Reborn to live the past!

 An awesome year for Bengali movie industry and for movie buffs like me, 2013 witnessed some of the best works.  Following its predecessor’s footsteps, 2014 began with the blockbuster nationwide release of Jaatishwar. This was a movie I watched with my mother after a long time in a theatre in Kolkata. Although both of us keep watching movies now and then and discuss them over, it was after quite some time that we were each other’s movie partners.

Starring Prasenjit Chatterjee as Kushal Hajra, an associate librarian at Central Library in Chandannagore, Jisshu Sengupta as Rohit, pursuing colonial history studies in Portugal and chooses to a Portugese Indian poet as his dissertation subject, Swastika Mukherjee as Mahamaya, a RJ at Radio Mirchi who proudly voices her love for the language and need to reach out to people through songs that are long lost in people’s memories, Jaatishwar was quite an interesting watch for me.

Srijit Mukherjee’s fifth offering after blockbusters like Autograph and Mishar Rahashya, expectations were sky-high from the time the movie was announced. Curiosity peaked when the trailer got released and Kushal Hajra announced, “Ami Anthony Firingi” (I am Anthony Firingi). Now that we knew it is going to be a re-incarnation of Heynsman Anthony or Anthony Firingi in this life, it got added to the list of “have to watch” movies.

Photo credit: Twitter.com

A character lesser known, Anthony in 19th century Bengal had impressed people with his musical talent in Bengali as he learnt the language by reading Hindu scriptures and by understanding the meanings of folk music and lyrical compositions. He participated and won many of Kavigaan concerts. But what made him reborn as Kushal in this era was the question that tickled the mind throughout the movie and the director made a commendable job by revealing the answer right in the end. An interesting method of making your audience stay glued to the scene and not concentrate anywhere else, the idea worked brilliantly.

The next high point was its music composed by Kabir Suman. Some master compositions by the musical genius after a long time, the music got equally lauded alongside the brilliant acting from the actors.

The transition in Prasenjit Chatterjee’s characters of both Anthony and Kushal was unique. To get away from the trauma of living a past life and losing balance in his present life, Kushal narrates Anthony’s life in sequences. 

With movies like these, I do not think there could be any other way of entertaining myself most of the time. A treat for eyes, mind and ears, Jaatishwar gave a good and entertaining start to the year.