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Director Anjan Dutta’s take on the Anglo-Indian lifestyle is authentic, writes Ervell E. Menezes TAKE a middle-class Anglo-Indian community in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and fill it with a host of idiosyncratic characters. Then get a real estate developer to make a pitch for this old fashioned neighborhood. How these "born losers" pool in their meager resources to fight him and stick to their ground is what Bow Barracks Forever is all about. But the story is centred on Emily Lobo (Lillete Dubey), an Anglo-Indian widow who ekes out a living brewing wine which is in great demand in the locality. Her only dream is that her elder son Kenneth will call her to live with him in London, so she constantly phones him up telling him how dull it is in Kolkata. Her younger son Bradley (Clayton Rodgers) is having an affair with Anne (Neha Dubey) whose drunken and wild husband Tom is often beating her up but his work takes him out of town so that Bradley, a would-be musician, has enough time with her. The plethora of eccentric characters include Peter the Cheater (Victor Banerjee), an alcoholic who lives by conning others, a hyper school teacher Melville and his outrageously seductive wife Rosa and a flirtatious teenager named Sally. It is into this milieu that director-scriptwriter Anjan Dutt introduces the audience to and the establishing shot is impressive. So is the language with "what men" and "bloody" being liberally strewn in the dialogue. The hollowness of the society comes across loud and clear. So is their association with the past. That things are no longer what they used (they were better off under the Raja) to be and so liquor is the best possible outlet. The ambience is similar to pockets of Christians living in Mumbai where migration is often a distant dream. It is their dream world versus reality and the fact that most of them are not unduly bright only makes things tougher. But there is a bonding of sorts and though the way out may not be very credible it works to give the plot a good twist and finally imbue the story with hope. As in 36 Chowringhee Lane, this film graphically captures the ambience of the place and guitar player Peter is brilliantly played by Victor Banerjee. Not only is the make-up first rate but Banerjee is absolutely convincing even if he at times tends to do a Topol in Fiddler on the Roof. The cameos come alive and the story chugs along interestingly. The adda is quite authentic and may be the film could have been clipped by at least so minutes (it is 118 minutes long) but director Dutt takes care not to miss a trick. And just as one wonders how it will end, he finds a way out. It may not provide great histrionic talent as apart from Victor Banerjee the others are amateurish. Lillete Dubey is at best patchy and so is Clayton Rodgers. Neha Dubey as the battered wife is more convincing but it is the story that is the focal point and in the end one is happy, though somewhat depressed, that it is a graphic study of Anglo-Indian life. Well worth taking a look at. -- To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end in life. — Robert Louis Stevenson |
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