A bit of fresh air

It has been a long time since I watched new Bengali movies. Except the flics of Rituparno Ghosh, although I did not see his last two creations, I have no idea about other movies since I came here. Back home however, I sometimes used to sit in front of the TV set, but the titles of the movies were so ridiculous ( eg, Baba Keno Chakor, Swami Keno Ashami, Sujon Sokhi, Kulangaar etc) and the content so rubbish, that I could not help but go out of the room in less than 15 minutes. I got so frustrated with mainstream Bengali cinema that I decided not to watch any of those which are released after 1990, or at most, 1995!

Recently however, I have broken my rule, and in the last week, I watched 3 bengali movies, which are each of three different types, and all of them were really a pleasure to watch.

The first one was Teen Ekke Teen. It is a very light-hearted comedy, executed very nicely without making the comedy a slapstick one. Three young ladies, in order to expand their business of pickles (of three tastes: tok, jhal, misty!) , try to get a loan of 10 lakhs from banks and other financial institutions. Being rejected from all of them, the trio plans to rob a bank by themselves in order to aquire the money. The incidents which follow from that point are very hilarious and enjoyable. Sreelekha Mitra, Nilanjana Sharma and Koneenica performed their roles brilliantly, and the corresponding male actors: Saswata Chatterjee, Kushal Chakraborty and Badsha Moitro, gave a very good support. Overall, it was a two-hour funride, filled with lots of funny as well as exciting, serious moments.

The second movie is named Aabar Ashbo Firey, maybe 2 years old, directed by Ravi Ojha. It deals with the old topic of rebirth , but the director handled it in a neat fashion, and the actors performed very nicely as well. Saswata and Koneenica were in the lead roles, while Victor Bannerjee was too good in his negative role. The other actors, namely Rajatabha Datta, Ramaprasad Banick and others consisted of the supporting cast. Although a very long movie of about 3 hours, I never got bored of watching it.

The third, and the last so far, is titled Waarish, directed by Kaushik Ganguly. I have seen a few telefilms directed by him back home, and some of them were simply great. This movie is a serious one, dealing with complex relationships of man and woman, the futile hope of conceiving a child, the indomitable self-confidence of a single mother , the hopelessness and confusion of a reputed school teacher and things of those kinds. Sabyasachi Chakraborty was good, Debashree Roy was wonderful, but Churni Ganguly was simply amazing. The way she portrayed her character was really an experience to watch. Maybe slow sometimes, but I liked watching the movie very much.

All of the above-mentioned movies do not have big names attached to them, yet they are so good. It seems that Bengali cinema is bringing in some fresh air for its audience. Hope it continues, and maybe some day Bengal will regain its position of honor and glory it possesed 20 years ago.