Rajkahini

Here are my two cents,

1. Not Director's (Srijit Mukherjee) best attempt; I think he does well in crime suspense genre than period genre. His direction shows parts brilliance as a very short simple story line stretches over 2 hours which could have well been within 1.5 hr. There are unnecessary attempt to develop characters of some who are not important for the main story-line. Nonetheless , the primary storyline is a touching one during the country's partition with mixture of fear, anguish, corruption, helplessness, courage and feminism.

2. Camera work great in some long and short shots, boring when continuously showed one half of faces of the two officers (Ilias and Prophullo) over different situations.

3. Acting mostly ordinary, Rituparna(Begam Jaan) tried hard to convince her character especially when she showed her anger on others, sometimes touching the border of melodrama. Rest are average with exception of Saswata(Prophullo), Kaushik(Ilias) and Jishu (Kabir). Why the actors casted for Lord Mountbatten so lackluster, and a British character Radcliff is played by an Indian face acted by an Indian!!!

I have a question why Nigel Akkara is not acting in many films. He is always taking a break between movies. Nigel Akkara we all want to see you more, whatever characters are done by Nigel Akkara always leave a huge impact on the audience.

This is the original Begum Jaan Movie, and and it is MUCH MUCH better than the Hindi Version.

This Original Bengali Version of the Movie, named Rajkahini, has much better acting, much better depth and much better pacing.

It may be a too long in duration but the awesome quality of the movie makes it entertaining nevertheless, for the entire 3 hours!

At the outset the director must be commended for taking on such a bold subject. But it seems he bit more than he could chew. The movie is excellent in patches and absolutely mediocre in the rest.

Apart from the gaping holes in the story and its portrayal, the acting is okay. The movie tries to steamroll its flaws by using a Galaxy of movie stars. Most of the characters are under developed and do not have a backside story. Some characters have no logical explanation about why they do what they do. Ex- Master. Also it is strange to assume that India was filled with rapists through and through.

The movie also generalizes the society of the time and even then fails to capture the essence of it.

The movie as a whole fails to do justice to the subject and you only leave the hall with some scenes, not the entire movie on your mind.

Actions speak louder than words. Nigel Akkara proved this phrase right through this film. I loved the performance of Nigel Akkara. He has played several characters in many films. Each character was unique in it's own way even this is another best performance of Nigel .