In "Barun Babur Bondhu” (Barun Babu’s Friend) - who is the friend after all? The Godot-like President? The old footballer pal Suku? Or Captain Nemo?
Director Anik Dutta had wowed the intelligent Bengali film goer with “Bhooter Bhabisyat”. While the audience rolled in belly aching laughter to the wickedly witty dialogues, it was a scathing satire of the first order, in the genre of Ray's Hirak Rajar Deshe. Known to have taken on a Government ban on one of his satirical films, Dutta is a free thinker and true to how art should hold up a mirror to prevalent sociopolitical foibles.
“Barun Babur Bondhu” has an upright octogenarian as the pivotal protagonist, who was involved in the Naxal movement during the 70s Emergency. The plot circles aspects of his extended family and friends and how everyone is tired of his uncompromising ideology of self-reliance. Especially when he can use his influences in the upper political echelons and pull a few strings here and there for his children's benefit.
The film is inspired by Ramapada Chowdhury’s “Chaad”. Of course, for those who have read it, Somnath babu reappears in the form of Barun babu in the film. One great thing about Chowdhury’s stories is that they come with almost ready-made screenplays in their detailed stage direction/description. There are recognizable facets of Chowdhury himself in the character of Somnath/Barun too. Chowdhury had settled in Calcutta in the 1940s, to study English in Presidency College. He was more of a recluse like Barun, infrequent in social spaces like the canteen, where among others, Satyajit Ray and Siddhartha Sankar Roy (who became the Chief Minister of West Bengal) would engage in endless addas over cups of infusions. India’s Partition, the riots, the famine and the refugee crisis deeply affected Chowdhury, and it reflected in most of his work. Chowdhury concentrated on the urban middle class and their inner contradictions in his fiction, often imbuing his novels with photographic qualities that led to screen adaptations. “Banpalashir Padabali”, “Kharij”, “Ekdin Achanak”, “Ek Doctor Ki Maut” were all inspired by his stories.
In “Barun babu r Bandhu”, Barun sounds oddly like Chowdhury himself. Like Chowdhury, Barun too casts a dispassionate but probing eye on human weaknesses and foibles of society. One of Barun's old friends, Sukumar in the film (or Rameshwar from the original story) is played by Paran Bandyopadhyay. The veteran Paran perhaps inimitably exhibits in his histrionics everything that Barun is not. But while the fiction had hinged on the concept of one’s roof or one’s own house, the film keeps its focus on the missing “friend”, giving the film an entirely new theme. And if I may say this, the film title really would have better suited for the short story as well.
Dutta has created magic in the characters, more so in that of the grandson, Nemo, who was hardly a visible version as Biltu in the original story. And every time Nemo came on screen with questions like: “Dadu dhymna mane ki?” the theater hall erupted with laughter. Not as comic relief, but these episodes added another dimension to human relationships where the spectrum ranged between 8 and 80 in terms of age. And like Barun held a mirror to a younger generation shrinking in its selfish outlook, Nemo holds a mirror to the adult world, an older generation, which to him is marked with conspicuous contradictions.
The film has an ensemble that needs no review. Ritwik is the ever natural, with the rest of the cast doing perfect justice to their roles. The best thing I loved about the characterization is that the retired Barun doesn't stir sympathy but commands solid respect. Barun is curiously solitary, with zero patience for useless gabble. His bedridden wife keeps him scant company, while he spends his time reading, solving crosswords and writing letters to the editor. Not for once is he portrayed as the helplessly senile doddering senior citizen waiting for someone else to help him.
Soumitra Chatterjee has essayed a wide range of fatherly/grandfatherly characters of late. But in this new film, his character outshines all others. He walks the stage with a kingly spine of stainless steel, but an absolute foil to King Lear, another father, who had raised his daughters to be his old age insurance. Barun is a citizen of a nation, rapidly changing its face, where innocence can be found only in the questions of a child, where hidden agendas surface in the guise of sudden affections in others. Barun redefines concepts like patriotism with razor sharp mind seeing through the veneer of all who surround him. But he holds no grudge. He is your father, your Dadu, your Jethu, your Mesho, your Pisho – every man you have idolized in your youth.
You should certainly watch the movie if you want to remember how these men used to be. Or maybe some still are.
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