If any of you are interested to know how to make a progressive literary text into a regressive conformist film, try watching Goynar Baksho. Aparna Sen has done her magic again. She has taken an extraordinary story and turned it into a trash can for all she has learnt that year. Watching the film is like talking to a typical 'dumb blonde' who has just memorised one volume of encyclopedia. If that is an example of socially aware art film, then give me commercial trash anyday.
Well I am more perturbed because Goynar Baksho is one of my favourite Bengali novels of all time. I have several choicest words to describe Sen's endeavours but those are rude. So I'm just gonna point out some points that drives me bonkers:
- Why Moushumi Chatterjee? Did Sen thing MC would be a comic relief. Was the the role of pishima supposed to be comical. Was she thinking that she is adopting an Enid Blyton story?
- Why did she get whole aspect of "Muktijuddho" into is? In this film, she was neither able to show any liberated woman character nor any liberated Bangladeshi Character.
- A daughter from a Zamindar family hopes to marry a servant's son- does this plot sound new, liberating or promising in anyway? If not, do not watch the film.
- Let's not talk about Kankana's casting. Each one of have our crosses to bear, she has a mother in form of a mediocre actress and worse filmmaker.
I can go on but the only thing I'm ending up doing is irritating myself more. At the end of the day,
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening.
