Review of Bengali movie “Chander Pahar”

Making a movie adapting a classic novel is not a new thing for Bengali movies, but to adapt a novel like “Chander Pahar” on the big screen need guts from the whole film unit. The backdrop of the story is so much larger than life that it was really a challenge for the whole team to recreate the same adventure which the readers can feel while reading the novel by the great author Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay.

Hats off to the production house Venkatesh films for investing around 15 Crore to make the movie in such a large scale which no other Bengali movie has dared ever.

From the time the movie was announced everyone have two doubts, first one whether it will be actually possible to recreate the incidents mentioned in the movie and second whether Dev will be able to carry off the role of Shankar which is totally out of his comfort zone. Let’s try to find the answers for these doubts.

The story has not been literally followed, some minor changes has been made to wrap up the story in 150 minutes time, but the soul of the story has been kept unchanged. The main story is almost similar where Shankar the adventurous young guy from Bengal goes to South Africa for employment and also to fulfil his adventurous dreams. There he meets Dieogo Alvarez who accompanies him in the search of diamond mine at Chander Pahar, the mountain of Moon. In his journey Shankar not only discovers the hidden dangers of the outer world rather he also discovers his inner world emotions.

The screenplay has been written with doing some necessary changes but the good thing is that the story has never been twisted to present the lead actor Dev as a commercial film hero. Only one negative point is that the movie looks so lengthy especially in the first half it takes too much time to build the plot for the main story. In the second half also some more emotional equation could have been added between Shankar and Diego Alvarez’s friendly relation, otherwise the journey of the two guys seems little monotonous until the death of Alvarez. But still there are some sequences which are breathtaking like Shankar’s encounter with the lion and the black Mamba, the rock climbing scene by Diego and Shankar, the sequences when Shankar is trapped in a cage and the sequences in the Kalahari Desert before the climax.

As a director it is the best work of Kamaleswar Mukherjee. He has performed the huge responsibility of recreating the adventurous journey on screen brilliantly. From choosing appropriate locations to taking good performance from his entire cast and technical team, Kamaleswar has done everything with 100% perfection.

There may have lots of questions about selecting Dev as Shankar but when you will see the movie you will not doubt on the selection made by the production house and the director. When you have to invest a lot of money to a movie then it becomes necessary to take a popular actor to create the required pre release buzz for the movie so that the budget can be recovered. Probably that was the reason for which the production house chooses Dev over some other probable options like Indraneil Sengupta or Abir Chatterjee. No matter whatever the reason is to take Dev, the good thing is that the story has never been compromised to add commercial movie elements keeping Dev in mind. For Dev it is the toughest role for his whole career. So far his ability to fight and dance well in commercial movies was considered as his strong point, doing good acting was never his strength. But here he has to act and only act without any dancing or fighting. For the maximum part of the movie he has to act alone without many dialogues. In such cases the actor has to emote through his expressions and Dev has tried his best to look convincing for most of the part of the movie. Although it is true that there is scope of improvement for Dev’s acting but there is no doubt that it is his best work so far.

Another important character Diego Alvarez has been played by Gerard Rudolf, who looks perfect for the role. He has done very natural acting. Here the actor has to talk some of his dialogues in an accented Bengali as he has been shown as hailing from Portuguese Chinsurah and he has spoken Bengali quite well.

The rest of the cast has provided able support. But the main character of the film is the backdrop of the story, South Africa. The whole technical team has done their best to present South Africa and the wildlife journey as real as possible. The cinematographer Soumik halder and Subhankar Bhar has captured South Africa through their lenses superbly. When there is very few dialogues and there are only two actors on the screen then the sound design becomes very important and full credit goes to Biswadeep Chatterjee for capturing the sound so well that it gives you the feeling to accompany Shankar in his journey. The background and music done by Indradeep Dasgupta and Debojyoti Mishra has influences of South African music which goes well with mood of the movie. Editor Rabiranjann Moitra has done a good job except for the sequences in the beginning when the narration of Shankar’s story started. The transition between the sequences showing the past and present of Shankar in not very clear in the beginning. The visual effects have been done extremely well considering the limited budget, except for the volcano eruption sequence which could have been shown in a better way.

On a whole Chader Pahar is a milestone in the history of Bengali movies. A whole film unit has dared to see a dream taking a lot of risk and giving their 100% for it and now it’s the audiences turn to give them the support and courage in return so that more such movies can be made in future.