Tuesday 27 March 2012

Bhuter Bhabishyat (Future of the Past) [2012]


Bhuter Bhabishyat, the debut feature of Anik Dutta, has turned out to be the surprise hit of the season. A whimsical storyline, a motley of idiosyncratic characters, script filled with hilarious one-liners and witticisms, beautifully guised social satire, great storytelling, impeccable production designs, great screen chemistry between the various actors, a number of fine performances by the ensemble case, and terrific photography – loads of things worked for this refreshingly humorous movie, thus helping it appeal so strongly to viewers, and having recommendations about it spread largely through positive word of mouth. The movie is about a young ad filmmaker (Parambrata Chatterjee), who, while contemplating the plot for his first feature film while waiting in an old and dilapidated palatial mansion, gets acquainted with a quintessential Bengali bhadralok with Leftist leanings (Sabyasachi Chakraborty) who offers to tell him a story about the plight of ghosts in contemporary Calcutta that might just make for the perfect movie. To say any more would be to reveal key spoilers. The ensemble cast includes turns by Swastika Mukherjee, Saswata Chatterjee, Mir, Paran Bandopadhyay, among others. Though the movie – an unabashed tribute to the great Satyajit Ray (with references to his Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne and Hirak Rajar Deshe) – doesn’t have great depths as such (its essentially an intelligent but lighthearted comedies), and quite self-indulgent at times, it did manage to be a mighty enjoyable watch for me.








Director: Anik Dutta
Genre: Comedy/Social Satire/Ensemble Film
Language: Bengali
Country: India

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