Raima Sen). He cleverly directs and involves both the settings and characters in creating the mood and feel of isolation with minimum use of special effects.

'Nishijapon'(the end of night) can be classified both as a psychological drama and psychological thriller. All seems to go well between the characters in the beginning until the earthquake. From then on, things start to change and secrets are unraveled.

Next to a coherent screenplay and brilliant direction, all actors have given strong performances. Sengupta is amazing. She displays the transformation in her character with ease. Both the Chatterjee's and Dey are brilliant. Sen is superb. Chakravarty is adequate.

All in all, this is a fine thriller/drama that will keep many engaged and it's worth the hours spent.

Sandeep Ray's movie Nishijapon reminds me of his father, the great Satyajit Ray. The direction, the dialogs and screenplay are on par with late Ray Senior.

The story revolves around a small family and friend get together in Darjeeling. After carefully character development in first half hour and so, what happens next is complex human natures displayed perfectly.

The performance from Sabyasachi and Rituparna are exceptional. Dipankar and Saumitra are already masters in these type of roles - so no complain there. Raima and Parambrata had given a solid performance.

The pace of the movie is perfect. Although I wanted at least 10 minutes more in the end.

Anyway, hats off to Sandeep for a great work.

The singular most dominant feel that I had after watching this movie is that this is a tailor-made script for use by Senior Ray's true successor, not his biologic one. Sandip Ray has taken a keen interest in his father's profession and learnt the trade from quite a young age assisting him in various aspects of his late movies, but that is where it all stops. You can learn as much as you can, but you have to have the gift, the magic touch, to match your legendary father which I find always missing in his movies. And there comes Rituparno Ghosh, who could have handled this story by Narayan Gangopadhyay much better and could give it a treatment as good as Satyajit Ray. Sandip tried everything in it, but that magic just has to be created by the director himself, I guess, no matter how good everything else is. A 6/10, a fine story which could have been better told...