This film moves forward by breaking conventions and offers a promise for future cinema.
From Rudranil Ghosh’s character stepping into the role of narrator and then returning to being a character again — it creates a unique effect.
Some fine artists skilled in various forms of criminal-world artistry become the central performers of this film. As a debut directorial work, it is a bold attempt. In the context of breaking the monotony of recent Bengali cinema content, the film is surely unconventional. The narrative style inspired by manga comics, brings in stylized depictions of sex and violence, especially in the character played by Amit Saha. Even the small character of a beggar–madman, initially created at the primary level, becomes important toward the end. Following a Tarantino-like formula, the film brings together a fresh breeze where every actor does well in their respective roles.
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Sudeep Mukherjee and Payel Sarkar’s performances stand out particularly. Rishav Basu too grabs attention. Cinematographer Arnab Laha’s work is excellent. Editing, sound design, and music are all very good, making the film technically experimental.
However, the film’s screenplay and dialogues demand more attention. The story contains some disjointed narrative elements. For example, when Kimling identifies the real bottle of expensive liquor from two similar ones, he could have simply peeled off the label of the fake bottle. Why would a replica bottle have the original name packaging under the fake name? Would a counterfeiter really be that foolish? Also, was the character Arunima truly necessary?
So does the film, while trying to move from a short-film shell to a feature-length format, lose its grip at certain places? Even within a linear, predictable storytelling framework, does the narrative fail to progress? Or perhaps the director did not feel the urge to tell a story in the conventional sense, which is also a pattern.
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The director and technical team are all students of SRFTI, so naturally there is a strong film-school influence. From that perspective, the fact that they have created a commercial film is commendable. However, just as imitating South Indian cinema does not help Bengali cinema progress, the same applies to imitation of Hollywood styles.
We hope director Jayabrata Das and his team will soon create their own cinematic language. We wait for his next film.
