Review of Bengali Cinema Hemanta

William Shakespeare’s #Hamlet has inspired many directors to adapt it in form of plays or movies as it is an interesting emotional drama of complex characters. In India Vishal Bhardwaj has already made an adaptation in Hindi as #Haider but #Hemanta is the first Bengali film to be adapted from #Hamlet. It was a long cherished dream of Director Anjan Dutta to adapt it as a film on celluloid and finally he has done it and #Hemanta is here in theaters.

Anjan Dutta has tried to be true to the original play as much as possible though he has transformed the story to today’s time in the backdrop of Kolkata. But the characters are almost true to the original as per their basic emotions. Here the Kingdom of Denmark has been changed to a Bengali Film production house, Agradoot Pictures and the ghost of Hamlet’s father has been changed to mobile messages from an unknown number which does not exists in real.

The story begins when Hemanta (Parambrata Chatterjee) comes back to Kolkata from America where he is studying film direction. Hemanta comes back to search answers of some sms which he is getting from some unknown numbers. Not only is him, rather his childhood friend Hirak (Jishu Sengupta) is also receiving similar messages. Hemanta believes that the sms are not just spam rather someone wants to give him some message. Soon he discovers that the messages are related with his father’s death which is believed to be a suicide but after decoding the messages Hemanta gets convinced that it was a murder and there was a conspiracy going on in his father’s production house. After coming back to Kolkata, Hemanta also discovers that his widow mother Gayatri (Gargee Roychowdhury) has married his uncle Kalyan Sen(Saswata Chatterjee). Gayatri was an actress before her first marriage and now both Gayatri and Kalyan are managing the production house as Trustees. With the help of the mobile sms, Hemanta understands it was his mother and uncle who were involved in the murder of his father and now he wants to take revenge but not sure how to take revenge. On the other hand Hirak also discovers some ongoing money laundering in Agradoot pictures with the help of his hacker friend Yuri (Shubhra Saurav Das). Hemanta is disturbed, impatient and clueless to take decision on the other hand Hirak is calm and composed and want to take revenge in legal way. In between all these, there is Olipriya (Payel Sarkar) who is a childhood friend of Hemanta and daughter of Kalyan Sen’s manager PulakBabu. Both Olipriya and Hemanta like each other but their priorities in life are different. Olipriya wants to get married with Hemanta and settle down where Hemanta is clueless about his future and not ready to commit to any relationship in the middle of the complications he is going through.

It’s true that to adapt a vast novel in a two and half hours film is very tough and the screenplay writers have tried here to touch the main characters and their basic emotions but still it looks like hurried towards the climax. It seems something remained untold or could have been explained a bit more. There are some moments which are really well scripted specially the confrontation scenes between Hemanta and Gayatri, the love hate relationship of the mother son duo has been portrayed very well. Also the relationship between Hirak and Yuri has been written wonderfully. There is not a single mention of their sexuality but still their relationship is pretty clear. But one will feel sad that this adaptation has just told the story which you already know it has added nothing new to add.

As a director Anjan Dutta is okay. Credit should be given to him for choosing perfect actors for playing different characters. But he should have been more careful about the screenplay. He has become so obsessed with the characters that he has missed to conclude the story in a perfect way.

All the actors have been perfectly cast and have done fine jobs. Parambrata Chatterjee has done one of his career best performances as the disturbed confused Hemanta. The impatience and aggressiveness of his character has been portrayed perfectly by the body language and mannerism of Parambrata. As per the director, no other actor in Bengali film industry could have done the character better than Parambrata Chatterjee and Parambrata has proved his director right.

Same can be said about Jishu Sengupta who is brilliant as calm and composed Hirak, who is exactly opposite to the character of Hemanta. Jishu Sengupta has played a supporting character that has not much screen time but he has managed to left impression. The chemistry between Jishu and Parambrata is absolutely wonderful; together they both have complemented each other in two exactly opposite characters.

For a change ,Saswata Chatterjee has played an out an out negative character and he is absolutely brilliant as the white  collared criminal Kalyan Sen who can go to any extent to be in top of his business.  There is not much scope for showing his love for Gayatri but in one scene he has been allowed to express his emotions towards her and he is too good in that.

Gargee Roychowdhury is undoubtedly one under rated actress in Bengali film industry. She is a powerhouse of talent and here she has fully utilized the opportunity to showcase her talent as Gayatri Sen. Gayatri is a woman torn between her affection towards her son and love towards her husband, the dilemma of the character has been expressed perfectly by Gargee . The pain and mental stress of her on screen character can be visible in her acting.

Payel Sarkar is good as Olipriya a simple girl with simple dreams in a complicated world around her. Payel has very limited screen time but still it can be said it is much better role for her compared to her last few commercial movies. She has done full justice with her character and has left her mark.

Apart from the main cast special mention should be given for two actors who have small roles but they are just extraordinary. One is Sagnik Chatterjee as raju , the helping hand of Kalyan Sen in his criminal activities and another one is Shubhra Saurav Das who has played Yuri, the gay friend of Hirak who is a hacker and helps Hirak to solve the mystery of the SMSes. Both of them have done fine job in their limited scope.

There is not much scope for songs but the background score by Neel Dutta is effective. But the only song which is there, towards the climax is not up to the mark which we expect from this father son duo.

Overall #Hemanta is a film which is neither too good nor too bad. Story wise it has nothing new to tell but still you can watch it for the brilliant performances by the whole cast.