Moner Manush

I haven't seen such an amazing interpretation about the falsity of society through the view of Lalon Fakir. Someday he'll be the greatest Bangali of all time. This cult is above all the politics & religion. This war for truth will be on and on... & this quest of freedom should be every man's heartiest desire in life.

Gautam Ghosh usually makes films that you can enjoy with the heart. Moner Manush is also one of them. The movie tells us about the story of a Sufi-Singer Lalon aka Lalon Fakir. His poems are usually called "Lalon-Giti". Both the starting and the finishing are awesome, regarding, as the whole movie is in between! Prosenjit as Lalon acted superb. There is a mix of Bangladeshi and Indian actors and actresses in the movie that eventually tells us the whole point, as songs are not only with any land or any region rather it is for the universe, the planet and the whole wide globe. The movie might seem a bit slow. The songs are well sung according to me. But the truth is you'll never know when it's going to end. So, just watch the movie and see it for yourself.

Gautam ghose did an amazing job in directing, doing the cinematography and moreover by writing the wonderful script of MONER MANUSH. It is an incredible story telling through celluloid. I will recommend everybody to see this movie. The songs of Lalon Fakir & their philosophy are immortal always and a true justice to them has been done in this film. The eternal quest for self is so inevitable for everyone and we do not realize that. Moner Manush seems to inculcate this through the vision of Lalon with accurate delineation. Capturing the time of this legend is another forte of Mr. Ghose. The social turbulence and narrow cast system of then was portrayed properly. How a man without any education is teaching the society the futile notion of cast system through his songs & philosophy is amazing.

It is a very difficult task to capture life and philosophy of a character like Lalon fakir in couple of hours of celluloid time. Gautom Ghose took that challenge and did a commendable job in capturing not only Lalon fakir's character but also essence of Baul culture in "Moner Manush". Cinematography is lyrical, bringing the best of rural Bengal. Presence of only minimum necessary numbers of characters in scenes gives a sense of serenity which helps to focus more on main characters of story. Presenting the Baul songs in Gayaki style blended well with overall ambiance of the movie. Except the title "Hey o re hey o" which seems out of place and unnecessary. The voice of Laitf Shah is quite in discord with Prasenjit's voice but the protagonist does well to express songs with his acting to divert viewers' attention from the mismatch of voice.

Asad, Prasenjit and Chanchal have excelled in acting. In the first half of the movie, while navigating through Lalon's childhood, screenplay is very weak and jumpy. Other than Asad and on some occasions young Lalon, most actors from first half of the movie are very ordinary. It is disheartening to see veterans like Hasan Imam, Laila Hasan can not get in to their characters. It is as much a weakness of actors as of the director. In the second half of the movie screenplay gets more compact and acting gets better which make up more than enough for the weakness in the first half. Quality of makeup was also found wanting.

Overall it is a very good movie. Even after weeks of watching it keeps echoing inside.

One of the best performance by Prosenjit in his career and such a wonderful experience seeing this movie worth watch it again. Specially the immortal songs of Lalon became more beautiful with great visual storytelling by goutom ghosh..I never seen such a movie with everything so perfectly presented..Be it the narrative or music and specially the acting was just superb and brilliant as well as the originality of the story and philosophy of the legend folk Lalon Fakir..I think that this film should always be remembered as a major benchmark in the history of bengali cinema in visual storytelling.