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

Namte Namte (2013)

The film, directed by Rana Basu, is based on a story Trata by Dibyendu Palit. The basic story revolves around a cowardly clerk (Rajatava Dutta) who is unable to face the challenges and adversities of life with courage and crumbles at the slightest provocation. The clerk lives with his family comprising of his wife (Rupa Ganguly), and a daughter and a son. The son lives in a boarding and occasionally visits his family during vacations.

Rajatava has not been paying his rent to his land owner for quite a few months, who decide to throw him out of the house. The land lord cuts off the water supply. To solve his problem, Rajatava approaches the local goon (Saswato Chaterjee) who agrees to help him. Gradually, Saswato begins eyeing Rupa Ganguly … Meanwhile the daughter complicates matters by indulging in pre-marital sex with her tutor.
The film ends on a tragic note, with Saswato locking Rupa Ganguly inside a room to defile her, and our protagonist weeps inconsolably outside the door. He is such a coward that he doesn’t display any kind of retribution even at this point. The great bard had put it so aptly “Cowards die many times before their death.”

I haven’t read the original story which was written about 20 years back. The film story doesn’t offer any solution. Should a film only present a realistic picture, however grim it might be, and end without throwing some light as to how such malaise can be purged from society? Goons like Saswato enjoyed political patronage and could indulge in criminal activities freely as shown in the film, but the director should have reflected and showed pointers as to how such elements would finally be brought to book.

The other perspective is that the film deliberately concluded on the implied “rape sequence” and kept it open-ended,like a few Mrinal Sen movies (Ek Din Pratidin, Antareen).

Rating: 4 out of 5

Paromitar Ek Din

Paromitar Ek Din was written and directed by Aparna Sen. The film had a successful run in the theatres when it was released. The strength of the film is the wonderful perfomances by all its actors, the novelty in the story-telling style and a good plot.

The gist: The film opens with a sequence of Paromita ( Rituparna Sengupta ) at the shrad ceremony of Sanoka ( Aparna Sen). The story unfolds using a flashback technique. Paromita gets married to Sanoka’s son Bhiru. Bhiru is a foul-mouthed, hard-drinking man. Besides them, Sanoka’s family consists of a mentally retarded daughter Khuku ( Sohini Halder ), her hubby ( Dulal Lahiri ), a couple of daughters and their family. Paromita adjusts to her new family quite well, but things take a turn for the worse when Paromita gives birth to a handicapped child Bablu. Her husband began pointing fingers of accusation towards her.

The film oscillates frequently between the past and the present mainly through the recollections of Paromita. Paromita soons endears herself to her family members. Mother-in-law Sanoka ( Aparna Sen ) also develops a particular liking for Paromita as does Khuku. The director beautifully brings out the hardships and the idiosyncracies of the handicapped through the characters of Khuku and Bablu and deserves kudos for her realistic, insightful depiction of such retarded characters. The fissures that such abnormal people can cause in an otherwise apparently normal family has been highlighted. Veteran actor Soumitra Chaterji plays the role of Moni Mama, ex-lover of Sanoka who couldn’t marry her because of  his cagey and his tight-lipped nature. Sanoka’s love for Moni-mama was an open secret to all family members. No one, however, raised a hue and cry over it.

Bablu is sent to a spastic school for the handicapped. Paromita falls in love with a filmmaker Raju Srivastav who was making a documentary on the handicapped and also used footage of Bablu in his film. Inspite of Sanoka’s pleadings, Paaromita divorces her first hubby Bhiru. And then she marries Raju Srivastav. Rajiv also successfully turns Paromita into a working woman and she began making use of her acquired degree in Mass Communication from Javadpur University.

For Paromita, her second marriage proved lucky. She also achieved some degree of success in her professional life. Ever after her divorce, Paromita couldn’t sever ties completely with Sanoka. In fact, during her last days Paromita looks after her needs with great affection and dedication.

The film ends as Paromita emerges out of the shrad ceremony of Sanoka where her presence was much ridiculed by gossip mongers in the family and their social circles. A tinge of optimism with a hint of Paromita bearing a normal child again provides the climax.

Aparna Sen, Rituparna Sengupta and Sohini Halder delivers terrific perfomances. A restrained Soumitra Chaterji is also memorable. Sumitra Mukherjee does a cameo. The only thing that jarrs in this otherwise flawless work is the depiction of a mentally retarded Khuku  singing soulful Rabindrasangeet numbers with such clarity on numerous occasions. Even though the director tells us that Khuku slipped into insanity gradually in her teenage years and wasn’t afflicted with the ailment since her birth, so what?

Overall, a great film from the director of 36 Chowringhee Lane.

Rating: 4.4 out of 5