BUNO- THE ANIMAL WITHIN
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(A Film review
Manas Paul..
It’s an eloquent story of strange and morbid intoxication for brutality-the brutality that runs, somewhere beneath the comfortable facade of life, and often times, challenging the much cherished assumption that develops one’s sensitivity in conjunction with the social construct.
The self designed journey of a boy from a rural and impoverished backdrop to a highly competitive and fast transforming middle class might have made him look tough, successful and a confident family man but behind that all apparently amenable aspects Partha Chatterjee lives a life of unbearable anarchy—and alone. But then, he is just the protagonist of a broader story.
As in almost all the participants in the rat race of the formidable consumer world, morality is always relatively and subjectively examined, and off and on – at the premise of it- luxury of crime can find a spectacular merit in abundance. The story is not, for an intelligent eye, very difficult to discern and determine. It is being repeated time and again almost at daily basis since the day Cain picked up the jawbone and murdered his brother Abel. The curse—as they say- Curse of Cain- continues as the blood flows in our veins. The enduring tale of fatal faults keeps on haunting even the most unsuspecting somewhere up in a small city apartment.
It was on a sultry and very oppressive mid-noon I sat with Debashish Saha watching the film “Buno” – which largely means “The wild”- in his private studio filled with computers, Tv screens and other gadgets. The room felt heavy with cigarette smoke constantly hovering lazily all around. It was about one month before the formal release of the film --which was a slightly different sequel of Debasis da’s first film “Roopantar” , the much acclaimed feature film of Tripura-- in all probability the first of its kind in this state-- that had been released 25 years ago. The film –“Buno” was entirely Debashis da’s creation, he being the producer, director, script writer-- all roles rolled into one.
As the story unfolded, I found it very unsettling. Unsettling because it told a wholly urban tale that developed, climaxed and then reached the denouement with a tragic tale that seemed to have been told in my neighbourhood.
The story—dark, brazen, and compelling indeed, but- at the face of it is, Simple too.
For Partha Chatterjee, the young short TV film producer, crime may be weird and repulsive but it is also essentially ‘wonderful’. And going by the simple logic of, what I would like to say, ‘eccentric’ market morality –Partha feels since it- the crime- is ‘weird’ and ‘wonderful’ it can also be ‘sold’.
Every day with his morning cup of tea Partha keeps on searching some such ‘wonderful’ crimes- especially murder mysteries –in the newspaper headlines that can be re-produced and offered before the audience in a platter. And, as the story goes, Partha-the producer- gradually became enamoured with crime stories that squeezed out all other finer sentiments and tastes from his life.. it affected his family, it affected his son. The shadow of anxiety grew darker with every passing day but Parth cocooned in his own world remained unmindful and uncaring. . Over the years, with the help of commonplace manipulations and lie and tricky manoeuvring Partha could attain certain degree of odd sophistication- as exemplified by one of his such productions shown in the film which, to my understanding would certainly make Mr O’Henri quite happy.
But behind all the success and achievements Partha Chatterjee, the family man –cum- crime film producer- was chasing a dream little knowing that he was actually in the throes of somnambular feat- like that old Lady Macbeth. He seeks to find, as Thomas De Quincy would have liked to say, ‘beauty in an ulcer’. Just the difference is he did not seek to cure the ‘ulcer’ but relished on it even as the ‘beautiful ulcer’ unknowingly developed to a deadly carcinoma.
As the story goes Partha – the connoisseur of mirbidity who sells urbane taste for crime, becomes himself the customer of it. Perhaps, for a common place “Son of long forgotten Kali dancer” the struggle for existence, and then, to excel scrambling up the ladder desperately it was oddly inherent search for salvation- in which somewhere and somehow the fatal flaw played the spoilsport.
Call it hubris or hamartia, the downfall of the hero – here Partha’s straight and clear tragic end- comes from his own misplaced interest, lack of familial understanding and over ambition- economic and social. While many would certainly, and quite rightly, find an element of psychological imbalance in Partha’s character, as for the common viewers he was definitely not a victim of his fate and he was himself responsible for his fall—uncontrolled rage that suddenly erupted with volcanic ferocity sending his younger son bleeding white and cold.
For a keen eye the rage was building since the beginning and one should not also miss that despite a good well knit family and a sitar playing wife, two lovely sons by his side – Partha was a lonely man in his own world – where success , to his understanding, comes only through something that survives and thrives at the scruples and infirmity of public taste—or perhaps, through the meaningless rat race where a son must be destined to be a Sachin Tedulkar. The element of despair and failures – that gradually and steadily built up the fatal frustration in the meantime, to steer the story to its final conclusion cannot be missed.
I shall quite consciously not give details of the plot – there are countless stories of how an over ambitious middleclass man falls into the pit created by him – knowingly and unknowingly and as to how the pit grows into a hell-void sucking up the protagonist in entirety- for two reasons, to keep the curiosity burning among my friends and also to avoid repetition. But what I can safely say is that there is nothing classic, but some behavioural aberrations that define our, should I say, ‘unrefined’ middle class existence. Partha was simply a protagonist of that. A victim who lives in my neighbourhood. On our daily routine, he is always missed. He is always given a passing smile in the morning on way to office or while buying a cigarette in the same local shop together. But he is not understood. It is because simply, perhaps, he stands solid as our Alter Ego.
In fine, the film Buno is film that should be watched and then discussed.
Pinaki Dey-( He had once played the same character, as a child, in Roopantar 25 years ago) basically an Agriculturist from Tripura who spent years in abroad, mostly in Germany returned to reappear as a grown up Partha in the ‘Buno’.. He did justice to this seriously complicated character giving quite a smell of all the subtle demonic DNAs that dismember us from within. As he lay cuddled up on a cold floor of police custody, and sought a desperate refuge in his long forgotten pure and pastoral home—and the universal or should I say metaphoric Mother reappearing in dream, the feel of the excruciating pain of a modern, irrational and restive family man are invasive in the audience .
Without going in to the story what I must say , other characters like Babai ( Arush Dey, and I believe he is Pinaki’s son) , Papai ( Rishik Saha), Partha’s wife Anita ( Jayasree Saha) did justice to their roles, especially the child artists. Bishnu Thakur ( I do not his original name) also played a small role but he was very impressive indeed. So are the others. ( Unfortunately as I write this piece, I do not remember all the characters and their original name. But they were really good in their given characters)
At the end, what to me looked seriously diluting in the entire story is some dance and romantic scenes. Those scenes were very poorly written and poorly shot. Perhaps, the director sought to give some ‘commercial’ touch --- or the ‘relief’---in it but in this process he compromised the intensity of the story itself. As I conclude, the film seemed to have been a bit drawn out at the end and the director for reasons best known to him tried to explain the subtle and indicative shots with dramatic actions. I was, and still am, at a loss , as to why he had done it. If he was thoughtful enough to give two indicative dolls hanging on the wall of which one suddenly fell –thus setting the premonition, if not the anticipation rolling, why at the end he thought that he should explain in a crude act of tearing off the one by Partha when one son was murdered--by himself? The director should have a bit confidence on the audience’s intelligence allowing the subtle and metaphoric displays to direct and capture the enormity of the story just told.
All said, Buno –the Wild – is a film that should be watched. It is a film that reminds us of our own primordial sense of selfish existence. The malaise within.
Frightening ? yes.
Formidable ? Yes.
The self designed journey of a boy from a rural and impoverished backdrop to a highly competitive and fast transforming middle class might have made him look tough, successful and a confident family man but behind that all apparently amenable aspects Partha Chatterjee lives a life of unbearable anarchy—and alone. But then, he is just the protagonist of a broader story.
As in almost all the participants in the rat race of the formidable consumer world, morality is always relatively and subjectively examined, and off and on – at the premise of it- luxury of crime can find a spectacular merit in abundance. The story is not, for an intelligent eye, very difficult to discern and determine. It is being repeated time and again almost at daily basis since the day Cain picked up the jawbone and murdered his brother Abel. The curse—as they say- Curse of Cain- continues as the blood flows in our veins. The enduring tale of fatal faults keeps on haunting even the most unsuspecting somewhere up in a small city apartment.
It was on a sultry and very oppressive mid-noon I sat with Debashish Saha watching the film “Buno” – which largely means “The wild”- in his private studio filled with computers, Tv screens and other gadgets. The room felt heavy with cigarette smoke constantly hovering lazily all around. It was about one month before the formal release of the film --which was a slightly different sequel of Debasis da’s first film “Roopantar” , the much acclaimed feature film of Tripura-- in all probability the first of its kind in this state-- that had been released 25 years ago. The film –“Buno” was entirely Debashis da’s creation, he being the producer, director, script writer-- all roles rolled into one.
As the story unfolded, I found it very unsettling. Unsettling because it told a wholly urban tale that developed, climaxed and then reached the denouement with a tragic tale that seemed to have been told in my neighbourhood.
The story—dark, brazen, and compelling indeed, but- at the face of it is, Simple too.
For Partha Chatterjee, the young short TV film producer, crime may be weird and repulsive but it is also essentially ‘wonderful’. And going by the simple logic of, what I would like to say, ‘eccentric’ market morality –Partha feels since it- the crime- is ‘weird’ and ‘wonderful’ it can also be ‘sold’.
Every day with his morning cup of tea Partha keeps on searching some such ‘wonderful’ crimes- especially murder mysteries –in the newspaper headlines that can be re-produced and offered before the audience in a platter. And, as the story goes, Partha-the producer- gradually became enamoured with crime stories that squeezed out all other finer sentiments and tastes from his life.. it affected his family, it affected his son. The shadow of anxiety grew darker with every passing day but Parth cocooned in his own world remained unmindful and uncaring. . Over the years, with the help of commonplace manipulations and lie and tricky manoeuvring Partha could attain certain degree of odd sophistication- as exemplified by one of his such productions shown in the film which, to my understanding would certainly make Mr O’Henri quite happy.
But behind all the success and achievements Partha Chatterjee, the family man –cum- crime film producer- was chasing a dream little knowing that he was actually in the throes of somnambular feat- like that old Lady Macbeth. He seeks to find, as Thomas De Quincy would have liked to say, ‘beauty in an ulcer’. Just the difference is he did not seek to cure the ‘ulcer’ but relished on it even as the ‘beautiful ulcer’ unknowingly developed to a deadly carcinoma.
As the story goes Partha – the connoisseur of mirbidity who sells urbane taste for crime, becomes himself the customer of it. Perhaps, for a common place “Son of long forgotten Kali dancer” the struggle for existence, and then, to excel scrambling up the ladder desperately it was oddly inherent search for salvation- in which somewhere and somehow the fatal flaw played the spoilsport.
Call it hubris or hamartia, the downfall of the hero – here Partha’s straight and clear tragic end- comes from his own misplaced interest, lack of familial understanding and over ambition- economic and social. While many would certainly, and quite rightly, find an element of psychological imbalance in Partha’s character, as for the common viewers he was definitely not a victim of his fate and he was himself responsible for his fall—uncontrolled rage that suddenly erupted with volcanic ferocity sending his younger son bleeding white and cold.
For a keen eye the rage was building since the beginning and one should not also miss that despite a good well knit family and a sitar playing wife, two lovely sons by his side – Partha was a lonely man in his own world – where success , to his understanding, comes only through something that survives and thrives at the scruples and infirmity of public taste—or perhaps, through the meaningless rat race where a son must be destined to be a Sachin Tedulkar. The element of despair and failures – that gradually and steadily built up the fatal frustration in the meantime, to steer the story to its final conclusion cannot be missed.
I shall quite consciously not give details of the plot – there are countless stories of how an over ambitious middleclass man falls into the pit created by him – knowingly and unknowingly and as to how the pit grows into a hell-void sucking up the protagonist in entirety- for two reasons, to keep the curiosity burning among my friends and also to avoid repetition. But what I can safely say is that there is nothing classic, but some behavioural aberrations that define our, should I say, ‘unrefined’ middle class existence. Partha was simply a protagonist of that. A victim who lives in my neighbourhood. On our daily routine, he is always missed. He is always given a passing smile in the morning on way to office or while buying a cigarette in the same local shop together. But he is not understood. It is because simply, perhaps, he stands solid as our Alter Ego.
In fine, the film Buno is film that should be watched and then discussed.
Pinaki Dey-( He had once played the same character, as a child, in Roopantar 25 years ago) basically an Agriculturist from Tripura who spent years in abroad, mostly in Germany returned to reappear as a grown up Partha in the ‘Buno’.. He did justice to this seriously complicated character giving quite a smell of all the subtle demonic DNAs that dismember us from within. As he lay cuddled up on a cold floor of police custody, and sought a desperate refuge in his long forgotten pure and pastoral home—and the universal or should I say metaphoric Mother reappearing in dream, the feel of the excruciating pain of a modern, irrational and restive family man are invasive in the audience .
Without going in to the story what I must say , other characters like Babai ( Arush Dey, and I believe he is Pinaki’s son) , Papai ( Rishik Saha), Partha’s wife Anita ( Jayasree Saha) did justice to their roles, especially the child artists. Bishnu Thakur ( I do not his original name) also played a small role but he was very impressive indeed. So are the others. ( Unfortunately as I write this piece, I do not remember all the characters and their original name. But they were really good in their given characters)
At the end, what to me looked seriously diluting in the entire story is some dance and romantic scenes. Those scenes were very poorly written and poorly shot. Perhaps, the director sought to give some ‘commercial’ touch --- or the ‘relief’---in it but in this process he compromised the intensity of the story itself. As I conclude, the film seemed to have been a bit drawn out at the end and the director for reasons best known to him tried to explain the subtle and indicative shots with dramatic actions. I was, and still am, at a loss , as to why he had done it. If he was thoughtful enough to give two indicative dolls hanging on the wall of which one suddenly fell –thus setting the premonition, if not the anticipation rolling, why at the end he thought that he should explain in a crude act of tearing off the one by Partha when one son was murdered--by himself? The director should have a bit confidence on the audience’s intelligence allowing the subtle and metaphoric displays to direct and capture the enormity of the story just told.
All said, Buno –the Wild – is a film that should be watched. It is a film that reminds us of our own primordial sense of selfish existence. The malaise within.
Frightening ? yes.
Formidable ? Yes.
