Palatak is another Indian musical melodrama, in the old style of Bollywood. Based on a story by Manoje Basu, adapted by Tarun Majumdar, who also directs, together with Dilip and Sachin Mukherjee, under the collective pseudonymous of Yatrik. The film had a significant success, receiving awards for best actor, Anup Kumar, and best actor second, Ruma Guha Thakurta.
Spoken in Bengali, constitutes today a classic of the cinema of the region.
It deals with the story of a second son, rich and beloved, from a Brahmin family, who does not want to assume the responsibilities of his social position and decides to wander the world, almost like a vagabond, in search of experiences and knowledge. I say, almost like a vagabond, because, although he has no shame in sleeping under a tree, in a stable, or of joining a troupe of musicians and fairground ballerinas, he is not only always well provided with money, for any need, as he does not hesitate to use his caste and family name to be accepted, wherever he passes, even showing arrogance, frequently, with the ones that help him, and he treats as "inferior".
Palatak, which could be translated as a fugitive errant, is precisely a kind of anti-hero, who exchanged wealth for freedom, only to discover, at last, that what he always sought was within reach, almost without leaving his home. It was just the comfort and love of establishing one's own family.
The story is moralistic, but the character is complex and well-interpreted by Anup Kumar, giving the film a picturesque and socially colorful (despite being a black and white movie) vision of a remote and traditionalist India, strongly marked by social divisions, caused by the system of castes.
