Chotushkone Bengali Movie
A crazy fashion phase, those kalbaishaki evenings when you could just bunk studies officially due to a sudden power cut, those deadline frenzy days just before you set out on a week long vacation. These moments are special and indeed memorable to all of us, because of their appealing simplicity thread along the strings of legitimate chaos. Srijit Mukherji's Chotuskone strings along the lines of one such memory and will definitely unsettle you after you have watched it. A story that blurs moments of separation between chaos and calm, that unsettles moment of resistance, which creates silence with noise, seems like not a very everyday story. But Chotushkone is indeed the everyday story, or rather the story of everyday. But what does not happen everyday is prescribed regression. Yes. Unknowingly walking the path of regression is justified, but walking in your knowledgeable self will make you conscious and unsettled. Will cause an irritation and unease. As the characters walk this unpaved, nongraveled path with blisters and cuts, the audience to walk the same path with soar feet.
Chotushkone is a masterpiece in its own right and adapts a many stories within a bigger story structure. Yet, the film never loses the simplistic charm and the narrative gets vocal about death with the four individual stories. Cinematography foreplays to settle us on the maze. The maze that succumbs us within and we begin walking along the patch of stories and their visual narration with a mesh of characters, as weaved by the four directors on reel. Trina (Aparna Sen), Shakyo (Goutam Ghosh), Dipta (Chiranjeet) and Joybrata (Parambrata Chatterjee) are the directors in question, who have been commissioned by a producer to make a film, which is backed up by the theme of death. As the directors travel with their stories to pitch it to the producer, reality gets dramatic. The turn of events at the end blurs the edges of difference and somehow everything real turns too unbelievable, or rather too logically believable. Srijit Mukherji does not compromise with his actors. He handpicks his actors, or should we say he breaks conventionality and moulds the much known faces into an unknown their lesser-known self. The beauty of his direction and his keen detailing is clear through the dialogues and the character developments. The cast for Chotushkone is way beyond imagination, and just too perfect for any comments. Who would have believed to see so many stalwarts and newcomers share the same screen space so righteously. Each character spells beauty and even if for a shot or two, does establish there screen presence too positively. Picking and praising them individually will actually be injustice, as Chotushkone would have never been a successful quadrangle without any one of them.
We all love to listen to good stories and when the storyteller is Srijit Mukherji, then all you need is to grab a seat and watch. Wait carefully as fiction unfolds in great proportions all around you.
