Shukno Lanka is the story of a very uncommon common man, the middle-aged Chinu Nandy, a junior artist at Tollywood. He lives his life on a day-to-day basis and in bits and pieces, just like his brief appearances in movies. Each day is a battle to him, a battle to get some role or the other as a junior artist, a battle to earn two to three hundred rupees, and a battle to survive. He is devoid of any dreams or aspirations. He is queerly content in his mundane life. He neither believes nor waits for miracles.
But, miracles do happen and it happens to the most unsuspected ones. One fine day, internationally acclaimed Bengali filmmaker Joy Sundar Sen offers Chinu to play the lead in his next project.
Shukno Lanka is also a story of Joy Sundar Sen-a man ensconced in his own world- a world of art and cinema. His dedication towards his art has slowly distanced him from his wife and it is his admiration for art that later draws him to the young Australian actress Isabella whom he meets in
This offer itself is a magic formula to Chinu…a formula that is bound to change his life. But, the simpleton Chinu is scared to dream big. The plot traces how sheer determination and life force help Chinu live the miracle and not become a victim of a miracle like many other.
Even Joy Shundar gets a Paraspathor in real life. As Chinu confronts Joy on the last day of the shoot, for the first time the audience see Joy being overwhelmed with emotions; maybe Chinu did manage to imbue life in the emotionally dead Joy Sundar Sen and make him more humane.
Mithun Chakraborty as Chinu Nandy, Sabyasachi Chakraborty as Joy Sundar Sen, Debashree Roy as Jhilik, Emma Garnett Brown as Isabella, Angana Bose as Bela, each actor gives a stellar of a performance and the same holds true for director Ajay Pandey. But undoubtedly it is Mithun who steals the show.
Better known these days for his over-the-top performances in below average commercial films, he proves that he still has what it takes to be a national award winning actor. He is brilliant in each frame and never once does he come across as Mithun Chakraborty, the superstar…he is Chinu Nandy a mere ‘extra’ in the ‘cinema para’.
Although, Chinu is the pivotal character of Shukno Lanka, it is in Joy Sundar that the director proves his mastery over character creation. Joy Sundar stands on the brink of becoming a negative character but the director holds his strings tight; never allowing him to trip over. One can hardly expect a man so engrossed in his art to get involved in the trivialities of day-to-day life. He is always preoccupied with his creations and hardly spends time with his wife. But, the director never lets him become a cold, inhuman beast. Instead he keeps him as a man of restrained emotions who understands her wife’s emotional needs and cares for her but has outgrown the romantic frills. Sabyasachi Chakraborty does a splendid job in portraying this character.
The movie is well scripted as well and never gets pretentious. If Joy Sundar is the ‘global bong’, Chinu is the personification of the kurta pajama and jhola clad ‘paati bangali’; Chinu’s wife-is like every other typical Bengali middle class housewife whose life revolves mostly around TV serials…and also her husband; Jhilik-Joy Sundar’s is the high society housewife who has in her life every luxury but love; Isabella, the Australian actress-turned-producer who comes to India from Germany to produce the film, with her admiration and restrained emotions for Joy Sundar; all the characters walk, talk, think, just as they should have in real life.
The movie that traces the journey of a junior artist, gives due importance to its own and hence from the tram conductor to the cha wala to the unemployed carom playing hoodlums, each character leave a mark on the screen.
According to Joy Sundar Sen, “To be international, you have to be intensely local” and the acclaim and adulation the movie is receiving far and wide is due to this very approach of its director Gaurav Pandey. The quintessential Kolkata comes alive in Mullikghaat,
We get a glimpse of today’s ‘cinema para’ replete with south Indian dance directors, dancers in hideous costumes, melodramatic dialogues, lecherous, middle-aged, self-obsessed ‘hero’s and their side-kicks, movies with names like ‘Ma morle Mashi’r ki hobe’, directors working at the mercy of the ‘hero’, politics and backstabbing, producers backing out on directors at the last minute, and so on and so forth.
The songs are good and each apt for the occasion. Lyrics like ‘Abchha raater chokh chhuye ghum’ are strewn in lilting melody and matched with some melt-in-the-mouth singing.
However, one thing that could have been taken a better care of is the lighting. Although it is supposed to be a night-long journey through the streets of Kolkata and end with Chinu showing his wife the poster of Parashpathor flashing him as the hero, one can’t fail to notice that all through the carriage ride the light stays almost the same…it is a night with a rather abrupt dawn!
And last but not the least the embedded advertisements especially that of a news channel could and should have been avoided.
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