Because the kids will love it, for Dev and the animals. Which brings us to the question: should you watch it? Of course you should, and here’s why. The music - done by Debajyoti Mishra and Indraadip Das Gupta - is operatic in parts, especially the soaring opening track. Technically, this film will be a landmark for Soumik Haldar and Subhankar Bhar, who’ve woven magic with the camera. He’s walking a new path here for Bengali cinema and like Shankar, he’s dreamt of uncharted lands he wants to conquer. As for emoting, he tries really hard - he’s come miles from Paglu and Rangbaaz here - but the strain of carrying a whole film on his broad shoulders shows. Dev looks fluent in the action scenes, riding on horseback, fighting the wild animals. For no fault of its own, the film misses a heroine. Their interactions are stilted and as a result, the film seems too long. There are no subtle touches to show the developing friendship between Shankar and Diego. Or why Jack Sparrow must have a sense of humour in Pirates of the Caribbean. Which is why Lord of the Rings needs the banter between Frodo and Sam. But for such films, the trick is to have humane interludes that break the big-ticket action and air the story, as it were. There’s a mission, a journey and the fulfilment of the mission.
So why does the face look like a cross between a walrus and a Cheshire cat?Īs in all quest stories, the narrative is linear. Two, the team had a blank canvas for creating the mythical monster, Bunyip. One, the volcanic eruption looks amateurish. As for the CGI work, it’s uniformly good for a Bengali film, dipping at just two points. The film’s high point are the human-animal interactions, which are real and thrilling, especially the lion’s attack on Shankar’s cabin at night. Panoramic shots of the wilderness are like none seen in Tollywood before. The landscape is breathtaking and for those of my generation, it’s a trip down memory lane to the time when VHS cassettes introduced us to the continent through films like Savage Harvest, Hatari and Born Free. The film scores big on its showcasing of Africa. His journey takes him on an incredible path from his quiet Bengali village to the heart of Africa in search of a fabled diamond mine. Just as in the book, Dev’s character is a dreamer who wants to travel the world. No such deviations are needed for Shankar though. So the gutsy Diego Alvarez, played by Gerard Rudolf, is shown as hailing from Portuguese Chinsurah, which is why he can speak a smattering of Bengali. The storyline follows Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s classic novella set in 1909 quite closely, with some necessary adjustments. Do they get their money’s worth? More on that later. So Chander Pahar is their symbiotic embrace, each seeking something from the other. The hero has the masses twined around his little finger, but seeks the afterglow of intellectual praise. The director is coming off Meghe Dhaka Tara - critically acclaimed, but commercially unviable.
Let’s not forget that this outing is a rebirth of sorts for Kamaleswar and Dev, as both step out of their comfort zones. The director and the actor do their best: marching, plodding, running, galloping - but sadly, never really soaring with the film. So there’s much effort and a lot of sweat in Chander Pahar. Our Tollywood voyagers may have arrived two centuries after the African explorer, but they haven’t missed his advice. “Damn right, we say” - Kamaleswar Mukherjee and Dev (reborn 2013).Īnd that is Chander Pahar for you in a nutshell.
“I will go anywhere, provided it is forward” - David Livingstone (born 1813). Should you watch it? Of course you should, and here’s why.