Joi Baba Felunath

It's another masterpiece from Satyajit & Saumitra combo...2nd making of detective feluda series...

With very little frills, the story is more than wonderful. The characters of Feluda, Topesh and Jatayu have been vividly portrayed and Utpal Dutt played his role just too well. The alternate humorous and serious scenes kept up the goodness of the story.

A point worth noting is the intelligent way of revealing the mystery at the end of the story which did not appear throughout the film. There was no main mystery and the watchers knew from the very first scene that Maganlal Meghraj (Utpal Dutt) was the villain. Yet there were shots which were kept unexplained. However, the watchers made no attempt to put they grey matter into work as they, most naturally, assumed those scenes to be insignificant --- a bit of smoke that Meghraj noticed behind the curtains, the hiding of a diamond in Jatayu's story, the Lucknow Station on the radio and a lot more.

The brilliant climax was unexpected and still stands out of the other ordinary films.

Feluda is a Bengali Sherlock Holmes, created by Satyajit Ray himself in 1965, in hugely successful children's books, which had multiple film adaptations, two of them directed by Satyajit Ray himself, Sonar Kella (The Golden Fortress) from 1974 and a sequel, this Joi Baba Felunath (The Elephant God) from 1979, both starring Soumitra Chatterjee, accompanied by his young cousin Tapesh, played by Siddartha Chatterjee and the comic character of the series, the crime novelist Jatayu, played by Santosh Dutta (who was actually a criminal lawyer).

Feluda is an institution of Bengali culture and Indian children's literature.

Sandip Ray, Satyajit's son, kept the series successful, making dozens of films for cinema and television. The character also originated an animated film in 2010, several radio series, since the 80s, comics, internet series, music and documentaries.

In this film, Satyajit Ray shows a more playful side, both in terms of script and set of characters, far from the realistic drama that made him famous in the West, but which is nonetheless exemplary and had a tremendous influence. A true icon of Indian culture, particularly of the Bengali community.

The way Satyajit played with light and shadow is a thing of enjoyment! And the folk music he used at perfect moments!

The sequel of 'Sonar Kella'. And much better in art and camera. I mentioned earlier that Ray was an admirer of Benares' geometry and loved shooting there. You will find another set of cooler shots of the alleys of the city, which itself is a metaphor to a detective story. Contrary to the previous film, we will get to know about all the guilts at the end of this movie. And, the best villain played by the great Utpal Dutt. Someone told me West Anderson was inspired by the symmetrical shots here, to use later in his movies.