Akaler Sandhane

Just adding what I inferred as the message of the movie (Caveat: I am not an avid film buff and see very few movies in a year. So my interest and exposure to films is limited. This may be considered before the reader takes any of my ratings/comments/reviews seriously. Given this rider, I am open to correction anytime by anyone.)

The film tries to convey the message that there is often thin and blurred line between fiction and reality.

In the movie, the villagers fear that playing the role of a 'fallen woman' would make a woman a 'fallen woman' in the eyes of society (the villagers).

Similarly the film crew is insensitive to the villagers need and does not think it is creating a 'famine' by taking away the village produce for its own extravagant consumption.

Sen's best. People would say socialist, or may be communist, but this is one of the best humanitarian treatment any director can use to his own film. This is almost like 'Fight Club' by David Finch or any work by Nabarun Bhattacharya. First of all, this movie is a great, great movie - both technically and plot wise. I am little bit afraid as the next thing might be spoilery. This film is about a director, his cast and crew going to a remote village to shoot an enactment of the famine of Bengal from '43. This film has been an inspiration for other filmmakers for making the films of this style. With the awesome star cast, for real, this even can be called a movie. Along with that, this film criticises hard about all the different perspective of a man for an film. Even for liberal ones, specially for them. This is one of the best 5 films made in bengali and we can just quote from the film itself as ".. How pure must a person be to depict.."

St want to say shortly that this kind of flim are those types which should have won oscar at the academy awards

"Cut!, Cut!, Cut!, Cut!" One of the remarkable scenes of the movie is a group of village boys running after the film crew bus shouting and mocking the way the director officially ends a shot. It is apparently, not much and only a 5 sec shot. However, 5 sec is long enough for people like Mrinal Sen to turn an innocent childish errant into much more purposeful. The word symbolically sharply demarcates between what is it in the movie and what is in the reality. The film crew was shooting famine which should have ended with the utterance of "cut" yet it leaks into the other side of the camera even though half century has passed since then and India supposedly progressed a lot. It is a slap and a mockery on the failure of the system done in the most subtle way. If a 5 sec shot can communicate all these, then think of what the full movie can do?

Famine is not about lack of food but it also about lack of morality rather the breakdown of values. Famine unleashes the dormant opportunist in the most corrupt and bigot way. Yet amongst such devastation there could be island, there could be people who despite of the hardship can still be empathetic, can still be humane. The movie is reap with many such examples. That's the reason it is a humanistic movie as Mrinal Sen himself is humanistic intellectual.

Unlike his contemporaries, his movies often end without a definite answer and leave the audience guessing. It is a bold experimentation to deliver a scratching message. The striking characteristic of "Akaler Sandhaney" is also that the making of the movie itself and the process of story telling is done in the most informal way. To the audience it it is more a like documentary capturing a set of unrelated events that happened to a film crew than a a feature film itself. His movies is mainly a feast for the mind, appealing and engrossing to your intellect and less so to your senses.

It has an additional value that it is only handful of movies that reminds us of the 1943 Bengal famine where 5 million people just perished due to lack of food (as mentioned in this movie itself)

Dhirtiman, Smita Patil and Rajen Torofdar (Himself a great director) all deserve special mention without which this review will be incomplete.

A must for the film school

"In Search of Famine" is the award winning story of a film crew shooting a feature in a Bengali Village on a devastating famine which killed five million people in 1943. The crew appear impervious to the poverty surrounding it.

This Movie one of the best movie by Mrinal Sen. We are really Miss Our Pride Mrinal Sen. He is such a good Director. His every movie have life, nature, country, love and Actual Life. He is a soil man. As a Bangladeshi I want to say one Line. Without Mrinal Sen our Bengal Culture Nothing. He is part of our Culture. Really he is a great person. He is asuch a good person.