Phoring

Phoring is the best Bengali film I have watched this year. Yes, detractors will try and unnecessarily intellectualise the demerits of the film. There are minor hiccups, especially the propensity towards emotional manipulation towards the end, but I choose to ignore them. The refreshing honesty of the film with its non-cerebral simplicity makes inroads into your heart, yet at the same time, explores certain complex themes with a nuanced candor. A gawky young adult caught between the two intersecting, permeable realms of the 'age of innocence' and 'age of experience' embarks on a journey from depersonalisation to self-realisation. The flight-graph of Phoring or the metaphorical dragonfly is beautifully narrated by the director through the prism of spiritual secularisation, starting with his naive conversations with God which finally culminates in the final act of dismissive arrogance where he denounces and disowns 'his' God.

Bakita Byaktigoto

Bakita Byaktigoto (Rest is Personal) is standout film because of its endearing and lucid simplicity. Most of the new-age Bengali films these days overuse and abuse the term surreal. However, Bakita Byaktigoto is rooted very much in the real, wrapped in a fairy tale bubble, with its fascinating docu-narrative blurring the boundaries between fantasy and reality. Riwtik, the lead protagonist, on an incredible quest for a seemingly intangible pursuit of love, steers the story on his able shoulders with a remarkable sense of economy in effortless acting and infectious honesty. Amit Saha and Aparajita Ghosh Das also play out their roles with astounding competence. Sumptuous camera-work, bearing the director's stamp of innate effective minimalism, and the score by Anindya Sundar Chakraborty, transiting from earthy notes to modern sound, are also worth mentioning. A laudable, stellar debut feature by Pradipta Bhattacharyya.

Satyagraha

Satyagraha is a migraine-inducing, wholesome lump of shit. A preachy overdose of lousy dialogues straight out of the Aastha Channel morning sermons. The grand daddy of Bollywood is a strict disciplinarian who loathes three things in life: corporates, alcoholic beverages and corruption. Like father, like son. Gold medalist engineer working for the 'aam admi' of his district, like the doting son shares his daddy's abhorrence for corporate greed and consumerism, ends up saying [after a flyover designed by him collapses] - "Yeh kharab quality ka cement hain; maine toh kaha tha Ultratech Cement use karne ke liye!" Later we would see Daddy Ji's followers wearing Anna caps and Rupa Frontline vests, screaming out fancy slogans. Apart from a sluggish item number and a quirky 'Raghupati Raghava', there's also a ludicrous youth-anthem called 'Janta Rocks'. Seriously, Prasoon Joshi? Mr. Richie Rich-turned-activist donates his billions, a noble gesture indeed. Or maybe a new strain of untreated bipolar disorder? A TV scribe who has fans cutting across social milieu, from chaiwalas, corrupt cops to bigwig politicos and biz honchos, suddenly takes a month-long sabbatical to participate in the Janta-Revolution, braving the lathicharge and water-canons, yet managing to maintain her perfect make-up and blow-dried hair. Oh I forgot, she was [still is?] a newsperson. And finally, the crafty and fraudulent politician, with a strong affinity for theatrics and half-baked English idioms, apparently has more say in Cabinet decisions than the seemingly toothless CM. Just one more thing, Prakash Jha - since when does the main Opposition leader take part in Cabinet meetings? Overall verdict: race for the 2013 Best Film on National Integration just got tighter.

Tasher Desh

Tasher Desh is a psychotomimetic vision of Qaushiq Mukherjee's unapologetic experiment that goes beyond the professed acid trip. A madcap versifier, with almost fanatical obsession for the outré, conjures up compelling and bizarre images in a non-linear, dual narrative that slowly seduces the audience into a hypnotic psychedelic ride. The inertia of the chimeric first half explodes into a volatile kinetic force as we are introduced to the restless motley of Card soldiers in the fascist dystopo-neverland. The very Q-esque split-screen shots, hyperstylised edginess of hand-held camera movements, skip-edits and jump-cuts trigger the hallucinatory surreal eeriness of a grungy meta-reality. But everything goes downhill from then on. Our Mr. Infant Terrible suddenly turns into a glorified music video director haplessly resorting to deliberate abstractness as an escape route for his fizzling out self-indulgences. The sensory and visual striptease becomes clumsier in the amorous exchanges which reduces the prophesied sexual liberation into a libidinous exercise with an unsuspecting abrupt climax. Zany, techno-funk pagan Rabindrasangeet and Manu Dacosse's flamboyantly sumptuous cinematography are the two biggest gains from this discordant and floundering amorphous fantasy drama. And, a special mention for the subtitling which is impeccably apt and incredibly germane.

Chennai Express

A sadistic grandfather deliberately robs his adorable grandson of a normal, leave alone healthy, sex life. We get a sneak-peek into the damaged psyche of this horny 40 year old when he says: "I am not Angelina Jolie. I am a boy." Much to the surprise of an unsuspecting audience, he sets on a debauchery mission to Goa. However he ends up in a train with a South Indian babe and her rogue cousins. They compose limericks at the drop of a hat and even set them to the tunes of popular Hindi chartbusters. An extended Chitrahar without commercial breaks, and then he suddenly turns into an Aam Admi Party spokesperson, mouthing: "Don't underestimate the power of a common man." From a DDLJ tribute, the film transforms into an elopement drama at breakneck speed. Then one fine night, he manages to share a bed with her. As soon as his sex-starved mind does a high-5 with his Little Johnny, he encounters her split personality, a demonic rant-spouting possessed witch. And there goes his sex drive, kaboom. However he doesn't give up. Relentless in his pursuit, what follows are wild chases and epic badassery on display. He's beaten into a pulp, yet does a Karan Arjun-meets-Rocky Balboa act and beats the shit out of her gangstah dad's desi Hulks. So much for love. And sex. Moral of the story? Don't underestimate the libido of a common man.

Meghe Dhaka Tara

When one decides to make a film on the First Citizen of Indian Cinema, it is bound to polarise the audience. If you expected that a certain doctor-cum-film enthusiast-turned-director will demystify and defictionalise the man and his legend, dismantling all the cliches and myths surrounding him, you were living in a fool's paradise. Initially, to garner media-hype, he proudly proclaimed 'Meghe Dhaka Tara' to be a biopic, only to disassociate himself from his previous claims, stating that it's a fictional work 'inspired' by Ghatak's life. Why the sudden and desperate face-saver? The positives first. Spectacular set designs, excellent use of light and shadow, Soumik Halder's stunning camera work, Debojyoti Mishra's brilliant score. Although the first half is barely watchable, the second half gets better with breathtaking visual imagery of Partition-affected immigrants, converging confluence of various characters from Ghatak's films, and of course, the superlative performances of Ananya and Subhasish. Kamaleswar chooses a very convenient and escapist medium to depict the master auteur's life: that of dreams and hallucinations. It works as a perfect alibi to (mis)represent Ghatak's thoughtscape as envisioned by him. Ghatak, audaciously self-indulgent and non-conformist to the core, quite paradoxically finds himself trapped in the flawed vision of a director who conforms to all the possible parameters of a sensationalist crowd-pleaser, almost like a footnoted historical and personal narrative. I do feel sorry for Shaswata. He is such a gifted actor and does justice to his role in parts, but one can't blame him for the director's myopic perception of Ghatak, and his life and times. All the ingredients are present, albeit in haphazard and erratic proportions in an already half-baked recipe, like - Jung's 'mother archetype', his swaying beliefs between revisionist and radical politics, the deep pangs of Partition, etc. But look at the banality of certain misplaced grandiose excesses (all in the name of passionately adhering to Ghatak's penchant for melodrama) - Shaswata, who almost lives on and swears by hooch or 'cholai', indiscriminately delivers hyperbolic punchlines with expletives, reminiscent of the 'angry young man' prototype during the Emergency rather than the Red Book-quoting generation of the 70s; he carries Bongobala in his arms with shrieking, angst-filled outcries of 'Suorer Bachha!' evoking Dilip Kumar's 'Ae bhai, koi hain?' act from 'Mashaal'; or even the salivating Shaswata during the enactment of his play at the mental asylum and the just-about-clinching-and-then-relaxing-of-fists-moment during the shock therapy session akin to a car's clutch-and-gear functioning, etc. Amplified exaggeration with playing-to-the-gallery-moments' galore, just enough to earn accolades and thundering applause from a generation, living in a joyless dungeon of failed ambitions and shattered dreams, finally being able to relate to the tragic story of a 'mad genius' who was a 'failure' in his lifetime. But Ghatak is much beyond the platitudes of the stereotypical portrait of an underdog. No, his life cannot be trivialised into a tragedy inhibited by dejection, pain, self-destruction and failure. On the contrary, it is a celebration of hope, of unwavering human spirit, of survival, of joy and optimism - boundless and unrestrained.

Stoker

Stoker is the most twisted, subverted, outrageous adaptation of Hamlet (with juxtaposed elements of Macbeth as well) you'll ever see. The eeriness and perversity of the deeply menacing sinisterness, cocooned in a sensuous and provocative atmosphere of disquieting tension, brings out a more evolved phase of Park Chan Wook's filmmaking. The violence is more internal, stripped of the spectacular grandiosity, deliberately restrained to fit into the lyricism of the breathtakingly stylized imagery and visually stunning frames. Compelling fetishization of the psycho-sexual broodings makes the film a poetry of violence rather than a ritual of the obviousness of this genre.