Director: Malay Bhattacharya; Producer: Malay Bhattacharya; Cinematographer: Sunny Joseph; Cast: Dhritiman Chatterjee, Debesh Roy Choudhury, Debashish Goswami, Robi Ghosh, Anuradha Ghatak, Suranjana Dasgupta, Soumomoy Bakshi, Neelkantha Sengupta
Duration: 01:34:51; Aspect Ratio: 1.571:1; Hue: 17.097; Saturation: 0.033; Lightness: 0.221; Volume: 0.152; Cuts per Minute: 5.704
Summary: Innovative debut feature by the TV producer
and designer Bhattacharya in the tradition of
Chakraborty’s Kaal Abhirati (1989) and
Vishwanathan’s Sunya Theke Suru (1993).
The story, told with a very sparse soundtrack,
revolves around three characters, a kind of
intellectual (Chatterjee), a taxi driver and a
billboard painter, who drug and kidnap a child
(hanging on to a notion of childhood) and set
out for the countryside in their blue
Ambassador car, initiating India’s first explicit
attempt at a road movie. The genre’s obligatory
quota of ‘strange encounters’ demarcate two
major sequences: a villager who has poisoned
his entire family and is caught before he can
commit suicide, and the monologue of a petrol
station attendant. The kidnappers shelter in an
old house where they unsuccessfully try to
revive the unconscious infant, which dies,
causing the trio to disintegrate. A parallel
theme deals with a peasant family blissfully
optimistic about finding a cure for their
crippled son. The film ends with the acrobatic
rehearsals, in the rain, of a travelling circus
group introduced earlier as a kind of choral
motif.
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