Chittagong: Wrapped Up in Haste

Chittagong is that rare film which makes you feel that it needed a longer duration than what it contents itself with. For uninformed people like me, this film is a lesson on history and an important one at that about the uprising in Chittagong in 1929-1931 mastered by Suraiya Sen. Everyone calls him Master-da but nothing was made known about what he did or does in the film except calling shots and making plans in the revolt. Which should suit the narrative fine but there always will be some questions that need answers and we just cannot digest someone revolting against the British with a group of underage youngsters with no strong motive. True, there doesn’t have to be a reason to fight for freedom but we could have used a back-story.

The cast consists mostly of GOW (it was an AKPFL film alright) ensemble with Dibyendu Bhattacharya joining them in a delightful comeback and none of them can be accused of putting in a wrong note anywhere. However dialogues credited to Piyush Mishra weren’t as sharp as they were with AK films. Nothing stings a viewer like the film that does not realize its true potential and Chittagong has immense potential and ample scope for drama to make it a longer film but one cannot understand the haste with which everything was wrapped up. It was as if Bedabrata Pain was instructed strictly to make a 90-minute film while the events that enfolded during the period demanded more screen time and a grander canvas.  Shankar Ehsaan Loy also make a comeback as music directors and it felt good to listen Shankar Mahadevan lending depth in his inimitable voice to the situations the lead characters have to go through in their journey.

Pain’s screenplay was so economic that there was no possibility for a non-event but ironically it was not racy either. Things happen and we shift between timelines so quickly that it makes it so difficult to empathize or relate to any particular character. Bajpayee gets more screen time than others but his role was not written to arouse and the subtlety he lends to the character does not help either. The Queen’s men were the regular stereotypes we usually find in patriotic films of yore and have nothing much to offer apart from menacing looks.  

Despite it’s obvious flaws Chittagong is worth a watch for its credible performance s and the story it has to tell about the first farmer uprising in Bengal in 1945, which it claims to be the final nail in the coffin for the British Rule in India. It is not the rousing patriotic film that you have expected especially after tagging it to Anurag Kashyap but it is still a story well told with whatever the director has got to deal with.