Dibakar Banerjee presents India’s detective… detective Byomkesh Bakshy. An experiment starring Sushant….will the risk work?
Set in 1943 WWII Calcutta, a strife zone between the ruling British, neighboring China and warring Japan. The film shows Byomkesh Bakshy as a lovelorn, to be mathematician professor who is known in local circles for his deduction skills.
Offered a case by Ajit (Anand Tiwari) to find his missing father Byomkesh lands up in a web of interesting range of characters ranging from a local doctor running a single men’s boarding lodge, a local councilor having a secret rendezvous with an immigrant actress, a rebellious local lad with a protective sister, a bumbling but hard fisted assistant, a Chinese opium dealer to a mysterious drug lord. Trying to make sense of all these with a British DCP breathing down his neck, Bakshy tries his best to beat the odds stacked against him.
The brilliance of Dibakar has always impressed me. He had the best story in the multi directed Bombay Talkies, Shanghai was a similar stroke of brilliance. So this was one project I have been following up since some time.
Full marks to Dibakar and his team for the thorough research done which is presented beautifully via the title track. You see the Calcutta of those days presented in one full panoramic orientation tour.
The success of the film is the taut script. In spite of being 150 minutes long, easy paced, not once do you feel that the film is dragging or needed to be crisper. The editing compliments the script fantastically.
The cinematography of the film is another brilliant aspect of the film. The camera angles, wide angle shots and the brilliantly lit environment, creating the right reflective moods of the film, dark, sombre and vivid.
The casting director of the film has to take a bow. A range of brilliant performances by the entire cast of able performers makes the film all that more interesting to watch. Anand Tiwari, Neeraj Kabi, Meiyang Chang, Swastika Mukherjee and Divya Menon are all brilliant.
Giving out bits of the suspense at regular intervals, backed by a lovely soundtrack the film is an intelligent film which will delight all its viewers. Yes I know some purists who might not take to the period set up well, but I guess they were never the audience.
Dibakar deserves all the accolades for this film that he is bound to receive. Sushant strikes a home run too. The realism shown in all fine details, it the half shave look which Sushant sports throughout the day, the clues intelligently strewn in the film right in our face but yet subtle enough to be missed out.
Without giving away any info on the film or its script, I have only one suggestion
Watch it.
Rating : 4/5
Good points : Story, Screenplay, Direction Performances.
By: Yusuf Poonawala
