Antardhan (Bengali, 2020)

It’s heartening that Bengali filmmakers have shown a zeal towards making celebral detective films / thrillers and this has always remained as a strong current in that industry in contrast to Bollywood that only occasionally comes up with a fine film on that genre. The reason can be adduced to the fact that most of the renowned writers of Bengal, be it Samaresh Basu, Sunil Gangopadhyay, Premandra Mitra, Suchitra Bhattacharyya, Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay, Sasthipada Chattopadhyay or Niharranjan Gupta, besides the ever-enduring Sharadindu Bandopadhyay and Satyajit Ray and many others have regularly penned detective works that tease your intelligence and keep you glued to the pages to unravel the mystery. No wonder the filmmakers are inspired by such writers and their creation.

The 2020 made ‘Antardhan’ directed by Arindam Bhattacharyya is a reasonably engaging thriller that keeps you engaged till the end of the storyline of a missing girl from a hill station, Kasauli, in North India. The film has an interesting twist at the end, something that the viewer would be unable to detect until the mystery gets unraveled even though the clues are infused at intermittent intervals during the progression of the story. Parambrata Chattopadhyay, Tanusree Chakraborty, Rajatava Dutta, Mamata Shankar, Harsh Chaya, Neel Mukherjee are the principal cast.
Rating: 3.8 out of 5

Nirbaak (Bengali, 2015)

Having watched ‘Nirbaak’ (Speechless) recently, a 2015 Bengali film directed by Srijit Mukherjee, I am in a bit of dilemma. Should I rate it as a good film, or a bad one? The initial thought that crossed my mind after the viewing of the film, which the director has dedicated to the master of surrealism- Salvador Dali, was that the film didn’t make much sense to me. All the beautiful imagery and novel techniques employed in the depiction of Kolkata hitherto unseen could not force me to develop a liking for the film. Maybe the question you would pour forth is “why?”. Well, for the kind of implausibility of the storyline – a women courted by three men, and hold your breath, a tree!!! Well, you can’t really blame the tree for developing those amorous feelings when the lady is Susmita Sen, eh?

I have always had a soft corner for experimental films that break the conventional style, and Srijit masterfully breaks all cinematic idioms in this work and came up with a film that stretches your power of imagination and takes you on a journey rather unfamiliar on the Indian cinemascape. The film deserves a watch for the bold attempt to tell a different kind of romantic story using some brilliant cinematic moments. Anjan Dutt, Jishu Sengupta, and Ritwik Chakrabarty are the three male leads in the film, in which a dog too features in a prominent role.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Nobel Chor (Bengali, 2011)

The film ‘Nobel Chor’ has an interesting fictionalized take on contemporary social issues based on a real life incident. The incident is the theft of the medal awarded to India’s sole Nobel Prize winner for literature, Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore. While unquestionably the basic premise of the film is weak, it nonetheless becomes an effective vehicle for a strong societal commentary. In retrospect, one feels that a surreal treatment of the film could have worked better, much like the Bhanu Bandopadhyay film of yesteryear ‘Asite Asiona’.

The probability of an innocent country bumpkin like Bhanu (played by Mithun with brilliance) finding a stolen Nobel medal in his field is as likely as finding God in our mortal existence. The prevalent rural urban values have been etched beautifully through a motley of character and the manner in which they hold in reverance Bengal’s biggest icon, Rabindranath Tagore. Soumitro Chattopadhyay, Rupa Ganguly, Saswato Chattopadhyay, Arindam Sil, Harsh Chaya and Sudipta Chakrabarty perform credibly in their cameos.The 2011 film was directed by Suman Ghosh.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Taxi Driver (USA, 1976)

Martin Scorcese’s ‘Taxi Driver’ (1976) has acquired a cult status over the last four decades or so. Along with Sidney Lumet’s ‘Dog Day Afternoon’, it was one of those urban angst films that rocked America in the seventies. Where angst is involved, can violence be far away? Yes, Travis Bickle, the protagonist, an ex-Vietnam War veteran, who now drives a Taxi in New York, can be described as someone seething with rage as to where American society is headed.

His job allows Travis to criss-cross the streets of the Big Apple daily. That opens up his eyes, and for a while, he remains a mute witness to the burgeoning pimps and dregs of society that seem to be everywhere in New York. He falls in love with a lady who is presently working on a campaign for a Presidential candidate. The romance doesn’t last long. When Bickle, in his naivety, takes her to a film, that turns out to be a ‘porn ‘, the relationship gets nixed by the lady. Spurned in love and a growing anger, Travis decides to kill the Presidential candidate. In one of his interviews, Ingmar Bergman said that “Martin Scorcese raises violence to the level of an art”. The film ‘Taxi Driver’ is an attestation to this statement of Bergman. The concluding sequence is bound to leave you wondering whether the incident is real or a surreal one, reminiscent of the ending of Antonioni’s Blow Up, or Bunnel’s Belle De Jour. Robert De Niro, arguably the greatest living actor, infuses his character with the right degree of controlled fury that the role demands, and delivers one of his best performances. For preparation of this role, De Niro worked as a cabbie in New York for a while.

I read somewhere that Marty was inspired to make “Taxi Driver” after watching Satyajit Ray ‘s “Abhijan”. I have watched both the films and feel that they are as different as chalk and cheese. The only common factor between them is that the protagonist in both is an angst-ridden cabby.

This is one of the greatest psychological thrillers of all times.

Rating: 4.4 out of 5

Aarakshan (Hindi, 2011)

Yesterday I saw this film on TV several years after its release. The title of the film and the stellar cast intrigued me. And a film that speaks of a controversial subject like reservation certainly carries an attractive pull on the audience. Satyajit Ray once told his filmmaker son Sandip Ray that a film is made on the editing table. However, filmmakers like Prakash Jha, the director of the film who had once made the award winning film Damul, doesn’t seem to believe it to be so. That’s why even with a strong subject the film meanders with unnecessary dramatic elements and song and dances in this tale of a pro-poor upright popular Principal who becomes the target of evil politicians and a section of his fraternity married to commerce. There’s also another big problem with the film. When you make a political film such as this, the director ought to make a directorial statement. For example, filmmaker like Mrinal Sen who made political films like Padatik (1974) questioned the direction the left political movement was taking. But Prakash Jha doesn’t make any assertion in his work about the pros and cons of reservation, the subject of his film. He presents the hardship the dalits face to get decent education, but is silent about the other side – the meritorious from the not so well off general category who face discrimination and injustices because of reservation. The cast includes Amitabh Bachchan, Saif Ali Khan, Deepika Padukone, Manoj Bajpayee, Saurabh Shukla and others.
Rating: 2.8 out of 5

Bhuvan Shome (Hindi, 1969)

This 1969 film is regarded as having sparked off the New Wave cinema movement in India and rightfully so. It is also quite possible that a film as wondrous as this one has never been made in India ever. Watching this film during the pandemic is such a pleasure and stress buster. The countryside beauty as our protagonist goes on a hunting expedition to relieve himself of the monotony of his job as a senior officer in the Railways is mesmerizing at the least. The film shows that Mrinal Sen, the director, is as adept as Fellini and Antonioni in using location speak in an exquisite cinematic language.
Based on a short story by Banaphool, a well known Bengali writer, the director deviated from the original narrative to suit his perspective and cinema. Much has been written about the stupendous performance by Utpal Dutt and that of Suhasini Mulay in her debut role. I also found Shekar Chaterjee brilliant in the role of the bullock cart driver who speaks Gujrati with a degree of finesse. As an actor of mostly Bengali films, fitting into the groove of a Gujrati cart-puller requires skill and perseverance and he comes up trumps. Sadhu Meher acts in a cameo.
Rating: 4.7 out of 5

Screenwriting tips by Coppola

Interview (1971, Bengali, d:-Mrinal Sen)

• There’s a noticeable continuity in the films of Mrinal Sen. When I rewatched ‘Interview’ recently, I found similarities in this film with his later work ‘Chalchitra.’ In both the films, the protagonist is seen frantically circling the city of Kolkata in pursuit of advancing his career. In Interview, the search is for an appropriate English attire to appear for an interview in a multinational company with its colonial Eurocentric culture, whereas in Chalchitra the search is for an appropriate journalistic story by a wannabe scribe of a Bengali newspaper. There’s almost a feeling of deja vu when you hear the protagonist in Chalchitra call out ‘Taxi!’ for a public conveyance akin to the shout belted out similarly by the lead character of Interview to board a cab on the streets of Kolkata.
  Stylistically, Interview bears the breezy style of his earlier iconic work ‘Bhuvan Shome’, but Interview goes beyond and introduces newer modes of expression hitherto unseen in Indian cinema. Like for instance when Ranjit Mullick, the protagonist, is introduced to us in the bus in the initial part of the movie, the cameraman K. K. Mahajan is shown filming the sequence in a cinéma-vérité style. Even the ending monologue where the protagonist converses with the unseen follower talking to the viewer directly before unclothing the mannequin in frustration bears a striking originality. Karuna Bandopadhyay, Shekar Chaterjee and others act in supporting roles.
  Rating: 4.4 out of 5

Kaalpurush (Bengali, 2005)

• Probably the most Internationally acclaimed Bengali filmmaker of the post Mrinal-Satyajit-Ritwik era, Buddhadeb Dasgupta has evolved as a filmmaker with a distinct voice and narrative style. While some of the films of his early years (Grihajuddha, Andhi Gali) had a political tenor, in subsequent years the poet filmmaker has used diverse abstract elements like Surrealism and dream sequences in the narration. KAAPURUSH (2005) featuring Mithun Chakraborty, Rahul Bose and Sameera Reddy falls in the later category of the oeuvre of the director.
  
  At its core the film is a lament for the erosion of values in our society. Mithun and Rahul play a father-son duo. A misunderstanding leads the wife of Mithun to leave her husband and walk off with her son Rahul. Years later the son faces an exploitative society which includes his workplace and his materialistic wife (Sameera Reddy), with a quiet grace and pining for a bonding with his father who keeps a watchful eye over his son in his afterlife. The abstract and the real coalesce to drive the narrative smoothly weaving within it the societal reality in contemporary times.
  Rating: 4.2 out of 5

Anantharam (Malayalam, 1987)

Adoor’s Anantaram (1987) has a unique narrative style. It first tells the story of a precocious child in linear progression till his college days, midway it changes track and starts recollection of his childhood days. The characters and their connect to the story are laid out with a great deal of subtleties; the main female lead (Shobhana) appears in both the narrative strand and the viewer is left perplexed about the going-ons in the film. Could she be the figment of imagination of the protagonist?
The film explores issues of identity, loneliness and relationships and is a fine exposition on the duality of perception. The film stars Mamoothy, Asokan and Shobhana. The open ended finale of the film is reminiscent of Mrinal Sen’s Ek Din Pratidin (1979) . The film is available on YouTube with English subtitles
Rating: 4 out of 5