Review of Bengali Movie - Hanuman.Com

From the title of the movie it was quite obvious to assume that this movie has some connection with the cyber world and when you start watching this movie, the title credit itself will confirm your assumption, where it shows two people doing a very dirty video chat over Skype.

The story starts with Anjaniputra Sensharma(Prosenjit Chatterjee), a math teacher in a village nearby Basirhat where he lives with his wife Tanushree(Mausumi Bhattacharya). His

life is limited to his home, his school, his co-workers and his villagers. He has no connection with the outer world as much, for him the cable connection on TV is the only way to connect with the outer world. Suddenly one day enters a computer along with an internet connection, in his life. In the beginning it was just a TV with a type-writer for Anjaniputra, but gradually he enters in the world of World Wide Web and started understanding that the knowledge of whole world ranging from the facts about the cockroach to Albert Einstein is there in the computer. He used to become so much involved with web world that he started  

de-touching with the real world around him. Then a girl Maria came in his web world and becomes his online friend very soon, but something happened in this relationship which forced Anjaniputra to go to Iceland leaving his own familiar world.

The screenplay is good in the first half till the point the story is in India. The way the small details have been shown of the life on an ordinary man is commendable. The way the story unfolds in first half it keeps you engaged especially the turning point sometime before the interval is totally a surprise. But when the ordinary man starts his extraordinary journey to Iceland the story keeps going to a totally different track. All of sudden it tries to became a crime thriller which is unfortunately not smart enough. It seems the director has not permission to shoot in Iceland for more days so he wanted to wrap up the story in a hurry, everything is placed properly to help our protagonist. The mystery solving part in the climax is just childish. While watching this childish part every audience will have too many questions to ask to the Director and Story writer Gaurav Pandey. Gaurav do you really believe that it is so simple to enter in the house of a Mayor of a city or to hack his computer? Grow up Gaurav and show some maturity next time because the audience expects something mature from you. 

Now a days , Prosenjit Chatterjee has become a brand associated with the movies made for multiplex going urban audiences and he is doing well too with such movies in the recent years. Here too it has no exception. He acts very well in both the parts. The scenes where he witnessed an unwanted incident on computer and then the reaction in his feelings are very good; it is a mix emotion of sadness and fear in his face and it looks so real.

Mausumi Bhattacharya who played Tanushree, wife of Anjaniputra does a good job. The innocence in her face is very nice. The portions where she is feeling deprived of her husband’s love has been enacted by her very well.

There is a very good thing about Bengali movie industry and that is its huge army of good character actors who can give enough support to the lead actors. Here too there is no exception. Kaushik Sen is wonderful as the geography teacher Mithilesh Babu, who is ready with a dirty joke every time. While Rudranil as the cable service provider Panchu is brilliant, his comic timing is awesome. Both Kaushik and Rudranil have proved once again that for them the length of the role does not matter.There is Kharaj Mukherjee too but he has not been given enough opportunity to connect with the audiences.

But in the second half of the movie when the story shifts to Iceland two new character artistes have been introduced to the Bengali movie. One is the director Gaurav Pandey himself and another is his daughter Saloni Pandey. This real life father and daughter duo has played on screen father and daughter too who lives in Iceland but actually are from Bangladesh. Saloni as nerd Nury shines very well as a computer savvy teenager, she looks good on screen. But it is her father Gaurav Pandey, who steals the show with his fabulous performance. Gaurav’s character Hassan is little inspired from a character with the same name from the Anjun Dutta directed movie “The Bong Connection”, but this Dirty-mouthed Hassan is more enjoyable than the earlier.

Apart from that, there are two foreign actors too in main characters, Saskia ranwig as Maria, the online friend of Anjaniputra and Oli Bigalke as the Mayor of Reykjavik, Iceland. Both of them have done an average job.

No matter how good Gaurav Pandey as an actor is, but as a director he fails to impress the audiences this time. Though he had managed to build the film well in the first half but god knows why suddenly he changed the track of a simple tale of relationship and emotion to a silly crime thriller. Hope to see something better from you next time.

Technically this film is good in parts. The cinematography by Madhusudan Shi and Oliver Koeppel is good. Sanjib Dutt does very average job as the editor, there are so many moments in the movie which looks like junk and could have been easily edited out. The moment before the interval when Anjaniputra’s mind is travelling from real to surreal while sitting outside a temple is totally bizarre. Then the dreams like situations which keep coming in the movie in a regular interval are totally unwanted. 

The music is not the USP of the film but it is true that the song “Prithivi ta naki” by Gautam Chatterjee has been used very well in this movie. It appears as a very much situational song for the movie. There is a remix version of two Tagore songs too, “Mama chitte” and “Je chhilo amar swapanocharini”. Also there is a remix of “Ikir Mikir ” and an original soundtrack too sung by Arijit singh and composed by Indradeep  Dashgupta which is good. But the only track which will be with you even after coming out of the theatres is “Prithivi”.

On a whole the movie has created a lot of pre release hype thanks to the presence of the extra ordinary man Prasenjit Chatterjee and the movie will do a good business for that buzz. But ultimately after watching the movie you will surely feel cheated. This is an example of how a good story idea can be wasted. This concept had lot of potential and I wish more focus would have been given on the emotional journey of the man rather than his physical journey. The posters of the movie may be selling it saying “An Extraordinary Journey Of An Ordinary Man” but it is actually “An Ordinary Movie Of An Extraordinary Actor”