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Reviews
Aynabaji (2016)
Amitabh Reza kept his promises
It's great to see cinema halls full of people cheering and laughing and enjoying a good film. I couldn't watch it right after the release but I managed to watch it on second week and I must admit the director Amitabh Reza surely kept his promises. We waited for his first feature film for a long time. He comes with great promises and he delivers a very enjoyable psycho-political thriller with a tone of romantic story line which didn't disappoint me at all. Now, instead of saying it pleased me, I said it didn't disappoint me. Why? Let's get to that later.
A man named Sharafat Karim Ayna serves time in jail for convicted criminals in exchange of money. He is a born actor, imitates anyone within minutes and manipulates anyone with his hypnotic personality. If you pay him well you don't have to be in jail, he would do that for you happily. This guy loves his con acting and loves his mercenary transformation from one character to another. There is something thrillingly artistic about his life. He isn't bothered about the morality of the act, considers himself a real life actor which makes the character more interesting. A woman comes into his life and a curious journalist starts asking questions. Great outline, great premise. The story begins.
The story promised a gripping tale of a con artist and you need a great actor to pull it off. Chanchal Chowdhury has done an outstandingly brilliant job on the male lead. Watching him transitioning from character to character was a delight. All the characters he played were believable especially the transformation into a rogue politician against his will was a showcase of sheer brilliance. The chemistry between him and the female lead Nabila needed more attention. She looked very refreshing yet a little artificial often. The storytelling has a few loopholes, clichés and continuation mistakes which I decided to ignore because of the overall experience. The ending seemed a bit disappointing and unbelievable at first but I am happy that it's actually believable if you know the protagonist well. There are suggestions and references in the film for the explanation. But I expected a grand ending. I was expecting a proper 'prestige' act. The director shared his perception about religious fanatics subtly. Comic reliefs were put in proper intervals and I enjoyed some of them. Background score was exquisitely well. Background scores were holding the intensity when required. The Best thing about this movie is the cinematography. The depiction of the Dhaka city was nearly poetic, melancholic, romantic and alive at the same time. Every character and place got their appropriate angles. It was never visually dull.
I heard about a Korean film (Tumbleweed, 2013) with an exactly similar synopsis. I watched that one immediately after this. Apart from the one liner synopsis and a few minor questionable similarities, the two films are totally separate films. We can say everything that Korean film was missing we got those in 'Aynabaji'. The Korean one says that he serves jail for other people but we never see him doing that sort of anything in the film. On the contrary, the main lead in Aynabaji kept dazzling us with his versatile character jumping all the way to the end. That Korean film cannot be an inspiring one and even it is, I would say Amitabh Reza has created a whole new story and done much better. Unlike Mostofa Sarwar Farooki, who completely copied the concept of "Vizontele" and reversed it.
The thing that annoyed me most about this film is the ongoing rating mania on IMDb. I saw 1500 people rated this film 10/10 before its release (29/9/2016). Sometimes people do that on IMDb but let's admit it; 1500 general audience from Bangladesh did not register on IMDb to rate this film before its release. This was done under some PR campaign. This was the start and after that, thousands of people started acting like T-1000 with a mission to give a 10/10 rating to save the Bengal film industry. If the IMDb authority checks these accounts, they would find all these 8000 votes came from accounts which were opened before or after the release of the film. It's just funny that some people want 8000 fake ratings for a film.
In the end, I have to admit that I was tired of watching our promising directors making trash one after another. "Aynabaji" is a complete exception to that. "Aynabaji" is an entertaining film and it entertained me in different levels. This is a great effort for a first feature film and we would be eagerly waiting with positive enthusiasm for the next film from Amitabh Reza.
Piprabidya (2013)
Miserable Trash...
After ripping off a Turkish film in his previous film, Mostofa Sarwar Farooki came up with his new film "Pipra Biddiya" (Ant story). The trailer was pretty much flat and the poster was visually similar with "Silence of the Lambs". I watched it with a minimum expectation and my minimums were never met.
The film is about a struggling guy who is employed by a crooked multilevel marketing company. He buys a stolen phone which belonged to a female film star (Rima) containing a sex clip with her boyfriend (Ayon). The guy tries to blackmail her and the film star keeps threatening him. That's the synopsis of the film. The plot line was interesting and could have been an interesting film but at the end of the day, it was more like an unresolved television drama with no subplot, conclusion and clarity. Let me tell the pros and cons of the film separately.
Pros: the main male character is a fresh new face. It was interesting watching him acting with a strange type of vulnerability. His dialogues are mixed with urban and local dialect which at some points created unintentional humor which was subtle and pleasing. Some dialogues were funny which I enjoyed. I think that's all about the good thing about the film.
Cons: first of all, the script seems to be empty. What things do you expect in this type of situation? If the guy wants to blackmail the film star, either he would have seduced her brains out over and over again or, ask for money over and over again. Or both can happen. In a real life scenario, if there is a blackmail, one of these two happens. But here, nothing happens. The seduction never happened and there was no money asked. There was sexual teasing all over the scenes but no sex. My guess is, the director didn't want to show any visual or conceptual disturbance. Or, the character is too dumbly written not to desire anything or achieving anything he wants. In these perspectives, the script wasn't true to the characters. The Film was short yet seemed painfully long after one hour because there was no subplot. No other character had the slightest importance on screen apart from the main two. There was a character (Redwan) playing the husband of the main character's ex-girlfriend, who has nothing to do with the script and story, comes from nowhere and fills up near about 10-15 minutes of the screen time with unbelievably meaningless dialogue and activities. The director wanted to fill up some screen time so that he invented an unbearably stupid character to get it through to one and half hour. And let alone the unnecessary surrealistic dream sequences of being eaten or attacked by ants. (Now we call him Bunuel of Bengal
lol) Director Mostofa Sarwar Farooki invited our friends and family to the cinema hall to watch an hour and half long film about a stolen porn clip and pathetically failed physical desire. Now that's a fantastic plot of a film to watch with my family. As the director is an avid fan of Abbas Kiarostami and Iranian films, I want him to remind that you don't have to do these. If you want to tell this type of story, please do it right, do the justice to your plot. Don't do this for a few cheap laughs. You might get some but your educated audience who watch movies like you do, can't be fooled. After making four feature films, the fifth one is the worst of all. Even though the previous one was a rip off, it was better.
Last point: there was no interval time in the movie
.that was a smart move
Because if there was any, some of the audiences would have never get back in.
Chorabali (2012)
I cannot believe the level of disappointment....!!!
First of all Let's say something about Redoan Rony. He is one of the significant products of "Mostofa Sarwar Farooki Wave". For the people outside Bangladesh, I am explaining it briefly. Mostafa Farooki is a director who promoted and assisted a bunch of guys to create a career in filmmaking as he was creating his own marks. They call themselves a brotherhood where most of the guys ended up making trashy television dramas and they don't have any real talent apart from copying Sarwar Farooki. But Redoan Rony seemed a bit different all the way with his style of making and we were watching a number of very entertaining television productions. It was clear at some point that he was not just following his mentor but he might have some real talent; until he made his first film "Chorabali".
How should I put this? I had a very positive expectation about this guy and I thought I would see some fast paced thriller and a decent storyline. The movie is a total joke. Not even close to the standard of any TV production that he made earlier. There was no strong storyline, no chemistry between characters, lousy characters with moronic and meaningless acts, typically commercial and lame actions, ridiculously boring dialogue, same old ending and what not. I think the director really lacks of basic scripting concept.
Everything is wrong about this movie. We see Joya Ahsan as a brave journalist who has fallen for a hit-man sent to kill her by a local gang leader. And the hit-man was tormented by guilt, decides to end his employers empire. This is pretty much it. Now, this sounds great. But trust me, there was nothing of this kind in this movie. The chemistry between the journalist and hit-man was such a fake; it failed terribly. The gang leader was so pathetic and sometimes he intentionally tried to imitate the "Joker laugh" (he also had a small scar just like joker..someone please kill me), and the other minor characters were so invisible, you will really feel like watching a prehistoric bangle movie. I always try not to give away important plot lines. But there is nothing to give away. I was just irritated by the shallowness of the story and the dialogue. And now I am shocked to see some good reviews in IMDb. I am sure these are written by the friends of the director. It is extremely hard to say any praise about anything of this movie.
The director basically misunderstood the concept of commercial movie. Or he misunderstood the concept of cinema. Who knows? But again, we don't expect worthless piece of cinema specially, when we know that the director is good. It's a pity that IMDb doesn't allow negative marking. Chorabali adds nothing to our cinema. Just deducts a few hours which I will never get back.
Television (2012)
Conceptually copied from a Turkish film
I went to the cinema on the very first show with enormous positive anticipation about this film as it has got the highest media hype in our country. The film entertained me on various angles but I was not mesmerized or something like that. I was convinced that it was a good film because of the intriguing content, standout performance by one of the main actors - Mosharraf Karim, and the twist in the later part of the movie. The cinematography could have been much better. The director used the "handheld camera" technique in random sequences and it didn't serve the point. As we all know that this technique is mainly used to create intensity in an intense sequence. Misunderstanding this concept, can create viewing disturbance. I would have talked about some more aspects but unfortunately I won't. Because this film does not deserve the actual criticism. Let me tell you why.
The main shocking fact about the film is, this film is a total conceptual copy of another Turkish film "Vizontele". The main concept in both films is, bringing a television to a remote village and creating the story of how the people and the society react to it. The design of the script in both movies are aimed to entertain the audience by the situational humor and the shocking ending. I would say that in case of disturbing ending, the Turkish film was light years ahead. It slaps you hard out of nowhere. In "Television", the same scripting design was followed by the writer and it might move you if you didn't see the Turkish one. But as a Director like Sarwar Farooki, I am deeply disappointed by this silly attempt of deceiving the audience. After finding all these, I totally lost all the charm about this movie and I think the director should answer this grand theft.
Mostafa Farooki is a very popular director and a creative one. But if he starts thinking that he can watch the less known movies of world cinema (in fact, "Vizontele" is not so less known) and make movies out of those, he should just join the mainstream Bangla Cinema and do the Bollywood rip offs. It would be easier, isn't it?
Third Person Singular Number (2009)
Revolution in Bangladeshi cinema once again
Mostafa Sarwar Farooki is one of the rising big shots and a veteran in Bangladesh TV and film media. I don’t doubt his genius and eccentric creativity for which he is specially acclaimed. But again, being a popular television drama director and a film director are totally two different things. His television dramas are fantastically unique and sometimes weirdly funny. When every other television dramas are full of monotonous cliché and disgusting imitation of Indian soap operas, Sarwar Farooki always comes with a promise of completely different sets of entertainment. When he first came up with his first film “Bachelor”, it was an unbelievably successful film in Bangladesh considering the response from the youngsters. And this film was made for youngsters. I would say, the film has done revolution in contemporary Bangladeshi films. But when he came up with the second film (“Made in Bangladesh”) it was unrealistically and unexpectedly an out of class film. Actually, there is nothing to talk about this one. This time, Sarwar Farooki came up with his third film which was long awaited “3rd Person Singular Number”. I had a chance to watch the film a few days ago. I don't care what others have to say…but I put my hat off to Mr. Farooki. He is indeed a master and a potential hope in our hopeless film industry.
The story circles about a lone girl who has been misfortunate, exhausted and manipulated by the male dominated society of ours where every woman searches for physical and mental security. The protagonist is completely homeless and deserted her family as her husband remains in the jail for murdering someone and her mother stays with her second husband. The film starts with a real kick from the very beginning with dark and tensed sequences and keeps it intact. I am not a feminist but I shared the pain, misery and irony of the central character. There are fun and also disturbance in a good ratio. Some of the sequences are absolute cliché and average. In the character of the “husband”, Mosharraf Karim provides another very “into the character” performance. Topu also delivered an enjoyable and amusing role which was humorous and interesting. Cinematography was good as expected.
Some of the very bitter truths are exposed in the films as good films always do. The psychological and moral dilemma of the central character which Tisha played was gripping and sometimes suffocating. According to our society, ‘living together is not supported at all. Some viewers complained about it but I think there was nothing to complain about this issue because the film also does not support living together without marriage and it shows the evil outcomes of doing it in a conservative society like ours. But I didn't like the ending part that much. It reminded me of watching “Jules and Jim” and other European films which does not match with our socio-cultural and psychological structure. But a director should always have the right to escape to his imagination where reality ends. The most engaging factor is, the film has nothing sinister or shocking plot-line but simple yet meaningful way of showing things. That's the fact I liked most.
To me, it was a film for matured viewers. You will not like the film if you are always looking for funny sequences like Farooki’s previous works. This is unlike his other works…with more depth, messages and reality. In a nutshell, it is a sensible and worth watching film.