Abohomaan

It is one of the gems which are made by Rituparno Ghosh. And this is the 3rd time i'm watching the movie. All the actors are brilliant and also a film which is very much relatable by everyone.

On the surface, 'Abohomaan' looked quite promising. I had only seen bits of it and expected something interesting as I liked some of Ghosh's works. So the movie starts off with an ailing director and his family dealing with the situation and their relationships. Then there's a sad actress who is on her way to visit. Soon after this tension builds between the characters...and that's it. The movie does not move beyond this.

Ghosh seems to have been inspired by 'Les Invasions Barbares' but his movie isn't near as effective. His direction and screenplay are below average. The cinematography is poor even though there are many photographic visuals. Only the art direction seems adequate. The editing is terrible. There is plenty of rambling on and the only bits that I enjoyed were the poetic recitations of Tagore. This is perhaps Ghosh's most boring movie.

Dipankar Dey delivers a transcendent performance, stealing the show with his restraint and quietness. He definitely more than manages to rise above the lacklustre writing while the rest of the actors' performances suffer mostly due to poor dialogue delivery. However, Ananya Chatterjee is competent.

'Abohomaan' has been one disappointing movie. It's hard to sit through such films while trying to stay awake.

Slightly inspired by the story of the relationship between the thespians Binodini Dasi and Girish Chandra Ghosh, from the bengali renaissance era, this film castes people in very much unorthodox roles. We never saw Mamata Shankar so cold or Dipankar Dey so less vocal. I will not mention about the art, camera, music and edit departments in Ghosh's films. They will remain in their prime till his last feature film. And one of my favourite actresses, Ananya Chatterjee just rocked, in both of its meaning.

In literature and films, there is no scarcity of plots on extra-marital affairs. It's used in many films like the way light is used to attract bugs. But there is another way to look at this plot. To discover the reality in it. Rituporno Ghosh brought this plot with an unconventional view to us.

I am not gonna go into details. Like Rituporno's most of the films, it carried me deep into the story. The screenplay had simultaneous scenes from two different timelines and it was so synchronous. The palpability of this whole film left me mesmerized.

I hardly write reviews. This one warranted a review. I've been on a kick watching regional movies (since Bollywood movies suck) since the pandemic started. This kept popping up on various lists and I thought I should give it a try. What a mistake.

There is so much wrong with this movie the good reviews don't make sense. The story line is nonexistent, acting is mostly pathetic and the camera work/editing is very very poor.

It took me almost 40 minutes to understand what the story was and then nothing really happened for the remainder of the movie. The random switching between scenes is very choppy and makes no sense. There is art work and this movie is not that. The music and poetry was poorly inserted throughout the movie and there was no real attempt at telling a solid story. In the attempt of trying to come off artistic and deep the story and acting all suffers.

SAVE YOUR TIME. If you're looking for an offbeat movie try Titli instead. Simple yet much better told story.