When you see Akash Chopra as a television expert on T20 cricket, you often wonder, WHY? When Kamaleswar Mukherjee decided to cast Dev as Shankar, I too wondered, WHY? The film, Chander Pahar, centres around a raging young Bengali, shrieking, squealing, screeching and howling through the jungles of Africa. Dev clearly suffers from a split personality. Either he is adorably harmless like Toothless from How to Train your Dragon, with perfectly combed hair and restrained exchanges stripped of enthusiastic bravado, or as the nostril-flaring human ghoul in a daredevilish wrathful avatar, replete with swashbuckling comedy. The cinematography, however, is breathtaking. All hail, Soumik Haldar. The CGI is exceptionally shoddy for a 15 crore film, and makes certain parts look like an underpriced photo album of an overpriced trip to the Alipore Zoo and Science City, with a 'Made in Africa' label tagged on it. Kamaleswar could not celebrate the life of Ghatak in his previous film, deliberately striving to emotionally manipulate the audience with a flawed depiction of half-truths. In this film too, he could not bring out the very essence, spirit and emotional crux of Bibhutibhushan's novel. Like Sandip Ray's glorified travel diary of Singapore in Tintoretter Jishu with catalogued documentation of Chinese restaurants, Kamaleswar's adventure drama comes across as a discounted African tour package. With FB flooded by recurring updates on "Bangla Cinema'r Punor-jonmo", Balaji Telefilms might reconsider sharing their K-serial rebirth-patent with these aficionados.
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