sid-47

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.

I was pleasantly surprised to see this movie, as I did it not expecting something more than a run-of-the-mill social. It has one of those rare things in movies, which without revealing to the reader I cannot describe in much detail except to say that it surprises you almost half way into the movie ( when most movies pack the major moments into the first quarter or the last ).

There is also some great music in this movie, of a kind rarely seen in Bangla films, including a live concert with violins, flute and piano.

Great acting by Priyanka Sarkar in a difficult role ( difficult because it did not have any great dramatic moments or demands ). Supporting cast was competent though I felt Indraneil Dasgupta could have portrayed his sense of absurdity and otherworld-ness a bit better.

Camera work in widescreen was top class for a Bangla film, and the director must be recommended for not allowing the story to slip, though at times it could have.

All in all, a very nice movie which many people may stop watching somewhere in the first 20 minutes as I almost did. It will reward you after that.

The movie is about a idol theft from the house of a old-time Benares family. Feluda, who is in Benares on holiday with his cousin and assistant Topshe and the inimitable Jatayu, is asked to help find the thief. The story moves along at a fast clip from the opening scenes when we see the holidaying trio arrive in rickshaws, with Jatayu having to constantly raise his folded hands to his forehead as they pass one temple after another. Ray is a master at showing the timeless beauty of this ancient city with its ghats, bazaars, havelis and gallis, and leverages this to the fullest to transform a mundane whodunit with a twist into a moody, sensuous, intensely funny and hauntingly musical piece of cinema which transcends its humble subject matter, but still delivers a darkly dreadful murder scene!