Jaatishwar (Bengali) Reincarnation tale with a twist

Cast: Prosenjeet Chatterjee, Jisshu Sengupta, Swastika Mukherjee, Kharaj Mukherjee, Tamal Roychoudhury, Mamata Shankar, Ananya Chatterjee,
Sujan Mukherjee, Abir Chatterjee, Ananya Chatterjee and others

By Shoma A. Chatterji

Jaatishwar offers a challenging and unusual take on reincarnation. A middle-aged social recluse, Kushal Hazra (Prosenjit), assistant librarian at the Chandannagar Central Library off Kolkata, believes he is Anthony Phiringee, a Kobigaan (poems as a musical battle between singers) performer, writer and singer who won awards against veteran Bengali poet-singers of his time – 177 years since the time of the present story. Rohit Mehta (Jisshu Sengupta), a young Gujarati, who was born in Kolkata but hardly knows Bengali, chances upon Hazra during his research for his dissertation on the songs and the life of Phiringee, a Portuguese who settled in Kolkata, married a Bengali Brahmin widow and had tremendous command over the ethnic performing and musical art.
Unlike most reincarnation films, Hazra is very different from what Phiringee was. He cannot compose or sing, is timid and diffident and lives all alone, while Anthony had the courage to break through the linguistic-cultural-ethnic barrier of the performing Bengali and gained wide acceptance by both his peers and his patrons. Prosenjit, both as Hazra and Phiringee, gives an award-worthy performance, though the Christ like look for his Anthony persona could have been toned down to make him look more real.
But Srijit structures the film in such a way that he’s able to cover three different tracks and tries to merge them to make a cohesive whole, which unfortunately fails to make an impact. He creates another sub-plot, that focusses on Jisshu’s frustrations on being rejected by Mahamaya (Swastika), who is fiercely parochial about everything in Bengali music. This subplot to anchor the beginning and the end would have worked well had Srijit not gone into excesses of introducing too many characters and needless incidents that tend to take away from the core story – of reincarnation and the music of Phiringee.
The second sub-plot is a detailed celluloid tribute to contemporary Bengali music and song in general, and the music of eminent music masters like Kabir Suman, Rupam Islam, Anindyo Chatterjee and others. This culminates in a Bangla Band music contest between Kolkata youngsters and Bangladesh singers. Rohit suddenly decides to enter this to impress Mahamaya, though we are not given any insight into his being a talented performing artist anywhere in the film, except for his interest in music research. This becomes an exaggerated tribute to contemporary Bengali music, which jars terribly when it constantly cuts into the much more sublime and soft musical insults and abuses rendered during the kobigaan contests in 19th century Kolkata patronised by the rich and aristocratic zamindars.
The film would have been brilliant had Srijit not backed up with a double-twist in the climax – one that seems to have been inspired by the climax of Baseraa (1981) where Raakhee pretends to go mad all over again after her return from an asylum. The second twist is even more clichéd, but that would be giving the secret away to those who would want to watch the film.
Jaatishwar will win hands down in the performance department. Prosenjit unfolds another dimension of his tremendous talent. The film, however, be archived forever for the brilliant musical score by Kabir Suman and the mind-blowing cinematography of Soumik Haldar. But as said many times before, if the content lacks focus and goes haywire from time to time, the best technique cannot raise the film to levels of excellence beyond a point. Take it a bit slow Srijit, you have time on your side!