Chander Pahar

The film brought back the memories of watching Life of Pi. This is a memorable journey of a single man through the wilderness of Africa, from death to life. 90% of the film is very high quality; the quality falling only at two points, the cg depiction of the volcano and the Bunyip monster, which I feel could have been better had the filmmakers got more post production time before release. For the same reason, though there are 5 languages used in the film, it has no subtitles. Overall, the film is a feast of spectacular visuals and stunts. The film has an universal appeal; even a person with no knowledge of Bengali language can watch the film, because there are few dialogs in the entire movie. The film has that element that makes you crave to come back to watch once more.

Chander Pahar: The Movie

Huge disappointment. Way worse than expected.

The movie started out good with great visuals, direction, cinematography. The first half was somewhat good. Dev was actually pretty good then. VFX wasn't that good, but not bad either.

Then arrived the second half. Oh my god. It was total down slope then onwards. The acting, the dialogues, the direction, everything came crashing down. And then it was actually just another Indian movie hopelessly trying to level with Hollywood.

And the VFX. They were terrible. They used unnecessary VFX, and very poorly executed ones. I mean, why spend 2.5 crores for making scenes which were never even in the book, and make them look horrible? Why couldn't they just show what little was there in the book, and make them look good?

And why did they show Bunyip? It wasn't even there in the book even. If they stuck with the book, we wouldn't have had to see the horrible 3D avatar of Bunyip. The volcano scene, too, was as bad.

And Dev's acting. It started out good, ended kinda good, but the middle part was worse than we expected.

The real winner in this movie was the cinematography. Yes, the teleportation to Africa did happen. And it was amazing.

However, they did put a lot of effort & dedication in the movie, and it showed. It might not turn out to be a modern day classic, but it will definitely be remembered for many years to come. And not just for good reasons.

3/5

Disappointing. What could've been one of the best entries in the genre of adventure cinema, that's not too well populated by movies made in the Indian studios, is marred by sloppy set-up/acting/directing/screenplay/editing, (really, really) shoddy CGI (Desert, Volcano, Bunyip.....) and everyone line-reading to one another. The actor who plays Diego (Gérard Rudolf) rises above the general mediocrity, but the main lead only remembers to stay in character right at the very end (about 15 minutes prior to curtains). The (rather unnecessary) voice-over narration also is a huge diversion, and was the root of plenty of unintentional humor, as was the lead's tendency to keep smiling at some private joke only he was privy to, almost throughout the movie's running time.

+s I can think of - a bold entry in a relatively new genre, noble intentions, lack of musical diversions, Gérard Rudolf's acting, (some of the) cinematography.

A missed chance, a lost opportunity. I do hope it doesn't put filmmakers off adventure fare though.

Another thing - lots of reviewers seem to be showering this with platitudes just for the intention, and are looking past the end product. It's nice to seem/sound encouraging, but I do wish the right talent had the chance to play with such budgets.

After the brilliant Meghey Dhaka Tara, director Kamaleshwar Mukherjee has pulled off another masterpiece. At this point in time, I regard him as the best current Bengali director, a couple of notches above Srijit Mukherjee.

I know this is not a fashionable opinion I hold. I almost did not watch this movie after reading some reviews on certain Bengali movie websites. I realize now that I should not have taken those reviews seriously, since they reflected a typically strange attitude - that Dev cannot act. First of all, I think Dev acted wonderfully in this movie. Second, this movie is not only about Dev - that would make it more like a 3rd class Hindi movie which has no substance but the cheap pull of its leading man. That would be a insult to a director of Mukherjee's calibre.

I don't want to reveal too much about this movie - so I wont go into details. I would request people to watch this movie - and make up their own minds. Let me put it simply, without revealing too much.

I will compare it to 2 recent movies which received better reviews - Satyanweshi by Rituparno Ghosh and Mishar Rahashyo by Srijit. In both those movies, I fell asleep at various points - especially in the turgid effort by Srijit with its high faluting moralizing and lack of pace and punch. In this movie, I was drawn to the action from start to end - the pace never slackened, the next event never became apparent, and the story never dulled.

Proloy was another great movie made recently - but this is the best Bengali movie of 2013.

The story is good and has been around for a long time. However, the way it was adapted for the movie leaves a lot to be desired. An action/adventure movie needs to be fast paced...this one is anything but...

Some of the landscape shots in Africa are nice but most leaves a lot to be desired...the night shots are horrible most of time...the African tribes don't seem authentic...and although I am not an expert on this myself the tribal dance and customs seem a bit unrealistic...

Now for the acting...the lead actor just doesn't know how to act...I have known him to be a successful commercial actor in Bengali movies and am really amazed at the lack of skills....no expression...no dialogue delivery....Some of the other actors were a bit better..however there was no on screen chemistry between them...nor did we see the lead character grow up...

overall the only saving grace is that the movie tries to do something in a genre which is slightly uncommon in Bengali movies...