Release date:
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July 5, 2013
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Director:
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Jahnu Barua
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Cast:
Language:
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Bishnu Kharghoria, Bina Patangia, Jatin Bora, Zerifa Wahid,
Abastosh Bhuyan & Anshuman Bhuyan.
Assamese
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 |
This lovely poster was designed by Jahan Singh Bakshi |
Jahnu Barua’s Baandhon
is an unhurried and minimalist film about an elderly couple leading a sheltered
existence in a town in Assam. It’s a bare-bones story that is literally just this:
a perennially-bickering old man and his wife are unexpectedly visited by the
harsh realities of the outside world when their grandson Pona – an IIT Mumbai student
who is the centre of their universe – goes missing on the night of 26/11. There
are no frills attached, no dramatic plot twists, very few characters, and
except for one stark shot of the couple sitting on a bench in Mumbai staring
out at the Arabian Sea, it’s not even a film of visual beauty. What’s attractive
about it though is its dogged simplicity.
The multiple-National-Award-winning director brings humour
and poignance to the depiction of his lead couple in early scenes. At the start of
the film, they visit the office of their family friend and lawyer, seeking a
divorce. This time, they tell him, it’s final. We know then that they’ve done
this before, and that once again, chances are there will be a reconciliation. I
guess we’ve all met long-married couples like Dandeswar and
Hkawni – can’t live with each other,
can’t live without. Their fights, their mutual tenderness despite the ongoing
battle and flashbacks to their childhood romance make up the bulk of Baandhon’s running time. As endearing as
their relationship is the bond with their young lawyer who cares deeply for them.
The tone and mood of the film change abruptly when the
couple travel to Mumbai for Pona. This is where my problems with Baandhon begin. The portion in Assam is
a reminder that innocence and uncomplicatedness still do exist in this world.
How guileless must you be to openly offer a bribe to an honest government
official because that’s what his predecessors wanted? In an age of Twitter
posts and youtube uploads, how secluded and un-frenzied must you be that
you are unaware of the 26/11 terror strike till a day later because your TV is spoilt
and you just didn’t read the morning’s papers? It is here that Barua charms. Not
so in the Mumbai segment where Baandhon
runs out of steam. The trip to India’s commercial capital adds nothing to the
narrative, and personally, I wish the characters had not made that physical journey
at all. For it is in a small town in Assam, in a state that copes with its own
dreadful troubles daily, that the point is driven home about how grand global gameplans
ultimately impact the commonest of the common people.
Of the two leads, Bishnu Kharghoria stands out as he give us a Dandeswar
who is by swift turns gentle and gruff, naive and wise. He wishes to protect
his wife when news of Pona comes in, yet it is he that we want to
protect. While that’s primarily because of the actor’s natural ease before the
camera, the other reason is that Hkawni isn’t played as effectively by Bina Patangia. To be fair to
the actress, her character is not as well written, the comparative severity of
her demeanour might possibly have been dictated by the script, and the story is
told from his point of view, not hers. Purely on the barometer of performance
though, she is amusing while angry but doesn’t convey the softening up as well,
nor does she evoke empathy in the denouement. The rest of the cast are a mixed
bag. Jatin Bora as the lawyer and Anshuman Bhuyan as the couple’s domestic help
feel real, but there are amateurish moments contributed by others such as the
government official’s wife in Mumbai and Pona’s two friends at IIT. In fact,
the meeting with Pona’s friends is awkwardly presented.
Bishnu Kharghoria, as it happens, played the lead – brilliantly – in the first of
Barua’s films that I had the good fortune of seeing, at a festival here in
Delhi. Hkhagoroloi Bohu Door (It’s a Long Way to the Sea) is a
work of genius with a premise of breathtaking obviousness. The sort that makes
you wonder: am I so selfish or just so insular, that I did not think of this? That
1995 film addressed an elementary question: when the government builds a bridge
across a river, you and I – the general public – exult at the progress being
made in infrastructure development, but what happens to the old boatman who has
spent his entire life rowing villagers across the river and back, and knows no
other means of earning his living? Most of North India, however, would perhaps know
Barua for his first Hindi film Maine
Gandhi Ko Nahin Maara in which Anupam Kher played a man with Alzheimer’s
Disease. That film could have been so much better than it turned out if it
wasn’t for the melodramatisation that Bollywood often seems to demand of its mainstream
filmmakers, often to the detriment of good cinema. There can be no other
explanation for the long and coherent speech delivered in court by Kher’s
character in the closing minutes, a feat that no person at such an advanced
stage of Alzheimer’s could possibly achieve.
With Baandhon – the first Assamese film to
get a theatrical release outside the state – Barua returns to his
pre-occupation with the little folk. “We are common people,” says a character in the film. “The world is too
big for us. We have no choice but to trust in it.” For that, and
for the historic milestone it has crossed by coming to theatres across India, Baandhon is worth celebrating.
Rating (out of five): **3/4
CBFC Rating (India):
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U
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Running time:
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96 minutes
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Trailer courtesy: PVR Director’s Rare http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxCbiAzthS8&feature=youtu.be
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