Televised back in 2015, "Onnyo Basanto" is still fondly remembered and much talked about on social media platforms. I watched it only recently and, surprisingly enough, found it quite underwhelming.
Tannistha (Amrita Chatterjee), engaged to her long-term "friend" Sounak (Rajdeep Gupta), meets the unambitious yet sensitive perfumer/entrepreneur Abhimanyu (Kaushik Roy) and falls for him. She sees glimpses of her father in him. Her father (Kamaleswar Mukherjee), on the verge of getting a "golden handshake" is more of a thinker, with a doer wife (Pallavi Chatterjee) who is clearly the alpha breadwinner. She chastises her husband's life choices quite vocally, and approves of the career-oriented Sounak. Sounak seems to be full of himself, with a clear set of goals and a "selfish" approach towards life. While Tannistha and Abhimanyu grow platonically close, Sounak decides to prepone their marriage so that he can move to Delhi with his newlywed bride to pursue a better career opportunity. What will Tannistha do? Whom would she choose?
Even with a promising start and good performances, the narrative fails to bind it all together. It's mostly incoherent; subpar music and bland songs ruining moments with potential. The little things do work for me, but the film as a whole fails to make an impact. The characters are well-written but don't really coalesce. The notion of being ambitious has been misrepresented; portrayed in a grey light with a prejudiced vision. Tannistha's relationship with Sounak fails to hold any weight, and the viewer wonders why she'd agreed to marry him in the first place. Abhimanyu's crises seem forced. The turn of events feel biased and too predictable. The closing moments seem pretentious.
I wonder if I've outgrown the intended appeal of the film or whether the film itself has failed to age well. Maybe the dawn of OTT and the wide range of far more realistic, relatable and well-made content have ruined it for me.
