It’s yesterday once more

In Ghose’s sequel, we are led to confront the next generation comprising Amrita, Asim and Aparna’s daughter, Sanjoy’s son and wife and their family friends, including Hari’s frivolous wife, Simul. Instead of revisiting Palamau, the motley crowd make a freakish foray to a north Bengal forest and get stranded in an upheaval during that short trip. The present generation seems to float about without any objectives or primary concerns, except for Amrita who seems to have internalised the trauma and shock of 9/11. She is still persecuted by the destruction of innocent lives and the fact that her only intimate friend, Yilmaz, has been sucked into the event. Amrita is, in fact, the conscience-keeper of the film. But while dealing with the complexities of contemporary life as well as its inherent vacuousness, Ghose appears less nuanced. When Ray tackled the journey of drifting youths in the sixties, it was a period of rabid bohemianism. Critic Pauline Kael felt Ray’s film had “larger, deeper associations impending” and that we recognise the presence of the mythic in the ordinary, although it is not the mythic we’re left with after the ordinary has been resolved.

Unfortunately, the sequel does not have similar depth. It is just a futile exercise in profiling a generation and its self-obsessive behaviour patterns. It does have the occasional spark though — provided mainly through the character of Amrita, played by Tabu, who tries to make contact with truth outside herself.

Ghose is known for his visual metaphors and tropes and they are not absent in this film either. But they are present only in patches.