Kalpurush (2005) Online

There is this father-son conversation in the climax of 'KALPURUSH'. I quote the English DVD-subtitle version. Shumonto tells his father: "I may not have become someone, but when I see two people in love, I smile. And when I see someone eating alone, I cry." Ashvini, his father, replies wistfully: "I wish I could've lived my life like you did." These 2 lines, perhaps, comprise the gist of this new film by Buddhadev Dasgupta - director of teeny-weeny gems like 'Tahader Katha', 'Bagh Bahadur', 'Uttara' & 'Mondo Meyer Upakhyan' - which took nearly 3 years to reach the cinemas in India.

The film opens with a man called Ashvini following a younger man called Shumonto, who, we are told, is his son. It seems that the father is stalking - or haunting, rather - his son. As the film progresses and we meet Shumonto's ambitious wife, Supriya, and his mother, Koyel, who seems to be tied up with something in her past, we realise that the son is, indeed, haunted by his father who was a somebody. He was a successful doctor and they had this beautiful family, but something - or someone - comes in and this happy husband-wife-child drift apart. This drifting apart is too hard for these three to endure, and the son, we see, is unable to lead even a proper relationship with his wife.

I don't know of too many father-son films from Bollywood or other Indian language films. I've seen only Ramesh Sippy's 'Shakti' & Feroze A. Khan's 'Gandhi, my father'. Both were the powerful types with dramatic, sad endings. I've also seen 'Thevar Magan' & its Hindi remake 'Virasat', but they were different. KALPURUSH is drama, but not the powerful type. It is, like other Dasgupta films, creatively- photographed, dream-like, poetic & soft. This keeps the viewer absolutely un-prepared for the surprise ending, for the film hardly feels like a father-son film. It starts like a husband-wife story, creates the tension, goes to become a mother-son film, and then explains why it is so, why the son is so, what was his relationship like with his father, what happens to the father, the mother, what the son's wife does, and how the son carries on with his life.

It would be unfair to dub KALPURUSH strictly for Buddhadev Dasgupta fans. However, I do suggest that the viewers acquaint themselves with Dasgupta's films before going to see KALPURUSH. Dasgupta's films are often accused of having a near-invisible storyline. KALPURUSH is no different. It starts, too, in a very un-Buddhadev Dasgupta-ish way. Instead of bare landscapes of Puruliya & Midnapore, one sees the trams of Calcutta in the opening credits. It helps, though, for it is like - What is this, urban Bengal? Soon after this, the film turns typical Dasgupta. The rural Bengal, this time, are the scenic outdoor locales of coastal Orissa.

The actors are stupendous. Mithun Chakraborty is a legend. This is his second film with Dasgupta. He plays his age, suits the part, one just has to see him in this one. Rahul Bose is so silent one could feel the loss of his loser character. Sameera Reddy has looked good in just 3 films - 'Musafir', 'Migration' & 'Kalpurush'. I haven't seen 'Ami, Yasin ar amar Madhubala' so I can't comment on that. She better shift to the Bengali film industry. A mentor like Dasgupta would surely do her a lot good. Sudipta Chakraborty's Other Woman role is short, but long enough to bring in that right amount of glamour, desire & heartbreak. Labony Sarkar is natural with a capital N.

With the usual Buddhadev Dasgupta tropes in place, KALPURUSH is a visual treat. There are bare landscapes, dry leaves flying in the wind, haunting background score, mysterious folk artistes in even more mysterious costumes & masks, dilapidated, old buildings, and things rustic and antique. This time there is also the sea and an aeroplane flying right outside the open window. KALPURUSH is a film which needs to be seen.

A true successor of the Apu trilogy!'Memories in the mist'by Dasgupta artistically and metaphorically inter-wovens the memories and fantasies of a man of his beloved and lost father.Set in the backdrop of North Kolkata,the story paces to and fro between past and present,between reality and imagination,between innocence and lucre!Amongst the numerous metaphors used in the movie,the one which cant be helped mentioning is the reference of the piper which beckons the man to his past,his childhood and his unfulfilled dreams.With this movie,Dasgupta has also endeavored to find the base of our relationships.At the end of the film,the man reveals himself to his father and thus to the audience,and thus forces us to remind of Apu who would,despite hostility as conferred by fate,love and wonder!That is probably the reason some critic has mentioned it as'the closest modern equivalent'to a Ray movie.But whatever international applaud it gets,it may not get along too well with the Bengali audience because of its sheer lack of bangaliyana(Bengali traditions and customs)as compared to a new wave cinema by Ray or Ghatak.

Dasgupta's Kaalpursh is easily one of the finest films to come out in Bollywood. A mind-blowing astounding film. What a film! A film which isn't a commercial in any aspect, yet your gloved in it. Any award given to this flick will be insulting it. Two Thumps Way Up!

Performances: Mithun Chakraborty is a Legendary actor of Indian Cinema, My favorite actor. His performance here once again proves that he's the best in the business. Rahul Bose is outstanding, he's an actor who has the potential to go down as one of the most natural actors of Indian Cinema. Sameera Reddy is effortless. Others are also Good.

'Kaalpurush' is outstanding, mind blowing film, Which is rich in each and every aspect. Bravo!

The English Title of the movie is "Memories in the Mist". Truly this is a movie about memories and fantasies.

This movie is about Sumanta, his father (Ashwini) and their wives. All of them are haunted by their memories and fantasies – Sumanta about his father and the childhood days he spent in their native village, his mother about his father, Ashwini dreams about 'Kushumpur' his imaginary dreamland. Sumanta's wife dreams about going to America, her notion of dreamland.

At the beginning of the movie we see Sumanta and Ashwini are walking on two parallel footpaths. In the movie also lives of Ashwini and Sumanta have been shown in parallel, interwoven. And how masterfully it has been shown by the director! We see Sumanta, as a boy, roaming about his native village, watching theater on 'Ramayana', listening to folk music in flute, following on bicycle his father's old fashioned car. Parallelly we see Sumanta's son wanders about the same village, watches the folks of some theater group (performing Ramayana again), and takes pictures from his grandfather's old camera.

Ashwini never escaped from his fantasy, 'Kusumpur'. In one scene we see Ashwini seating in front of a valley. The picturesque valley is certainly reminiscent to 'Kusumpur'. Ashwini looks behind; we see his old fashioned car and a troop of theater group. He leaves them all behind; he doesn't stop and let his car drop from the hilly road to the valley. The sound of explosion is overlapped with the sound of celebration of Dassera as the scene cuts into the scene of setting fire on Ravana.

Sumanta's mother, Putul, will probably live remains of her life with the memory of her husband. We see Putul stopping her son, Sumanta, to close the window of her room. Because she thinks she can see her husband outside the window and she has only one window in her room.

Sumanta's wife daydreams about America. That's her 'Kushumpur'. One day, in a surreal scene, she disappears into her fantasy.

Sumanta also thinks about his native village. The melodious tune in flute often haunts him. But he never gives up to his memory. He remains what he is. The movie starts with a view of sky; not a clear view; the wires over the tram line create an allusion of spider's web. The movie ends with another view of sky as Sumanta, playing with his children on seashore, throws a ball upward; the camera follows the ball and freezes there. We can see a clear sky this time.

Buddhadeb Dasgupta has made a gem of a cinema – his masterpiece. The camera movement, direction, mise en scene are absolutely of top class. Mithun Chakroborty as Ashwini and Rahul Bose as Sumanta are, as always, very good. I haven't seen any other of his. I certainly am looking forward to it.

The movie is ostensibly about a father and son and the parallelism in their lives. In reality, there is much too little substance in the story to merit a two hour movie. The director seems enamored with certain visual and musical metaphors. It will not be unkind to say that he does not spare a thought for the poor viewer who has taken two hours out of his life to watch his movie. The acting is uniformly poor, and the fact that none of the protagonists can speak the language unaccented makes it worse. But in the end, leaving aside the overindulgence in metaphors and camera angles and the poor movement, there is just nothing in the story or the dialog to hold an intelligent viewer's attention for longer than 30 minutes. A poor effort.

This movie like any other Buddhadeb Dasgupta movies is wondering without a plot or story line. Even an aimless movie can be good movie if the execution is perfect. But in this 'art movie' of Buddhadeb, he fails in that department too. Ad nauseating overdose of 'symbolism' (he never abandoned his ambition to create at least one scene like the legendary filmmaker Ray), anachronistic events of rural Bengal, clichés galore and obsession with the nihilism make this movie a mess. If you really like to see good Bengali movies, go for old classics of Ray or Ghatak or for that matter go for the new movies by a few contemporary directors who make good movies without being 'artificial arty'. Buddhadeb, it seems, never learns from the past.

When I watched Buddhadeb's Uttara, I was very impressed. Almost eight years later I saw 'Kaalpurush' and I felt sad about him.

Yes, Buddhadeb Dashgupta is apparently one of the best directors from Bengal in recent times who makes 'art films'. Unfortunately, just like 'oscar-baiters' from Hollywood, if one sees enough, these 'art-film'-s also fall in one formula or another. They have repetitive 'abstract' stuff (is that called symbolism or something?) that somehow appeal to the 'intellectuals' ('in' pronounced as in French). I first tasted this in the 'procession of dwarfs' in Uttara. At least they had some cool dialogues in that movie. But a procession of 'Jatra' actors - where everybody is acting there part even when going from one place to another. The Hanuman standing on a bullock-cart and waving his 'gadaa' was the most ridiculous thing I could expect from such a celebrated director.

The actors did a good job, but the lack of funds and the director being highly abstracted away from reality was obvious throughout the movie. The story is not bad (though somewhat cliché if you have some idea of intellectual novels in Bengali - while these stories of complicated relationships may seem impressive to an outsider, the plots are always like this: a relationship that did not result in marriage, the man and the woman meet many years later, at least one of them married; then there is some misunderstanding between the married couple - you may involve the kid for more complications; there may be additional extra-marital affairs and everybody is kind of unhappy and depressed - yet going on with their daily life and fake relationships). A cliché story can be made into a good movie, but this one failed to do that miserably. It turns out to be like 'cottage industry and handicraft' these days - badly done, too many rough edges but passes just for being non-commercial and highly rated by the elite.

If only Buddhadeb had ventured to escape himself while making the movie and had paid some attention to details and polishing, it could have been a good movie! So 6 out of 10 - penalty for high profile garbage!!