Bristhi Bristi / The Night Of The Interview (Bengali) / A good attempt

Cast: Pallavi Chatterjee, Rajesh Shringarpore, Suchismita, Disha and Ashok Singh

The Night of The Interview is a bi-lingual film shot simultaneously in Bengali and Hindi. The Bengali version is called Brishti Brishti and for a change, both the titles are relevant to the story. The film is about a journalist (Rajesh Shringarpore) who comes at night to interview Ragini Mitra, a renowned author (Pallavi Chatterjee) who has just won a big literary award for a novel titled Baarish. She is a recluse and refuses to interact with the media. The interviewee has been appointed by the author’s regular publisher (Suchismita) who persuades her to agree to this interview. The Bengali name suggests the novel she won the award for and also for the author’s panic-stricken fear of the rains. There is one catch which gives the story its social relevance — she is blind from birth.
The story unfolds in 24 hours and has just two individuals — the journalist and the author. As she negotiates with her blindness and begins to open up to a man perhaps for the first time in her life, the relationship between the interviewer and the interviewee go through sometimes slow and sometimes sudden changes till it turns into one of conflict and confrontation. Who is this man whose touch the author finds so familiar and yet shocking? She cannot see him but the touch reminds her of something traumatic that happened to her in the past. What happened to her in the past and how did she cope with it? Why is she so terror-stricken by the rains and yet names her novel after the rains? These are questions that are answered, layer by layer, through the film.
It is a very original take on relationships between a visually-impaired but talented young woman who has learnt to live on her own, and a man who comes into her life suddenly one night to turn it topsy-turvy. The social angle steps in through Ragini’s constant interaction with the activists of the National Association for the Blind whose team members train her in Braille . She lives alone and discovers a whole new world when her aunt throws her out of their home after the traumatic incident. The film would have taken a better turn if the narrative gave some space to the activities of the NAB, but falls short of doing this. As a consequence, the film tends to drag on as the camera cuts back and forth between Ragini and the journalist and focusses mainly on dialogue.
Pallavi was specially trained by NAB to essay the role of a blind girl. She is very good but needs to trim down to fit into similar roles in the future. Rajesh Shringarpore is good in a many-layered role. Ashok Singh, an excellent actor is extremely theatrical while Suchismita’s Hindi is atrocious. The editing and the cinematography could have been better. The prolonged melodramatic twist in the climax strips the film of much of its qualitative intentions. The music, specially the Ahista ahista number that comes as a repeated metaphor through the film, is very good but again, a bit loud at moments.
— SAC

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