Bhooter Bhabishyat : A Laugh Riot

Bhooter Bhabishyat : A Laugh Riot

Bhooter Bhabishyat : A Laugh Riot

                     What images comes to your mind when you hear this scary word called ‘Bhoot’ or ghosts? And Can you think of their future..? Or can they have a future..? Sounds crazy, right..? But, this crazy idea has been put into celluloid by dubutant director Anik Dutta in the film Bhooter Bhabishyat, quite impressively. The Bangla film industry definitely has a brighter ‘Bhabishyat’ (future) with movies like this with unique concepts and outstanding performances.

             In this bone-tickling Bangla comedy, a young and talented ad director Ayan Sengupta (Parambrata Chatterjee) visits a dilapidated mansion for location hunting for his new ad film, with his assistant and the production manager. The mansion is known as ‘haunted’ and and is locked for many years, after an actress supposedly saw a ghost here while shooting. Ayan’s companions had to leave the place for some urgent work, but he agrees to stay back for a few hours until his cinematographer arrives for Recce. We also learn that Ayan is still looking for a good plot for his feature film. To kill time, Ayan starts working on his unfinished script but soon falls asleep out of tiredness. Suddenly his slumber is broken by a sound and here the actual story starts.

Sabyasachi Mukherjee and Parambrata Chatterjee

             Ayan is shocked to see a Kurta-clad man (Sabyasachi Mukherjee) in this godforsaken haunted mansion. Ayan mistakes the new man as a relative of the owner of mansion and starts chatting up. This mysterious man states that he stays there only and upon knowing that Ayan is an upcoming movie director, he offers him to narrate a movie plot, which he claims full of all the masalas required for a hit film. This man seems a little out-of-sync from the modern era as he stills unaware of Bangla-bands, and understands bands only by Beatles. However, he starts narrating the story, which shakes him apart.

The Bhoots in Bhooter Bhabishyat

              As you might have already guessed it right, there starts a story of a group of ghosts who takes shelter in the mansion owned by former landlord Raja Darpa Narayan Chaudhari (Paran Bandyopadhyay), who conducts a hilarious interview session of the ghosts, required to get admission into the mansion. The selected candidates were Kodolibala, a famous yesteryear actress (Swastika Mukherjee), an Indian army martyr (Biswajit Chakrabarty), a refugee from east Bengal (Sumit Samaddar), an upcoming Bengali rock singer (Samadarshi Dutt), an utterly romantic girl Koel (Mumtaaz Sircar), an Englishman Ramsay (George Baker), a cook of Siraj-Ud Daulla from the Mughal era and a poor rickshaw puller. There is another character or supernatural inhabitant mentioned is Biplab , but hardly any details are provided by the narrator. But from what we hear, we understand that he is a man with revolutionary ideas and a communist rebel himself. The ghosts live a ‘spirited’ life in the mansion (full of Fashion shows and picnics), until they were disturbed by one Ganesh Bhutoria (Mir), an unscrupulous real estate developer who wants to demolish the mansion to make a five star shopping mall. This gives sleepless nights to the ghosts who would be homeless and their survival is at stake, if the Mansion is razed down. The next part of the story narrated how the ghosts work on a full proof plan to counter Bhutoria’s Nasty plans and to save their beloved mansion.

Swastika Mukherjee as Kodolibala

              I am not going to spill the beans here. Find out yourself when you get a chance to watch this hilarious ‘horror’ flick. The casting is immaculate with each of the characters coming ‘alive’. No Bengali film in the recent past comes even closer to the outstanding performance by all the characters in this film. Especially Swastika Mukherjee was so mind boggling in getting her looks, accent, voice, facial expressions and even her mannerisms right in the role of an yesteryear heroine from the Black and White era, Kodolibala. Samadarshi Dutt is promising in the role of Pablo (‘neither Picasso nor Neruda’ as he says), an inspiring Bengali rock musician. Mir as the nasty Ganesh Bhutoria, is hilarious in his dialougue delivery and acting, as well as Sumit Samaddar as an east Bengali refugee from the 40’s, who loves his Hilsa and has a soft corner for Kodolibala. Saswata Chaterjee in his cameo as ‘Hath kata Kartik’ is splendid in comic timing and definitely enhances the fun-mood of the movie. Parambrata Chatterjee has nothing new to offer, although he was proficient. Sabyasachi Mukherjee was commanding and admirable as always in his role. 

Director Anik Dutta

              It is hard to believe that it’s the maiden venture of the director Anik Dutta. The scripting and storytelling of this film is at par with the masterpieces of Bengali cinema. The water tight screenplay and meticulous direction makes the film gripping throughout. The humour keeps on increasing scene after scene and Dutta’s style of storytelling keeps the interest growing.  The director pays tribute to Satyajit Ray by making several references to the great director. For example, Ayan is an admirer of ‘Manik Da’(Ray’s popular name), using the ghost-king’s song as Ayan’s mobile ringtone and adapting matching rhyme style of dialogue delivery of the characters (‘Gopi Gyne, Bagha Byne’). Also the film tracks across the socio-political history of India through its characters, starting from the Battle of Plassey (1757) through the Sepoy Mutiny (1857), the Naxalite movement (1970's), the communal riots of East Bengal (1940's) to the Kargil war (1999). 




                        The director has structured the narrative beautifully using flashbacks of some of the ghosts in a snappy editing style.The imaginative scissors of Arghyakamal Dutta delivers the layered editing coherently. The creative editing makes the film snappy, dynamic and without any blank space. The cinematography by Abhik Mukhopadhyaa is aesthetically brilliant, using different tones and textures for flashbacks and present. The music by Raj Narayan Deb  is enticing while he does a commendable job in modifying the iconic Rabindra Sangeet 'Ami Jabona Jabona Ghorey' to fit the comic situation of the film. the item song in the film is titillating and it sounds more literal than metaphorical when she sings, 'Mere Ang Ang mein Aag Lagayee De Sayyaan Beimaan' as her husband actually set her ablaze in the past.  


                 Overall, it is one of the best written, directed and acted films Bengal has ever witnessed. And the foremost aspect of the film is that it does not confine itself to the narrow boundaries of Bengal, but focuses on ever changing cultural, political and technological scenarios of India at large. The snippets of history, politics and society come alive subtly, with this character driven,nicely packed drama-cum-thriller. Anik Dutta makes a grand entry with Bhooter Bhabishyat and definitely deserves a standing ovation for this rib-tickling, gripping 'original' script and film.

                

Ram Gopal Verma Ka Department

Ram Gopal Verma Ka Department

Department by RGV

        The first word that comes out for this film is “disappointment”. After watching Department, I seriously doubt whether he is the same director who excelled with the underworld gangster movies like Shiva, Satya and Company. RGV carved out a niche for himself, but lost his direction midway. After producing and directing duds like Agyat, James and the unbeatable Ram Gopal Verma Ki Aag, we all expected he will say adieu to direction.

         But here he makes a comeback. This time armed with stars like Amitabh Bachchan and Sanjay Dutt. We expected at least some substance here as RGV has given us the Sarkars with BigB. But nothing works out here in this failed experiment. It is just another extension of his done-to-death gangster genre, offering nothing new for the viewers.

Rana Dagubatti and Amitabh Bachchan in Department

       It’s a ‘good cop-bad cop’ story depicting the same old mafia-police nexus in Mumbai underworld. The storyline remains pretty predictable and boring most of the time. BigB plays gangster-turned-politician who tries to influence the good cop (Rana Dagubatti) by offering him a gift. Sanjay Dutt plays the bad cop who works for another mafia don, and tries to include the good cop in his corrupt world. The good cop refuses but declares a peaceful co-existence. How the story moves ahead with all the politics and gang wars, is largely foreseeable for an RGV flick.

Rana Dagubatti and Sanjay Dutt

        The gory images, the mindless gun-battle sequences add nothing extra to the numb narrative. The cinematography, which RGV claims to be a novel style, is nothing more than a torture for your eyes. It should not be taken for granted or abused just because the technology allows you to do so. Weird angles, unnecessary track-shots, ugly extreme close-ups with a fish eye lens, create nausea and induce migraine. It has been shot without a DoP and RGV started this trend with his movie Not a Love Story. The Director now is totally obsessed with this style of filming with different varieties of digital cameras with different formats. We have seen RGV’s unusual camera angles in his previous films as well, but most of them were creatively and aesthetically done, e.g. Company (Cinematography by Hemant Chaturvedi) and Sarkar (Cinematography by Amit Roy). This is the reason why a film largely depends on the DoP.

Amitabh Bachchan in Department

           Now-a-days, we rarely see anyone coming up with a riveting, powerhouse performance in a gangster genre flick, as examples set by Manoj Bajpai in Satya or Vivek Oberoi in Company. BigB tries to resemble a gangster-turned politician, but his stature is too huge to justify a nasty Neta. His deep baritone provides a ray of hope for a meaty role, but we never found one. Sanjay Dutt plays the bad cop role well but cannot come out of being stereotypical. But somehow he manages to balance between his double characteristics. Rana Dagubatti does nothing more than flexing his muscles and unleashes his anger and bullets on dirty gangsters. His expressions are a mixture of wooden and cold. The only one, who is worth mentioning is Vijay Raaz in a smaller role, but well performed, may be because he cannot help it.

           Overall, it is a failed pointless experiment by RGV, looks as if he does not care about the box-office collections and makes the movies he wants to make. But that does not provide him with a “License to kill” the mood of the viewers, and this is a heinous crime. A bunch of filthy blood-splattering gun-battle sequences put together does not make a film. On the top of that the nauseous Camera movements and angles add to the agony. We request RGV to have mercy on the movie-goers and spare us from his disasters.