but-then-perhaps

This is an extraordinary film, and that would be saying less. It is about the life of a foley artist Tarak (Ritwick Chakraborty), who is so absorbed in his work, that all the sounds that he hears are ambient, background sounds, and misses out on a lot of what people talk. This leads to a case of what people understand as a severe case of inattention and loss of contact with the "real" world. And by the mundane societal normative standards he is a "patient" who needs to be treated to get back to "normal".

This is where you start feeling extremely angry with society and feel one with Tarak when he smashes a studio mike in anger. Yes, like Tarak, I wanted to scream, that he is absolutely fine. There is nothing wrong with him. Just because he is more attuned to sounds that others who spend their lives listening to the rabble of unmeaning conversations cannot hear, you cannot brand him as abnormal or ill. Ritwick Chakraborty makes Tarak come alive. He keeps you riveted and draws you in enough to actually care for this unheard of artist. In his ordinariness of everyday life and his genius of perceiving the tiniest of sounds, including the sound of light, he is more than words could describe. He becomes the reason why you watch the film.

As for the direction-it is good, very good. The cinematography is apt.There is a dream sequence on the beach which deserves special mention.

The supporting cast including Srijit, Raima, Churni and Victor are good-but just that. Placed in comparison to Ritwick, their inability to rise from adequate actors to awesome ones stand out glaringly. Raima is just a wife, but, unlike Tarak who totally internalizes the walk, look, talk of an otherwise very middle class, suburban man, she fails to become the very ordinary wife. Her urbanness stands out too much. Churni and Victor fail to make their conversation scenes from falling into a sense of monotony. You start wishing that their scene will get over soon. The last scene is one of the memorable scenes that you will take back with you. It'll be there, haunting you. And it'll probably come back to you when you want to brand someone who doesn't conform to the societal standards of normalcy, ill. That is how everyday all the potentiality that could lead to enhanced sensitivity is killed by the insensitive bland commonplace society.

It's rather hard to describe this film. It plays out like a comedy and a thriller but is a psychological drama. Parodies of popular Bengali films and ads abound. The concept is rather different and will take some time to sink in. Animated sequences are liberally used along with real ones. Some of it is downright silly or hilarious. But the film keeps you guessing till the end. It has a very contemporary issue at its heart-the culture of judging people by their weight and always feeling somehow incomplete till you've reached that elusive supermodel body. Subconsciously, we as a society and as individuals are always pressurizing ourselves and others needlessly to achieve that perfect weight. In the process we forget to think of a person as an individual with unique qualities that make them so different from others. The films take on this is serious and funny and a little scary all together. Acting is good, but Raima could have done better maybe. This is not a movie to watch with subtitles. It is too mired in the Bong culture that we grew up with and one needs the background to appreciate or follow a lot of the dialogues and puns. Kudos to the team for such a different film.