Alternate Movies

This is one of those intelligent and abstract movie which rarely gets made in indian filmdom.Inspired by the Celebrated Sahitya Akademi awardee, poet and novelist Joy Goswami's novel of the same name. This movie brings to screen the beauty of creating something. It takes us deeper into the characters, into their consciousness and to the root of an creative idea. Unfortunately this movie didn't get its due recognition. Probably, the fact that this is a little abstract and a difficult movie to follow, worked against it.

joy goswami's book

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The story is narrated by ‘Saanjbathi’ (twilight lamp), alias ‘Tukun’.Tukun is heavily influenced by her father's creative world of poetry and paintings. Tukun who also lives in this dreamy world, is not able to come to terms with the real world. Her dream world is repeatedly broken by reality which makes her disillusioned and loose her creative visions.what happens to her did she come to terms with her dreams and real life is the rest of the movie..
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This is a very difficult story to tell. It is hard to portrait someone's consciousness on the screen. But anjan das has brought out the story beautifully on the screen.

The characters inner thoughts, dreams, visions and real life incidents mingle in the story. The story is narrated as events happening and what is tukun thinking about it, what is going on in her mind.It switches between reality and visons frequently.By making us aware of the real life incidents and how it affects tukun's vision and the way she thinks, Anjan Das gets us very close to the character. you are literally looking into the mind of the character.

The tukun character is a interesting one. She is that dreamy girl growing up under the love and care of her parents. She is shielded from the harsh real world and nurtured in a dream world by her parents. when she goes away from her parent to study at a different place, she goes through the growing into an adult routine.Dreams are broken, you are forced to face the realities of life and made to come to terms with yourself.Tukun also goes through that routine.She concludes that dreams and realities are different things and she cannot expect life to be like a dream.

Even though the movie is kind of slow. There is harldy any unnecessary scene.With in a few minutes into the movie,Anjan das easily establishes the deep relationship between the daughter and father. He weaves the story effortlessly from then on.With minimal characters and a good screenplay, anjan doesn't allow us to be distracted and keeps us focused on the characters.

Tukun who is trying hard to create something, trying hard to dream, realizes in the end that there is dream in reality itself.She also tastes the joy of creating something, she becomes a writer.

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Tukun who wants to create something, listens to his father about how he gets the idea to paint.He tells her that he gets the visions, he first gets the silhouette and then the whole image appears to him.

Tukun also wants to emulate her father tries to create the same way.she gets those visions, she sees this poor and sad women in her dreams who compels her to write a story about her.But she is just a silhouette and tukun is not able to write anything about her.She tries hard and still she is not able to write it.incidents in her life makes her decide that dreams don't exist in reality.But at the end of the movie there is a scene where she finds that one of the characters in the movie has a broken chappel similar to the poor women who came in her visions.When we see that character as the poor women , the silhouette that was presented in the vision becomes a full fledged figure.Tukun realizes that dreams don't come to you. you create them with your realities.

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Cast and Credits:
Indrani Haldar .... Tukun
Soumitra Chatterjee .... Saikat
Ratna Sarkar Mandel .... Boyfriend

Indrani Haldar & Soumitra Chatterjee

The acting by Indrani haldar and soumitra chatterjee is very good in the movie.The movie get's its credibility only because of the awesome acting by these two. Especially soumitra chatterjee, who as painter saikat has given an excellent performance.

Cinematography: Adinath Das

The movie is produced by one of the guy the indian blogosphere hates the most,IIMP boss, arindham chaudhari.But he should be appreciated for producing this movie.This script was supposedly rejected by many producers .This movie is as remote as you can go from a commercial material, don’t have an idea what made arindham produce this movie. But he did produce it under a new production company called "planman life" and successfully canvassed Columbia tri star to market it. Saanjhbathir Roopkathara has the distinction of being the first ever regional film in India to be released by a Hollywood studio.The movies supposedly did well at the box office and was very well received in the international film festivals.


Arindham chaudhari

Awards:
Its sad that this movie didn't get any national awards. Every one was hoping that this movie would clinch the indian oscar entry for that year, but it didn't. Blockbuster Devdas was sent instead .At the national level Mr and Mrs iyer took many of the big awards.

It was screened at the London film festival as one of the seven outstanding movies of the year.

joy goswami


DVD:
The DVD/VCD is released by Shradha Home Videos.More

Trivia:
Supposedly a Second part of this movie is coming in next year(2006).more

When tukun asks questions to her dad about how he gets his visions to create something. He reads her the pablo neruda poem "Poetry"

Poetry
And it was at that age...Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.more

Links:
Saanjhbathir Roopkathara official website
Joy Goswami in wiki