Good: Shukno Lanka

Shukno Lanka places parallel narratives to throw in perspective,the high-profile,glamorous life of the director against the invisible,humiliating and sidetracked existence of the junior artiste. It demonstrates the universal dichotomy between the famous and the anonymous,the powerful and the vulnerable,the celebrated and the ignored in the world of cinema. Pandey ingenuously binds these two seemingly incongruent strands with a journey Chinu embarks upon with his wife. He takes a ride in a landau along the streets of Kolkata,unburdening his sadness,his sorrows and his triumphs she was kept in the dark about. The episodes appear in flashbacks during the journey. The ride ends at break of dawn when one realises the twist the director was leading to.

The private and professional life of Joy Sundar Sen spans his directorial horizon that fetches him an award at the Berlinalle 2007,his bonding with Isabella (Emma Brown) who flies down to rescue his under-production film when the producer does the disappearing act and his troubled relationship with his beautiful and suppressed wife Jhilik (Debasree Roy.) Mahesh Aney’s cinematography in his first Bengali film is both technically brilliant and emotionally moving. The landau travels along the deserted street of Kolkata with street lights casting their shadows on the happy face of Chinu. Indranil Ghosh’s production design encapsulates the different worlds of the film – the studio compound where the tea-boy ignores Chinu while distributing the studio tea,the make-up room where a top actor (Shaheb Chatterjee) uses the choicest vocabulary,the studio floors and the spacious,spic-and-span apartment of Joy Sundar and his wife,and Chinu’s single-room flat in a dingy Howrah bylane. Debajyoto Mishra’s music is infused with melody,variety and voices,spanning a range from a famous Baul number to a reinvented Kishore Kumar hit rendered by Rupam Islam.

The acting cast takes away the top prize. Sabyasachi Chakraborty’s Joy Sundar,Emma Brown’s Isabella,Debasree Roy’s Jhilik,Angana Bose’s Bela,the late Kunal Mitra’s matinee idol and Shaheb Chaterjee’s foul-mouthed,bitter start are brilliant illustrations of what acting should be. Shukno Lanka is Mithun’s show all the way though his East Bengali dialect leaves room for improvement. He lives the role of Chinu Nandy who taught himself the lesson of coping and accepting what life has dealt out. His monologue with God is atypical of his character and reminds one of Deewar. Jhilik’s breaking into a dance is another big glitch. The crowning glory comes when at the end of the ride,Mithun points out to a huge hoarding above Metro theatre in Kolkata of his forthcoming film to his wife. It carries a huge blow-up of his face. But the credits do not carry his name.
RATING : The three stars are – for direction,acting and cinematography. Well done Gaurav Pandey.