Ekdin Theek

This core story had strong cinematic possibilities ruined by the director trying to make the film a platform for his or someone else’s poetry. There is too much poetry than one can handle. This is tweaked by Siddha (Debasree Roy),a woman friend of Nikhilesh,older than him but with whom he finds closer bonding that is more than friendship but less than love.. One strongly suspects that the addition of this superfluous character was to raise the USP of the film by including Debasree Roy. Roy looks charismatic minus the deepening lines on her face. It would perhaps have done the film good had she been a fiction of Nikhilesh’s poetic imagination. Roy does not seem interested in her character within the film.

When the political party (whose identity remains nebulous for obvious reasons) makes Nikhilesh a candidate to further its prospects in the forthcoming elections,Nikhilesh happily agrees. His father is shocked to learn this from his Delhi links. They throw shaded threats at him. But Nikhilesh refuses to withdraw his name. Soumen Dutta then drops a bombshell. He tells his son that the award was ‘fixed’ by him with the help of his contacts in Delhi! A shocked Nikhilesh wants to confess the truth,but his ‘allies’ will not let him. His party colleagues are aghast. The publisher has put in a lot of money on his award-winning book. The filmmaker has already paid him for the film rights. “What will my family say?” asks a desperate Ankita whose ‘family’ remains absent – literally,socially and metaphorically throughout the film. But Nikhilesh has made up his mind to hold a press conference without the backing of his ‘friends.’

The closure is left to interpretation. But one can take a guess. The closing shots show him back in the fields flying kites with his urchin friend. Ashrunu as Nikhilesh fails to impress. Mousumi as Ankita is listless and artificial. The publisher and filmmaker look anything but. The only genuine person is the street-urchin. Dhritiman Chatterjee as his father and Soma Dey as the mother are the two saving- graces of the film. The director deserves credit for portraying a screen mother as a realistic homely and gentle soul who actually chops vegetables,fries fish and scolds the maid for breaking crockery.

Verdict : **

Two stars go to the acting by the parents of the hero and the title-song.