AUTOGRAPH Please ... Review on Autograph - Bengali Movie

“I am Arun Chatterjee. I am the Industry.”; that is the statement the veteran actor makes and thrives on in every word when he is at the peak of his career. Arun Chatterjee (Proshenjit Chatterjee) the reigning king of Tollywood Cinemas is a brand himself for any damn movie to sell but somewhere he wishes to explore more; so this time he decides to produce a movie with himself in the lead role on something which was not seen earlier. While hearing out scripts from renowned directors he comes across a novice director, story-writer, script-writer Shuvobrata Mitra(Indranil Sengupta) who aims to reach the highest star with his first movie ‘Ajker Nayak’ (Today’s Hero). Convinced by the serious and highly ambitious project which would be the remake of all time powerful movie of two stalwarts of this industry, the legendary director Satyajit Ray and the legendary actor Uttam Kumar where the duo worked together to produce a legendary movie ‘Nayak’ (The Hero).

As the movie starts in its making, the darker and grimmer shades of the industry gradually come to surface. Meanwhile, the director Shuvo tags in his love-interest and live-in partner Shreen aka Sreenandita (Nandana Sen) for casting opposite to Arun Chatterjee. Shreen is an upcoming theatre actor who completely fits into the frame of being the lead actress with Arun. The rest of the movie Autograph’ is about these three characters uniting together to make the biggest movie of their respective careers without knowing the fact that they assembled together only to come face-to-face with their own ‘other self’ lying buried deep underneath which is of course, not a pleasant experience. Here the movie takes a turn into ‘Dissociative Identity Order’ exploring the character of Arun Chatterjee.

Arun while playing the celluloid Hero starts living the role in his real life where the past of betrayals haunt back. He suffers the shock of living his past in his present through the film he is doing. On one hand, Shreen captures his attention and captivates him with her innocent charms and on the other he is reminded of breaking and exploiting such innocence of his beloved in past. In this conflict of past and present he becomes vulnerable to Shreen and that becomes his ‘Nemesis’ declaring his downfall.

Shuvo the over-ambitious, hot-blood director who begins his career with honesty, truthfulness and vigor gradually starts shredding his nobility. He turns out to be a shrewdest man in the end; heartless, devoid of emotions who never hesitate to exploit anything and anybody to reach his goal faster. He is portrayed as a perfect modern man, the most intriguing character in the movie who reflects Shakespeare’s Hamlet of “To be, or not to be..” ; where both Godliness and Evil resides and finally when Evil overpowers the ‘self’ the doom is inevitable.

Shreen or Sreenandita, the only woman of significance and the ‘’Antigone’ of the movie is the scapegoat in this war of chasing dreams. Her innocence, uprightness and ‘easily getting involved’ attitude make her pay off heavily. She is full of life, vitality and beauty and she carries her idealistic Utopian world wherever she goes. Hence, she ends up realizing that the world is not what she dreamt; the relations are not so easy what she saw and the love which she felt is not always true. In this chaos of external and internal worlds of her own she banishes the filthy materialistic world to set out in recluse.

See the rest of the movie to know how the worlds of normal people transform into nightmarish existence where loneliness and heartbreaks replace the warmth of relationships.

The movie though in Bengali doesn’t cater to a particular region. It is a complete cosmopolitan approach where dialogues (very colloquial) are replaced by intense and poignant expressions. The movie hails in capturing those quiet reflections that come time-to-time on each character in demand to the situation they need to face. Therefore, all non-bong people pick up the DVD with subtitles to have a firsthand experience to this marvelous creation. It has an amazing line of talented actors who successfully shook the roots of every person watching it. Proshenjit (who never had been my favorite) is at his bestest best. The ways he maturely impressed all through with his vulnerable characteristics; that restrained mannerisms of a senior person who cannot afford go out of his way to lay down his heart, makes you weak at your knees. His acting skills has been openly put into comparison with the veteran actor Uttam Kumar; but Proshenjit puts up a brave answer that he is no less and he is here to stay for longer time to come. But my favorite here was Indranil Sengupta, the reel life bad man in this movie and the real life hero of Barkha Bisht. His toned up body complimented his toned down emotions as Shuvo reveals how hard he can be. His initial sweet disposition gradually gets ripped off by his shrewd self that lured everyone into damnation. The way his expressions were captured in each frame was simply mind blowing. He is the most complicated character in this movie and the way his influx of emotions gets punctured by his under hidden game plan is something worth a catch. Indranil does the role giving out his soul here and you will feel the danger once you catch the glimpses in his immediate change of expressions from sweet to deadly, smiling to crude, ruthless director to crooked laugh. Nandana as Shreen looks amicable and maintains her school-girl self perfectly, doing complete justice to the character, though her performance was weaker than the other two. Direction, screenplay and story were top-notch taken care by the director himself. Full marks to Srijit Mukherjee who makes his debut as a director as he meticulously unfurls the various shades of a modern man. The film never seemed to be a bore or vicious at any point of time. It was normal, realistic, breath-taking yet aesthetically portrayed that will impress movie-goers of any generations. Debajyoti Mishra’s songs are melodious and rightly placed in the movie. Overall, it’s the director’s movie where the director is the hidden hero behind its success. He is the sculptor who confidently hails his creation Autograph.

My  Rating : 4 / 5

Thereby, signing off by picking few lines from a song in this movie:

“Amar jonno aalo jelona keu,

Ami manusher samudrey gunechi dheu,

Oi station er chottore hariye gechi,  Shesh frame e ghore firbo na na…..

Na na na na………na na na na……”

(Translation)

“Don’t burn a light for me anymore,

I have learnt to count the waves of men now,

Got lost in this station place,

Will not return in that same frame as I left,

No no no no… … … no no no no… ….”