Chayamoy Bengali Movie
Going back to childhood and rejoicing innocent memories always holds a special place in all our hearts. However expecting an out and out children's film from the Bengali film industry, which could make the imagination go wild is like expecting snowfall all over India. Haranath Chakroborty's screen adaptation of Shirshendu Mukhopadhay's story 'Chayamoy', is that rare try to bring alive a child's imagination on screen. But unfortunately even with a ghost, a brilliant storyline and some great actor the film fails to impress.
Sabyasachi Chakroborty, our very own Feluda's voice invites us to visit Shimultala. His narration of the story almost sets the mood for the film and much like a storytelling session reveals almost half of the story. Shimultala is the village of our story and has some amazing characters and of course a community of amazing friendly ghosts.
The story of Chayamoy is too simple and revolves around a bag of gold coins, which alters the lives of the villagers and disrupts the normalcy of the villagers. Treasure, adventure and ghosts forms the primary plot for the film and director Haranath Chakroborty has not deviated from the plot of the original story and has kept the essence alive in every way.
Gaurav Chakroborty plays the lead protagonist in the film, he is Indra Pratap, the heir of Raidighi kingdom. He comes to look for his ancestors treasure and is helped in his quest by his father Sabyasachi Chakroborty, who portrays the role of the friendly ghost Chayamoy. The village life is presented in a very casual yet colorful way and several characters like Gagan (Dipankar De), the money monger, a fraud Kapalik, 93 year old man of the village (Paran Bandopadhay) and of course the child character Alankar.
The actors are brilliant in their individual roles and are truly natural as the rural residents. Apart from acting, music by Debojyoti Mishra is also praiseworthy and sutures the narrative by presenting the rightful background music.
An ensemble cast, senior actors and a heartwarming story with the rightful touch of soulful music was not really a success formula for director Haranath Chakroborty. Poor production quality, shaky editing and extremely childish special effects were somehow too prominent in the film Chayamoy.
To summarize, Chayamoy felt short of delivering a complete film for children due to a lack of perfection unlike the too perfect children stories by Shirshendu Mukhopadhay.
