CLERK: A NEW BENGALI MOVIE ABOUT LEADING A DOUBLE LIFE
What: Clerk, the film
Where: Playing at Nandan, Priya, Star, & other Kolkata multiplexes.
Language: Bengali
Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars
Nitesh Sharma, founder Bangla Talkies, commissioned Subhadro Choudhury, to direct his sixth film Clerk. Prosenjit plays the title role in this off-beat film. It is a character that is not up his normal street of masala films. He is increasingly shifting his focus to niche films targeted at a niche audience, perhaps to explore his potential as an actor who can fit into any role and need not be identified with the mainstream image of Prosenjit that rural Bengal knows him as.
In Clerk, director Subhadro Choudhury who has also written the script has stripped him of all the iconic appendages he has acquired as the top star of Bengali mainstream cinema to actually identify with the lowly role of the low-profile, self-effacing clerk in the film. Choudhury won the National Award for First Film of a Director for Prohor, an experimental film based on a short story by Dulendra Bhowmik called Dosh Nombor Bed. He won the award jointly with another debutant Abhijit Choudhury who won it for Patalghar, a sci-fi. Choudhury earlier had won a National Award for the Diploma film he made at FTII. Prohor was a courageous attempt at breaking several stereotypical rules of filmmaking. But it was a bit too experimental to go down well with the masses. Clerk is also not quite a run-of-the-mill film. One hopes Prosenjit will be a major attraction. Sirsho Roy is D.O.P., Raj Narayan Deb has written the musical score, Shyamal Karmakar has edited the film with Choudhury, Tirthankar has done the sound design and Tanmoy Chakraborty did the art direction.
“The time and place setting of the film is contemporary Kolkata, capital of West Bengal. The film explores the complex psychology of an average middle-class Bengali who works as a typist in a private firm on the brink of pulling down its shutters that is being troubled by the members of the union who do not want it to b shut down,” explains Choudhury who has written the story along with Sarthok Roy Choudhury.
The character Prosenjit plays has the ironical name of Biplab which means ‘revolution’ because he keeps himself aloof from the aggressive agitation that the union has launched and does not even talk much with his colleagues, beyond flashing what appears to be an apology of a smile. He ignores the growing storm in the office and keeps working conscientiously. He is an introvert and keeps away from any social interaction with his colleagues and his neighbours.
“But there is another side to his persona that no one knows about. When he returns to his lonely flat in a dilapidated high-rise in Kolkata, he becomes a different person. He lives in a world of created fantasy full of film stars he imagines himself to be intimate with. The top actresses of Bollywood from Rani Mukherjee to Kareena Kapoor to Urmila Matondkar are quite intimate with him. He talks to each one for hours across the telephone, drinks himself crazy and sees every story ending with the same climax – the hero rescuing the damsel in distress,” details Sharma who has produced the film. He sits amongst a circle of candles he has lit and loses himself in this world of dreams.
“Clerk is a film that journeys between the real and the surreal world. I have taken a minimalistic approach to the film, attempting to reach the realm of pure and transcendental cinema,” says Choudhury. “But fantasies do not last forever because an incident, an event, a person or just a moment might shatter fantasies in ways the dreamer might never have imagined. Biplab faces an emotional crisis and commits a crime of passion,” sums up Choudhury, unwilling to give out the climax. Lending histrionic support to Prosenjit are Anindita Bose, Debobroto Chakraborty, Ruma Bandopadhyay, Chunilal, Sophie and Kalyan Gupta.
Biplab’s story is open to multilayered interpretations, according to the director. A recurrent metaphor in the film is of a fish trapped in an aquarium. Is this fish symbolic of the dreamer in Biplab? Or does Biplab find his final escape from his fantasy world of loving and rescuing famous film stars in this hobby of nurturing a fish aquarium? Is he able to cope with the real world and abandon his fantasy world? Can and does he find a more grounded relationship with a flesh-and-blood person in real life?
Clerk is scheduled for a public release on January 15.
By Shoma A. Chatterji
Official Link: http://clerkthefilm.in/
Posted by Dave M. Posted In : Reviews - Movie
