Review of Bishorjon

#Bishorjon is a movie about basic human feelings of giving love and being loved, no matter from which religion or which country you belong to,love is an universal emotion of human being and that has been portrayed wonderfully in the simple yet powerful story telling by Kaushik Ganguly.

The story is about Padma(Jaya Ahsaan) a Hindu young widow living in the border side village of Bangladesh nearby Ichhamati river. She lives with her old ailing father in law in a small house with very little income to survive. There is a middle aged bachelor rich powerful businessman Ganesh Mandal(Kaushik Ganguly) who lives in the same village and wants to marry Padma. To impress her he tries his level best, he pays for all her domestic expenses, visits her everyday asking for if any help is required, tries to propose her for marriage almost

every time he meets her, even he tries to manipulate the local doctor to convince her for marriage, but he never uses his powers to force her for marriage. Padma does not like to take favors from Ganesh but she has no choice, but she is not ready to marry her rather she is happy to be with the memories of her late husband. There is one void in her life, she has desire to get genuine love and care. One day a storm comes in her rather stagnant life when she finds an injured Indian Muslim guy Nasir(Abir Chatterjee) in half conscious state on the banks of Ichhamati. She not only rescued him from the border security forces rather she gives him shelter to her own house as a guest. But as it is not acceptable in society that a widow giving shelter to a stranger young man so she gives him a fake identity of her cousin brother Subhas Das. She starts getting attached to Nasir with every passing day, she starts feeling the gap of her husband in her mind with Nasir by giving him her husband’s clothes and cigarettes, though she knows Nasir is not here to stay forever, he has a family and a girlfriend waiting for him in India still she cannot control her feelings. But for a helpless widow it is not so easy to hide an Indian immigrant that too in a border side village also Ganesh has an eagle’s eye on her every movement. So how Nasir will get back to his own country, will he be able to understand the feelings of Padma, and what will happen to Ganesh all these answers are there in the climax with a twist.

The story and screenplay penned by Ganguly himself is fresh and have emotional moments to connect with audiences. The best thing about the story is its simplicity; here all the characters and their feelings are real. The good thing about the screenplay is, it never wastes time for introducing the characters rather one will get to know the background of the central characters by their conversation about their past life. Also another good thing is it breaks all the clichés about religious preferences in India and Bangladesh, here the person representing India is a Muslim and the lead characters from Bangladesh are Hindu who can celebrate Hindu festivals freely there. In the story there are two parallel love stories and both are mostly one sided but with totally different flavours, where Ganesh’s love for Padma is very loud and vocal on the other side Padma’s feelings for Nasir is silent and painful. The prelude to the climax is a scene that you will remember for long time and it will bring tears in your eyes.

As a director Kaushik Ganguly is brilliant to portray an emotional story with real feelings. In every frame he has created a magic with totally perfect detailing. There is no doubt it is one of his best work till date. With his master class direction he has made all his characters and surroundings so real that you can feel yourself present in that world while watching them on screen.

Among the actors Jaya Ahsaan is in top form, she has given many good and versatile performances in recent Bengali movies but it is her career best performance so far, she is the back bone of the story. Her body language, her painful expression through her eyes and above all her dialogue delivery in perfect Bangladeshi dialect is too good. She has got a big opportunity to showcase her talent in the central character and she has done full justice to it. It will be remembered one of carer best performance in her lifetime. Kaushik Ganguly as Ganesh has the meatiest role among all, he is comic, he is emotional, he is funny, he is jealous and he is little menace too sometime and with every emotion he will surprise you. His dialogues in perfect Bangladeshi dialect are unbelievable as it is not so easy for him being a resident of India. Once again he will confuse you whether he is better as an actor or as a director as he is just perfect in both of these. Among the three leads Abir Chatterjee looks comparatively weaker with his performance, though he tries his best to make Nasir as real as possible but it is not so easy to act opposite two extremely talented actors. Still he has managed to leave impression. Among the others both Lama and Arun Guhathakurta are in good form.

When the story is so engrossing one hardly notices about the technical details but it is the perfection of the technical team which has made the backdrop so realistic. Special mention should be given to Churni Ganguly for the makeup and costume supervision and production designer Gautam Basu for making the background and characters looking so authentic. Cinematography by Souvik Basu is of first rate. Background music by Indradip Dashgupta is good.

There is no lip sync song but music is the soul of this film. The folk songs sung and composed by Late Kalika Prasad goes very well with the narrative. The song that stands tall is “Bandhu Tor Laiga Re”, this will remain in your mind for long time.

Overall #Bishorjon is a well made movie with wonderful team work from the cast and crew. If you like to watch good content based movies then you should not miss it.