Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Getting Fooled By Commercial Bengali Cinema: Luring For A Movie With A Fabulous Song

Okay, so this has happened quite a few times now and I'm wondering if I should completely avoid watching any 'commercial' Bengali cinemas. As it is I never watched Bengali movies except for the artsy ones that came to Delhi and other places, basically not living in Kolkata has always meant that I only get to know about the really good Bengali movies, ones that have garnered critical acclaim, international festival appreciation and awards. Thankfully, I had quite managed to stay away from the other ones.

But of late, as the trend changed and Bengali cinema suddenly began churning one amazing movie after another, albeit movies that would typically be categorised as 'artsy' or 'intellectual' or 'festival marked movies', I started thinking that maybe the other ones were worth a shot too. Till late I wasn't aware of Dev and Jeet....yes, I had heard the song Paglu, someone had sent it to me, and also the song 'Jaaneman' from the movie with the same name. Both songs featured the same female and frankly, anytime I have flicked through the Bengali song channel, hers is the only face I have seen and these two guys are the only guys I've seen. If that's the condition of Bengali main stream cinema today, well then, it's quite sad.




Though I'm not much into the movies, I've been completely hooked on to the music, not all, but the special chosen ones, of them my favourites being 'Jaani Dekha Hobe' - a song that haunts me no matter how many times I've already heard it and no matter where I am and in what frame of mind, it always takes me to a zone that is reserved just for me, and Anupam, as always, manages to take me there with his voice and haunting sounds each time. I love the song so so much that just for this one song I decided I would watch the entire movie, though I had been warned by friends in Kolkata - and what a disaster it was! I mean, I just couldn't believe that someone could make this kind of a movie, and come to think of it, someone like Parambrata, who does a movie like Kahaani, agreed to do it! Unless of course he was doing it as a favour to a friend, but even then! And the character that I really found utterly silly and fake was the photographer....and it seems the director actually thought he made the photographer character a dude!!!! Dud!!!!!!


The other Bengali main stream movie that completely completely rattled me with is silliness with its lack of any sense, with its immaturity and 'bokaamo' was the movie 'Hemlock Society.'
Yet another movie with two amazing tracks that I have on loop mode a lot of the time are 'Ekhon Onek Raat' by Anupam Roy and 'Jolphoring' by Shilajeet. I absolutely love these two tracks and it's again on the basis of these two that I thought the movie would be outstanding!!! What a royal waste....That too with a dream caste of Parambrata Chatterjee, Soumitra Chatterjee, Rupa Ganguli, Dipankar De, Sabyasachi Chakraborty...!!!!

By the way, I had even started watching 'Paglu' solely based on the title track, and it's another story what happened after 15 minutes, which you can read here.

Really, I'm quite surprised that while directors and actors and writers in Kolkata manage to create such brilliant cinema, there are still these dumb ass movies coming out!

By the way, all opinions expressed here are my own, and if you don't agree, I am open to hearing them, as long as it's not abusive or disrespectful.

- Debolina Raja Gupta

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