May 16, 2015 08:03 PM
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The two looked at each other.
“ For long ‘, they said, ‘we have been relegated to the hidden crevices in regular conversation constructs, mentioned only in brackets, whispered about or referred to with numbers 1 and 2”
“We feel emancipated now. Freed from centuries of being the discriminated but important part of the daily household conversation”
Fresh from their new found celebrity status the Western and Indian commodes glittered. Not far in a fertility lab microscopic living organisms smiled knowingly. They too owed their new found status of being referred to in casual banter without any cringe to a skilled Bengali story teller.
Shoojit Sircar( Vicky Donor) is clearly on a mission. Messiah of the hidden performances of the human body. The neglected and yet the most important. The shunned and yet the emancipators of human burden.
Imagine using a unique theme of constipation as a fiber to hold the err…stool of the story together. Shoojit with his unique tales somehow brings out the embarrassment in you, beats it till it cries out that it is ok to sht or sperm. See for instance the uncaring ease with which we use the word sht now which otherwise could have been relegated to alternate use of medical terminology of stools, excreta and the like. You find the description a little too disgusting? You have not heard anything yet!
Please walk into the dining room of Bhaskor Banerjee with an ‘O’ mind you and his not so virgin daughter PIKU who gets more ruffled with the slight at being referred to as sexually independent not because it is embarrassing but because as she describes, it is a need. You sit up straight and think hello this is interesting! Where is this heading? Never seen a movie like this before.
And Shoojit does not let you down as he allows you to immerse headlong into not a story but a splice of events from the life of the forthcoming but constipated father and his professional independent but caring daughter. The stage is set for a false highlight every few minutes as you hope that Mr.Bhaskar, otherwise an hypochondriac, is able to relieve himself of his fibrous deteriorating burden within the rotund belly that he sports but there is disappointment and you start mentally working out what you could have probably done in his position. Hot green tea? Lots of warm water? Butter milk? Fasting for a few days? Wow this is actually heading to be a medical thriller. The Bengalis in the movie are really cute. They can discuss it unflinchingly while you quietly put down the packet of chips that you brought along and refuse to slurp on the cold beverage containing apparently 24 packets of sugar.
Into the continuous banter of daily activities of laundry, lunch, pills, failed extermination of the stools enters the owner of the taxi service which services PIKUs office and always has a negative fallout. But then the owner Rana Chowdhury has a soft corner for the indifferent PIKU struggling to catch her attention by flashing his owner status as well as being a friend of the partner of PIKUs firm.
As all Bengalis do Bhaskor has an ancestral home that PIKU hopes to sell off to tick off one of the burdens in her unmanageable list of activities but Bhaskor is only too horrified at the thought. He also does not want his daughter settled down pushing away suitors in a Sholay style by describing her unflatteringly.
Bhaskor decides to travel to Kolkatta giving a road movie status to the movie from thereon. Failing to find a driver to accompany PIKU who the drivers find annoying, Rana decides to accompany the duo himself driving their car from Delhi to Kolkatta. The journey is a filamentous threading of various facets of human nature cleverly strewn across the length of it with constipation being a clever ploy to hold the comic attention.
It is not a tale to be revealed in miniscule detail but a string of incidents to be enjoyed as excellently written characters populate the journey from Delhi to Kolkatta till Bhaskor reaches his ancestral home and decides the fate of his ancestral home while new relationships flesh out.
The script is boss here. Dialogues are freshly baked from a creative oven. Nothing too casual or clichéd. Direction is totally unobtrusive almost as if the director was invisible and the robotic cameras weaves in and out as ordinary people go about their routines. There is not one false bat of an eyelid of any character to reveal they are not living out their roles. All the characters from the aunt(Moushmi Chatterji) the man servant Budhan(Balendra singh), Pikus partner Syed Afroz –(Jishu Sengupta) are brilliantly cast. It is a treat to watch them go about their activities with uncharacteristic ease. Even a small exchange between Bhaskor and their house maid are utterly realistic.
It only reinforces the superiority of cinema does not emanate from the budget but from superior writing, superior character development who lend additional reinforcements to a story line and keep viewers gripped with simplicity.
What is absolutely outstanding is the act by the three main leads. Exceptionally brilliant Deepika manages to hold her own with the towering Amitabh Bachhan reliving his Hrishikesh Mukherjee days of film making with some truly realistic moments and a casual unflappable Irfan who steals scenes whenever the camera pans to him with a simple smirk, shocked questioning eyes or a silly smile. None of them act. They seem to have been living the roles while the cameras invisibly shot them. Moushmi Chatterji seemed to hold herself back and yet nevertheless impressed
Some of the scenes like the ones where Deepika struggles with her internal desires and her softening approach to her suitors reflects on her face as a unanswered puzzle, the scenes by the Banaras riverside, the tense standoff on the highway, some chuckle worthy depictions of the digestive system, Deepika conveying so many messages with just a flicker of her eyes, silent stares between the protagonists open for interpretation, all stand out. The list is endless. In short Deepika has crowned herself the best on the scene today, Mr.Bachchan tells us why he is still no 1 to 10 and Irfan shows us why Hollywood reaches out to him repeatedly.
In short a 4 starrer that deserves 5 stars thanks to these actors
Suffice it to say that you will sit with a silly smile permanently etched on your face till the end.
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