The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : A disaster from frame one Film review

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Sunday, Jul 29, 2007
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

A disaster from frame one Film review

Pecking order: Victor Banerji and Lilette Dubey in Bow Barracks Forever!

Film: Bow Barracks Forever! (English)

Starcast: Lilette Dubey ,Victor Banerji, Moon Moon Sen, Neha Dubey

Direction: Anjan Dutt

It could well have been the summer of dreams for Anjan Dutt. Two of his films – “The Bong Connection” and “Bow Barracks Forever!” – had been lying in the cans long enough for dust to accumulate until there came the Summer of 2007 and the films finally made their way to cinema halls.

“The Bong Connection” released a few weeks ago to a mixed response. Now comes “Bow Barracks…”. There is unlikely to be a mixed response to this film: it is a disaster from the first frame. Nothing but a slanging match between an ensemble cast of seasoned actors, the film is a pathetic spectacle, and does enough to shake your faith in the medium for a while.

For record purposes though the film talks of a microscopicr minority of Anglo-Indians, the guys who profess Christianity, speak English, live in the barracks of Kolkata. And are as much Indians as anybody else.

They are faced with threats of eviction as the forces of development threaten to usurp tradition.

There are a handful of families, middle to lower middle class, earning their livelihood by selling pastries, wines, antiques and the like.

Each family has a problem of space. Each family has a dream to grow, yet is unable to let go off the place. Interesting? Yes, as an idea Dutt’s film scores full marks. It is in the implementation that it scores in the negative.

Soul missing

A film with melancholy as an enduring feeling needed a gentler handling. Muted tones are there all right, what is missing is a soul. No story involves the viewer: almost every sub-lot is reiteration of age-old stereotypes about the community.

And where a word was called for, the director packs in a dozen. Where a whisper would have sufficed, he gives us a scream.

Really, but almost all the cast members scream their lungs out – Lilette Dubey as a woman who wants to shift to London is easily the worst culprit. She shouts and slaps her younger son. She out-shouts the neighbourhood woman, Neha Dubey, accused to using her son. She out-shouts Peter, the Cheater: Victor Banerji in a role he did in a moment of amnesia. All this flaring tempers and sharp tongue business is an insult to the community it claims to give a voice to.

Everybody here speaks at the top of his voice, leaving you longing for some moments of silence, some stillness when the gravity of the challenge ahead of them can strike you.

Sobriety was the need of the hour. It is not there even for a moment.

Since the film is in English, and talks of Anglo-Indians, Dutt tends to make that as a licence to talk of wine, to use frequent four-letter words – many of which are, thankfully, blipped – and even show nudity when completely uncalled for. If intimate sequences involving Moon Moon Sen are crude, the ones involving Clayton Rogers absolutely forced.

A little suggestive gesture would have better conveyed the passion than slipped undergarments. Bawdy.

Really, but this story of a woman who wants to go to London to escape the sadness of life in Kolkata, another who is a victim of marital violence, yet another who runs away from her man to find fulfilment elsewhere, is just so-much of sameness. No seep in story-telling, no punch in dialogue, and despite Usha Uthup’s appearance, a forgettable music score.Though it has been screened at about a dozen film festivals across the world, the film was waiting for a commercial release for more than a couple of years. The reason is for all to see. Anyone for “Bow Barracks Forever”? Never.

ZIYA US SALAM

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