It is good to see Ashok Viswanathan virtually reinventing himself with Bhrosto Tara. It is not the kind of work that fits in with the cerebral energy of Shunya Thekey Suru, Kichu Sanglapo Kichu Pralap and other films that had reflected the enthusiasm for an “alternative language” acquired during his years at the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune and later during the teaching assignments at FTII and elsewhere. This time he springs a surprise by refraining from any experiment in either the content or the narrative style. Instead he takes up a simple story that was written more than a century ago and tries to put it in a contemporary context.

That is not easy since the dowry problem today is embroiled in social realities that didn’t exist in the early 20th century. The director allows the story to flow at its own pace with the actors slipping into the social climate of rural Bengal, the only difference being that they make a conscious effort to speak a dialect of the district they belong to without disturbing the overall appeal.

The director&’s contribution to the script — the flashback that begins with the death of the woman some years after she is married into an aristocratic household against her wishes — carries just a casual impression of the technical jugglery that had distinguished someone committed to changing the rules of a screen narrative. Here, if he keeps repeating the image of the last journey in sepia tones, it is essentially to reinforce the tragic irony. The woman had died with mistaken notions of the man who was quite helpless when the elders were adamant in their endorsement of a cruel ritual — the sense of guilt driving him into the final gesture. All this proceeds in the style that recalls the social environment that prevailed then, with no attempt to add visual details or insights to update the basic idea.

This is a pleasant surprise as far as Ashok Viswanathan is concerned, but he gets ample support from his cast, particularly Bhaswar Chatterjee, who speaks in the original dialect even after he and his family come to the city where he finds a job as a teacher. The other actors also sustain their social roots without the director trying to add the distorted forms that, in his past work, have been testing the cinematic sensibilities of the audience. It gives the film an old-fashioned look — something that could easily have been passed off as something made in the 1950s. 

The tragedy revolving around the woman doesn’t acquire much strength for the simple reason that the character is given somewhat shallow treatment and there is no way in which the new actress playing the part can leave an impression. There seemed to be more space left unused in the script for the character to be given more substance.

Altogether, this would be remembered as an average production with a much too traditional look. There are folk songs to recreate the milieu but these are mixed with Tagore music that seems to be out of place. In the final analysis, it would seem that Viswanathan is trying to leave his signature on a straightforward narrative, making him quite unpredictable.

He began with the fiery commitment to a new language that fetched him a place in discerning circles and a few awards. Then he switched to a monstrously big-budgeted potboiler like Sesh Sanghat and films made in Hindi, Malayalam and Tamil that were difficult to relate to the serious work that he had done earlier or the non-fiction work that found him exploring social realities. He moved back to distorted forms in recent years only to find to find that it wasn’t easy to regain lost ground. Bhrosto Tara looks like a return to roots but without the ideas or the vitality to make audiences sit up. It swings to an extreme that virtually makes him unrecognisable and keeps one guessing on what he will come up with next.

But with all the rapid twists and turns, it is possible to follow the developments and appreciate the difficult choices that Ashok Viswanathan has to make to keep working on a variety of projects while sustaining his personal credentials. This is more than what can be said for a newcomer like Tathagata Banerjee, who has ventured into the world of the mystery thriller in Sesh Anka, his first film, without having a clue as to how to hold the tensions in the genre to which it is apparently committed. The script has too many strands to enable the audience to experience the thrills of a whodunit after the murder is discovered. Between a hopelessly mangled crime thriller and an old-fashioned drama, the choice is not too inspiring.

That is the overall picture of Bengali cinema today. Apart from the stunning impact of an offbeat venture like Asha Jaoar Majhe that has raised a storm, there is nothing much to talk about.