Rosogolla

Very Nice movie. Hat's off to all of the members of "Rosogolla" team.... Awesome acting, direction, story.....Carry On.

My take on "Rossogolla" the movie The much awaited biopic on Nobin Chandra Das, the inventor of the "Rossogolla" hit the screens yesterday. The timing of the movie is rather significant as it comes in the backdrop of the "bitter sweet" tussle for the GI tag for Bengali Rossogolla and also coincides with the 150 years of the epic invention. To set the expectations right, it needs to be said right at the onset that Rossogolla is a commercial feature and not a strict biopic. The script has therefore leveraged the creative license available to a storyteller to play facts with a healthy dose of imagination, to weave the intended impact. The film has debutants Ujaan Ganguly (son of extremely talented and well read Kaushik and Churni Ganguly) and Abantika in the lead and they make a lively pair. Both of them had a formidable task at hand. Ujaan plays the legendary confectioner Nobin Chandra Das, a simple 20 something from the mid 19th century with meagre means but a steely resolve. Abantika plays Khirod

• first a 16 year livewire with a temper to match and later the loving and spirited wife of Nobin. As newcomers Ujaan and Abantika come out with flying colors. Abantika gets into the character as if she is an incarnation of Khirode...playing it with an amazing ease...you hardly feel she is "acting". As audience, you fall in love with her within the first few minutes and its to her immense credit that we start pining for her presence repeatedly. Ujaan has a wider canvas of character to sketch and his effort does look a bit labored at times - but to be fair to him, does a remarkable job of seizing the critical moments. His spontaneous jig every time there is a moment to celebrate, looks innocently cute.

Most in the important support casts are relative heavyweights and do adequate justice to their characterization(s). Rajatava Dutta plays Kalidas Indra to near perfection. Bidipta as Nobin Das' doting yet strong willed mother looks most natural. Kharaj Mukherjee, as a Hindi speaking confectionery worker Mahesh looks effortlessly convincing - as he so often does. Shantilal plays a short yet stunning role as Baikuntha. Kaushik Sen, with a total screentime of barely 3 mins makes his mark. Music plays an important part in the overall narrative...and the impact of the Late Kalikaprasad is overarching. All of us who have been witness to transformation of Zee Bangla Sa Re Ga Ma Pa into a rich and eclectic musical panorama under the amazing scholarly, yet immensely creative tutelage of Late "Kalika da" are bound to find their eyes swell with timeless memories, as you see his magic unfolding in Rossogolla. His extremely detailed work on architecting a soundscape so integral to the storyline needs to be saluted. The opening Fakiri song "Khodar Banda" rendered by Arko is breathtaking and so is Tapur Tupur. Tapur tupur also needs to be lauded for its "lyrics from the heart" and its warm visuals. Director Pavel has done a good job and has done an even better job as the co-scriptwriter along with Smaranjit. There are moments which are a little too melodramatic and overbearing but probably will have takers in the gallery - as was evident by the spontaneous claps by a section of the gathering at the premiere. The "sets" is an area that remains somewhat under-leveraged. Mid 19th century Kolkata was a great opportunity to create a "period" magic to augment the impact; in contrast the setting at times look a little "put on" and the backdrops created to extend the ambience are not adequately seamless at times. Windows films should be credited for encouraging a young promising director and blooding a debutant lead pair in a film that by virtue of the subject alone, will find a place in the annals of Bengali cinema. A sharper editing could have probably glued us more, but, keeping the finer points aside, the film is immensely successful in creating an indelible impact with the story of blood and sweat that went in to create "Rossogolla" - arguably the national sweet of India. The magnanimity of Nobin Chandra Das to have consciously stayed away from commercializing the invention for benefitting the masses at large has a strong message and has been done beautifully. I hope the English subtitles takes the story beyond the Bengali speaking populace. Apart from making you feel part a of a rare culinary heritage, Rossogolla, is also a must watch for its overall warmth and the poetic justice.

"Rosogolla," based on the life of Nabin Chandra Das & his creations, is a film with wasted potential. Directed by Pavel & featuring Ujaan Ganguly, Abantika Biswas, Rajatava Dutta, Kharaj Mukherjee & many more, the two hour long film fails to live upto the expectations. With awful lot of flaws, it's actually hard to point out what the core problem is.

First, the film isn't well written at all. Lack of definitive reality-checks and extremely predictable outcomes from the beginning, the film was bound to be an experiment with the outcome solely depending on its direction. And even in that department, Pavel has failed to keep a consistent pace and a perfect dramatic set-up. At times, I felt as if there's no point of watching the film & that, I'm actually watching some sort of overdramatic Indian serial on the silver screen. A polished and better resolution camera hardly ever manages to fill up the holes. But yet, the cinematographer has done a good job, considering the limited amount of resources, that was evident throughout the movie. Poor VFX with as poor sets is one point you can totally call a "core problem."

Talking about the story itself, it's pretty obvious. All of us have grown up eating the sweets & listening to the stories of Nabin Chandra Das. There was nothing expected out of it & still, the makers found hilarious ways to add "masalas" to it without any elaboration of the actual history. Eventually, the film ended in a peculiar fashion where Rajatava Dutta & Shantilal Mukherjee's characters' characteristics were totally destroyed to glorify the protagonist, for an even more dramatic ending. The ridiculousness reached new heights right there, even more so with the help of a poor cast selection and lead actors' poor acting (and dialogue delivery) skills. Ujaan Ganguly's one dimensional performance especially when his character demanded a lot of layers (with the core being joyous attitude), in particular, was absolutely a disaster in every aspect & that's really unexpected, given the amount of time Shiboprasad & Nandita, as producers, or Pavel, as director, usually spend. The struggle due to poverty and rejection being a lower-class, especially, was missing even though the story demanded it & at no moment did I feel a bit of sympathy for Nabin Chandra Das' cinematic counterpart. The British Era's Kolkata also didn't feel like "Kalikata" for one single moment.

But not everything is negative as the dialogue writing, editing & music were fabulous but not "sweet." Having a lot of expectations personally might've forced me to go a bit harsh on the film but even on a second watch, the flaws weren't really negligible. Innocence, however, was the brightest point of the film. At the end, the highly potential "Rosogolla" turned into one bittersweet experience & yet, it somehow manages to be below average family movie, especially for the children to teach them never to give up!

As a bengali food lover this movie is very entertaining and heart touching for me. This movie has historical background of invention of a new sweet called "Rosogolla". In the first part of movie, a middle aged boy named Nabin is very enthusiastic for making new sweets but invention of new sweet is not so easy and specially when it comes to Rosogolla. He faces many difficult situations for this invention. After 2 years of trying he finally succeeded to make this tricky sweet called Rosogolla. So its a story of success in the form of Rosogolla. This is a very heart touching biopic on Nabin chandra Das, the inventor of Rosogolla. You can enjoy it with your family.

Its a must watch movie.

Rosogolla falls short of my expectations. Set designing and background score are very good. So are the performances by Rajatabha, Aparajita and Kharaj. The rest is average, a bit tedious at times. A movie made about Bengal's most famous mishti could and should have been much better.