Satyanweshi: a film to forget

Yesterday evening, as I was watching Rituparno Ghosh’s last directorial venture “Satyanweshi” (The Truth Seeker), I felt sad for Sharadindu Bandopadhyay. He did not get his due respect in the arena of Bengali literature. Moreover, two world renowned Bengali directors have botched two of his valuable creations: one was Satyajit Ray, who murdered Sharadindu’s Chiriyakhana (The Zoo) in 1967, and the second is Rituparno Ghosh, who created a mess with Chorabali (Quicksand), one of Sharadindu’s best detective stories, in 2013. The sad part is, both featured Byomkesh Bakshi, the greatest Bengali literary detective, according to my personal opinion.

In fact, in Satyanweshi, only the character names are same, but the rest is totally Rituparno’s creation. For this reason, nowhere in the opening credits did we see the mention of Sharadindu as the author.I did not see the final credits however. Ritu wrote his own story, that is acceptable, but naming the detective as Byomkesh is not acceptable. The film did not do a minimum justice to the great detective. Sujoy Ghosh as Byomkesh did not fit into the role from the start. His expressions, dialogue delivery, body language, all were flawed and lacked spontaneity. I would say that Anindya Chatterjee as Ajit was far superior to Byomkesh. He at least made an attempt to understand the character and did some justice to his role.

The story has nothing new worth mentioning. Based on a royal family, the incidents are cliché, and we have read and viewed lots of stories like this in numerous books and films before.  Indraneil Sengupta as Raja Himangshu was expressionless. His body language was stiff from the start. His wife Alaka, portrayed by Arpita Chatterjee, was pathetic. It looked as if she was been forced for the role. The only character which I liked was that of Kaligoti, the antagonist. Shivaji Bandopadhyay, in his casual manner, has done a nice job.

Another aspect which is common in many films of Rituparno is dubbing. Deepankar De dubbed for the elder Raja Arunangshu while Sumanta Mukherjee dubbed for the Dewan Chandrasekhar. At least Ritu could have used the acting skills of Deepankar and Sumanta , rather than using their voices. Himangshu is said to be passionate about hunting. But barring a stint of shooting cups being blindfolded, there was no mention of hunting. Almost 80% of the film was shot indoors, under dimly-lit lights. The performers were mostly sitting, speaking in a sad tone with each other.

The film failed from the detection angle as well. The mystery was never build up properly. In the final 10 minutes, Byomkesh merely narrated his hypothesis but did not provide any logic for his conclusions. I felt that he knew everything from the start and was just waiting for the right moment for narrating his views. A few sequences shown in the film (the picnic scene, for instance, where every person wrote 3 names in 15 seconds) had no relevance with the story or with the solution of the disappearance case.

In all, it is good to forget this film. Let us presume that alike Harinath, the film Satyanweshi has also lost in quicksand.

My rating: 1/5.