Ami Yasin Aar Amar Madhubala - The Voyeurs (2008)Story, Screenplay, Direction: Buddhadeb Dasgupta
Music: Amitabha Dasgupta
Cinematographer: Sunny Joseph
Editing: Amitabha Dasgupta
Pruducers: Anuradha Prasad, Shanjiv Shankar Prasad
Cast: Prosenjit Chakraborty, Amitabh Bhattacharjee, Sameera Reddy
Ami Yasin Aar Amar Madhubala (The Voyeur) scripted and directed by Buddhadeb Dasgupta is a stark, haunting yet seemingly light-hearted film. Starring Prosenjit Chatterjee, Sameera Reddy and Amitav Bhattacharya, the film tries to explore how simple acts of passion can change one's destiny in a politically inflammable atmosphere. Buddhadeb Dasgupta, being a poet himself has painted a visual poetry by exploring the intricacies of the human mind especially that of urban. The film is a critique of the modern surveillance system that makes a mockery of individual privacy. Given the film’s plot and its treatment, Ami Yasin Aar Amar Madhubala may hold wider commercial prospects than Dasgupta’s previous films by appealing to a wide spectrum of viewers.
Sameera Reddy (as Rekha) who plays a dancer comes to Kolkata to try her luck as an actress. She rents an apartment next to the place where Prosenjit (as Dilip) lives. Prosenjit plays a peeping Tom with a surveillance camera. Prosenjit is an obsessed fan of Madhubala. But now he starts believing that Rekha is even more beautiful than Madhubala and starts keeping a track of her. Amitabh Bhattacharjee (as Yasin) plays the role of a Muslim roommate of Prosenjit. Their families know each other for a very long time. Both Yasin and Dilip enjoy the free show on television many times. However, Yasin gets astonished when Dilip switches off the television just when Rekha is about to open her bra. But when Rekha discovers the surveillance camera, she promptly reports to the police. Prosenjit escapes before the cops arrive. Unfortunately during the same time there happens some bomb blasts and the cops misidentify them as terrorists. Unfortunately, Yasin’s looks is again very similar to a member of an Islamic terrorist gang the police has been looking for. Finally the police are able to catch Dilip and Yasin. But the fate for them is not good at all. Yasin remains to be the victim of mistaken identity and in customary Indian fashion, he is “encountered” while Dilip is sent to jail for life.
As a filmmaker, Buddhadeb Dasgupta has consistently tried to define and re-define the significance of the auteur in cinema. From Dooratwa in 1978 to The Voyeurs in 2007, the stamp of his individuality gets noticed in each work. One can not ignore the increased alienation of the individual in his films. His cinema is a journey as much as it is a cinema of the loneliness of man in a world where one-to-one communication is being increasingly threatened. Produced by B.A.G Films and Media Ltd, Ami Yasin Aar Amar Madhubala has already been screened in renowned festivals at Toronto, London and Athens.
Sunil Naliath
The Man, Machine and his Ordeal
Buddhadeb Dasgupta, the poet cum film maker once again hits the screen with his lyricism in story telling through his latest movie ‘Ami Yasir Aur Amar Madhubala The Voyeurs’ Though the story is galore with philosophical nuances, it is rendered in a lighter vein. Buddhdeb who is averse to the idea of disearning the cinema as art, commercial and middle also seems to be adamant on the film must be conveying. He does not call a slow moving one a cinema. His brand of narration is indebted largely to that of popular cinema; a story that begins with hilarious episodes ends up in a tragedy completing the course of its trajectory.
The theme that Buddhdeb selected this time for filming is genuine and humane. The role that the modern gadgets play in the lives of youngsters is the pivotal point in it.
Dilip was earning much money by installing surveillance cameras to lead a flamboyant life style in Calcutta. Though he was fully taken by the enchantment of urban living, he still nourished the country folk in him who represented a village in Berhampur. To add spice to his living his friend from his home village Yasin joins him. Yasin who had left behind a somewhat large family consisting father, mother and two younger ones and its pressing necessities rejoices in the comparing of Dilip discarding his immediate task of securing a job.
The life for Dilip and Yasin take an interesting turn with the arrival of a beauty queen Rekha – a kathak dancer, who was there to try her luck in tinsel town. Dilip who was an ardent fan of yester year’s glamour actor Madhubala cut a sorry figure while dealing with women. He did not know that he was committing a blunder when he fixed a spy camera on top of the mirror in Rekha’s living room so as to see a woman as she was. Rekha who worshipped her body unknowingly offered Dilip and Yasin many jerky moments.
With Rekha detecting the instrument that spied on her, she broke down. For her it was treachery of sort that came from a man whom she was reckoning as someone with difference and bonafide intentions. Following her tipping off , the police chase the two as the most wanted terrorists in which Yasin gets killed suffering from bullet injuries and Dilip is framed in a case.
The film is noteworthy for the brilliant performance of the three actors in the lead roles. Sunny Joseph who wields camera for this on screen wonder catches up all the actions and movements of characters (that is rather choreographic) shedding mood lighting on his subjects.
However, there are two drawbacks in this film which shall not go unnoticed. Firstly, Dilip’s admiration for Madhubala who is born after she had passed away does not justify itself for the _____ is being someone admires the matinee idols of his times and naturally carries over it till his old age. Secondly, though the police do not want any circumstantial evidences to frame somebody in a case the way in which Dilip and Yasin were stamped as terrorist smacks a contrived plot in the absence of convincing depiction of the sequence.
M T Baby
