Bangla film industry’s gripe about ‘Pathaan’ shines the light on its own shortcomings

I hadn’t heard of Udayan Cinema, Sheoraphuli, before. But now I will make it a point to visit this two-screen multiplex barely 40 kms away from Kolkata. On January 28, days after Pathaan was released in halls across the country, Udayan Cinema’s official Facebook page put out a piece addressing the overwhelming backlash it faced for reserving only one show per day for Bangla films and dedicating all other screens to SRK’s blockbuster, Pathaan. Days before this post, big names of the Bengali film industry, including director-actor Kaushik Ganguly, had conducted FB live sessions complaining about the way Pathaan has usurped most screens in Bengal. His latest film, Kaberi Antardhan, now has fewer shows thanks to Pathaan. Ganguly is not the first one to raise the alarm. Actor Prosenjit, the undisputed face of cinema from Bengal for the past 30 years, has time and again expressed disappointment at the step-motherly treatment meted out to Bangla films. Dev, who is considered to be the biggest crowd-puller of Bengal, complained about how his latest “blockbuster”, Projapati, has been pulled down from theatres to make way for Pathaan.

Fingers have been pointed at exhibitors and hall owners, who are being made to feel guilty for prioritising profit over “love for Bangla cinema”. The owners of Udayan Cinema, which according to booking platforms is still running shows of the Bangla film Projapati, had this to say in their FB post: “Of course we want Bengali movies to do well and it is our first priority as a proud Bengali family running the cinema for three generations. There was an era when Bollywood would think twice before releasing a movie in Bengal in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s when Bengali cinema was at its peak but today there are only 5-10 movies which do decently in a year. What about the remaining 40-45 weeks in a year? We are in the business of exhibiting movies and will continue doing so only if the audience keeps supporting us…We have salaries, electricity bills, taxes, repairs/ maintenance and other operational expenses to take care of.”

That all is not well with the Bengali film industry is an open secret. How is it doing, my non-resident Bengali friends often ask me when they come down for their yearly dose of Flury’s rumball and Mocambo’s devilled crabs.

My answer is a grunt or a sigh, depending on my last outing at the cinemas. How does one explain this exasperation to people outside Bengal? Especially when the film industries of Kerala, Maharashtra, Karnataka and even Assam and Odisha are dispensing cerebral, entertaining money spinners with such amazing alacrity — while Bengal stews in mediocrity. In the past decade or so, Bengali cinema has made itself comfortable in this cocoon of mediocrity. The state of affairs was best articulated by the late Rituparno Ghosh. In an episode of Ghosh & Company, his eminently watchable talk show, Ghosh chides Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury and Kaushik Ganguly, celebrated filmmakers of contemporary Bengal, for not being true to their craft. The disappointment is like that of an exasperated older sister whose younger siblings ape her blindly. “You have recreated my style but what about the content?” Ghosh asks. A decade after the interview, the question remains pertinent.

Take, for example, Bangla cinema’s lazy detective genre obsession. In the past few years, three different Bengali filmmakers have chosen to adapt Saradindu Bandyopadhyay’s Byomkesh Bakshi novels for the big screen with varying degrees of incompetence. And this week, Dev, the superstar, announced that he will join the Byomkesh Bakshi bandwagon too. He will adapt Bondyopadhyay’s Durga Rahasya, joining the not-so-exclusive clubs of Bengali actors playing the iconic detective. Coincidentally, another production house is also planning to adapt the same novel. Which means there is obvious cannibalisation of ideas.

Bengal’s insatiable appetite for detective fiction means we have a detective for every mood in our literature. But that doesn’t always translate to good cinema. From the insipid Eken series (a bumbling middle-class man is Bengal’s answer to Poirot) to the trope-y Mitin Mashi (Tollywood superstar Koel Mallick playing a zesty woman detective), we have them all. But none of them are raking in the big bucks. Things are so bad that Mahendra Soni, co-founder of Bengal’s biggest production house, SVF, tweeted, “It’s time that everyone needs to go back to the drawing board, and unlearn a lot (specially the so-called “success formula “).”

It’s time to rethink, for sure. As the owners of Udayan Cinema pointed out in their post, maybe a bit of the responsibility lies on the shoulders of the audience too: “Instead of pointing fingers at us, please ponder about your actions or inactions and support Bengali movies with the honesty that the South Indian cinema lovers do for their movies. They worship their art of cinema, their artists/technicians and cinema halls.”

premankur.biswas@indianexpress.com