The Storyteller movie review: Paresh Rawal, Adil Hussain film rewards you for your patience

The compact between the two men feels like like a twist on an old grandma’s tale, the kind master story-teller Ray revelled in: Tarini Babu will supply the magic pill of his storytelling, and Ratan Bhai will find his eyelids getting heavier, until slumber claims him.

There is plainness and linearity — one step after another — in Mahadevan’s story-telling, but the style suits this tale. The inclusion of animation in Tarini’s imaginative wanderings feels like a nod to Ray’s fascination with the form even if the stories-within-the-story are not beguiling enough. The rest of it, though, keeps us with it.

Like many traditional Bengalis of that era and class, Tarini squabbles with his fish-monger about freshness and price, and is seen gobbling ‘puchka’ and ‘mishti’. His encounters with sprightly librarian Suzie Fibert (Tannishtha Chatterjee) gives him a chance to go on about Gorky, and other beloved classic Russian authors. The ‘bahi-khata’ wielding Ratan is desperate for the grace of Saraswati, standing in for both knowledge and the classy-lady-in-understated-saris (Revathy) he has given his heart to.

Tarini is the spinner of yarns, which he enjoys telling, but his pen, gifted to him by a dearly beloved departed wife (Anindita Bose) has never been put to use. Ratan, the ‘eighth-class pass’ seller of cotton, pronounces it, as some ‘motabhais’ are wont to, as ‘kotun’: as far as Tarini is concerned, the man from the other side of the country is quite beyond the pale, being both vegetarian and capitalist.

The differences between the two are a bit on the nose; the references, wrapped within the names of characters, even more so — Ratan’s grouchy man-Friday is called Manik (Jayesh More), another name for Ray. The two lead performances make up for this. Though the supporting cast does its job well enough, ‘The Storyteller’ is essentially a two-hander. Even though the casting of the Gujju-in-real-life Paresh Rawal as the intellectual Bengali, and Adil Hussain as the sheep-counting-to-no-avail businessman, feels counter-intuitive to begin with, the actors are consummate enough to carry it off.

Alert viewers (those who aren’t familiar with Ray’s story, ‘Golpo Bolo Tarini Khuro’) will twig on to the reveal early enough, but the film earns it, along with our trust.

The Storyteller movie cast: Paresh Rawal, Adil Hussain, Revathy, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Jayesh More, Anindita Bose
The Storyteller movie director: Ananth Narayan Mahadevan
The Storyteller movie rating: 3 stars