(no subject)
My first film in a new city; went to see it because I was missing my city a lot.
The film speaks of the Bengali diaspora. One promising young man - Parambrata - goes to America anticipating a prosperous future and another young man-Shayan-born and brought up abroad comes to Kolkata in search of baul tunes.
Shayan wants to work and live in the city. He had always idealized his grandfather, a musician. But, when he comes back to their ancestral house he sees his grandfather paralysed and reduced to a silent existence after his youngest son expressed a desire to sell off the house. Shayan’s aunt, Mamata Shankar, has all the signs of typical motherly warmth and distress at being torn apart between her own convictions, duties to her family and the realities she needs to face because of her husband and son. Her son is unemployed and keeps bashing up his wife at night - the wife is June Maliah, who keeps suffering silently. The son goes around drinking and whiling away his time. He hopes someday his grandfather will die and then they can sell off the house to the promoter and he can enter the real estate business.
Shayan tries to enter the music scene in Kolkata. He joins a rock band, but leaves it when he sees them squabbling about the little money they have earned. He accuses them of un-professionalism and selfishness. He gets an offer to create an advertisement jingle and lands up with a few elderly musicians who know how to play the actual instruments, but have given in to the times and produce synthetic tunes on the synthesizer. He keeps trying to bring them out of their ennui, casual lethargy and insincerity, but fails. In the meanwhile he meets Raima, and falls in love with her. They go together to Shantiniketan and to other such places where with her he discovers the real Bengal and the tunes of the baul.
He gets an offer for a Mira Nair film, but feels that his future lies in Kolkata, in spite of the failures he has faced here. One day he comes home to see his grandfather - the source of all his sustenance - dead. His uncle now asks him to sign the document that would allow them to sell off the house; Shayan is left shocked and hurt and refuses to sign. He had thought unlike his own selfish father, the people back home would have more faith in tradition, relationships and homes. His uncle says he can’t maintain the house and Shayan says he is taking the easy way out. They have a fierce argument and Shayan decides to leave, though before he leaves his uncle can’t help saying that he was the steed of the family, and he wished he had a son like that. Before leaving Shayan proposes to Raima, asks her to come with him, but she refuses and then bids him a weeping farewell.
In the airport while she is seeing Shayan walk away she sees Parambrata coming towards her with a trolley. Parambrata was her boyfriend. They had had many arguments about shifting to America. Raima had never wanted to go abroad, she believed in living in Kolkata and making a life out here. Parambrata on the other hand had believed America was the palce to be for a good life.
Parambrata begun his stay in America by being mugged in the streets of Houstan and with a glimpse of his gay room mate sleeping with his partner. However, he grows fond of both his gay room mate and his partner, he becomes friends with a Bangladeshi cab driver, who is an illegal immigrant and is welcomed into the Bengali community out there. He does very well in his office and anticipates success for himself.
One day, in a pub with his gay friends, Parambrata drinks too much and while puking he meets this Bengali girl, Peeya,with whom he becomes friends. Peeya is a rebel and a hippie, and over a course of time she falls in love with him. Though Parambrata is attracted towards her and grows to be fond of her, he cannot completely break away from Raima. Peeya on the other hand finds a certain kind of stability through her interactions with him and decides to go to the University for further studies. Her parents start thinking of him as a future son-in-law and there is an amusing scene in the film when a drunk Parambrata desperately musters up the courage to tell her parents that he cannot marry their daughter.
The Bengali community is shown in a rather ironic way; they are shown living in a mini Bengal, with their ilish mach, Bhupen Hazarika and a never ending nostalgia of all things Bengali. Yet, they can’t think of coming back home, as it would take away from them their comfort and their cushy glass palaces. On the other hand, the Bangladeshi cab driver, with a feel for women, is in love with a South Asian girl, whom he wants to marry and return to his land to meet his daughter; but, he is shot dead while escaping from the police. Another Bengali young man is shown to be aware of his loss of identity, he is sarcastic about the Bengalis who create a mini Bengal and he can’t go back home, because he knows he will be a misfit. He gives Parambrata a job in Kolkata when he decides to leave his job in America.
Parambrata works in a company headed by Victor Banerjee, a man who is contemptuous of Indians and thinks they are usually failures, he is tremendously proud of his own rise and lives in a sprawling villa. He sees promise in Parambrata and is fond of him. Victor hates gays and warns Parambrata about them at the onset, and when he finds out Parambrata’s roommate -an employee in his office - is a gay, he dismisses him. Parambrata tries to talk him out of it and when he refuses to listen to him, he leaves the job and comes back to India.
This film too has its share of Anjan Dutta’s obsessions and ‘romantic’ treatment of everything, however since it’s a different set up, even with a few clichés it is more or less pleasant viewing. There is a strain of humour and tender irony that wards off the melodrama of archetypal situations. There is a remixed version of ‘Pagla Hawa’ where you see all the characters in their moments of bliss, Shayan and Raima in Shantiniketan, the gay couple dancing in their bedroom, Parambrata with his Bangladeshi friend and the South Asian girlfriend by a sea side and Shayan with the bauls. At a certain level, even this portrayal is a cliché, but at another level the cuts of all the different characters searching for their own versions of home is nice. I like the jazzed up bhatiyali Shayan sings in a pub about a boat searching for its anchor, the sound Neel creates in this song is interesting, touching and haunting.