Kolkata Diaries

The first story,arguably the best executed,draws life from the interaction between an upper middle-class man and a man of modest means left to spend the night in a hospital. While the underbelly of the city bares its fangs outside,Manmatha (Anjan Dutt) and Jagadish (Biplab Chatterjee) paint a picture of the two ends of belief – superstition and dismissal. While the thread of violence seems a little loud compared to the general mood of quiet,the first story is the one that has its feet firmly on the ground. The second story talks about how anxiety and fear take over the life of what you call a faceless common man. While the climax seems more forced that shocking,Arun Mukhopadhyay’s effortless portrayal of a man cowering under the demands of uncertainty,failure and insecurity saves the day. The third and the most hyped of the stories,however,leaves a lot to be desired. While there’s a stray mention of Naxalism in the earlier thread,the plurality of subtexts and the neo-realistic stance of execution in the last story fails to stir us,despite the familiar context – that of upper middle-class youth unsure of their desires in life. There’s a telecast of the Nandigram massacre on TV while the protagonist strips,drinks,plays a guitar and surrenders himself to complete suspension of reality. Are we to read it as complacence or a subconscious reaction to the collective reality of the world around? There’s little help from the director. There’s also a mention of Marx,a Bengali intellectual’s favourite showpiece. But we suspect,it’s intended to act as a stamp of the film’s aspired class as we are not ready to believe that people,with any claim to intellect would routinely quote Marx in our city after a few drinks. And these are just a few of the things that keep your city at an arm’s length from Mukhopadhyay’s.