Director: Rituporno Ghosh

Made: 2000, released 2002

Writers: original screenplay by Rituporno Ghosh

Genre: Family Drama

Cast:

Madhabi Mukherjee ...  Bhagabati

 Pradip Mukherjee ...  Asit

 Bodhisattva Mazumdar ...  Nishit

 Alaknanda Roy ...  Bonani, Nishit's wife

 Anuradha Roy ...  Monika, Asit's wife

 Mamata Shankar ...  Parul

 Rituparna Sengupta ...  Keya

 Prasenjit Chatterjee ...  Arun, Keya's husband

 Ratul Shankar Ghosh ...  Joy, Parul's son

 Arpita Pal ...  Shompa, Nishit's daughter

 Vinit Ranjan Maitra ...  Bumba, Asit's son

 Dipankar Dey ...  Shishir (Special Appearance)

A large family, with all its offshoots, gathers in the ancestral home to celebrate the grand annual event. As in any other family, there are tensions, misunderstandings, and emotional baggage from the past that colors all their interpersonal relationships. Into this bubbling cauldron of mistrust and seething rage, is thrown the prospect of the sale of the house, which will result in a neat profit. The question of how this windfall should eventually be distributed and shared, along with the basic debate about whether the house should even be sold, brings things to a head, threatening to destroy the family and rip apart all the relationships.

Bhagamati, her sons Asit and Nishit, and daughters Parul and Keya, and all the other members of their immediate and extended families have gathered at the old homestead for the Durga Puja. There are tensions and undercurrents, superbly captured by Rituporno Ghosh. In addition, some of the new generation seems to be repeating the mistakes of the past, doing the things their earlier generation did, and now regrets. This adds a new set of tensions for everyone, as does the lack of communication among the characters. In fact, this lack of communication is clearly the major culprit is creating the tensions that the family has to deal with.

Although the film is sometimes visually dull, and slow paced, it is neither boring nor uninteresting.  The subtle but brilliant handling of each of the characters and their situations, the understated sharpness of the portrayal of emotional nuances… this film proves, yet again, that Rituporno is a force to be reckoned with, and one of the great film makers of our generation.

Buy Utsab 
 

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