SVF

Professor Shonku O El Dorado

Professor Shonku O El Dorado: The First-ever Shonku Film Is Too Staid and Understated for a Generation Weaned on Marvel

Sandip Ray’s adaptation of his father’s Shonku story stays too close to the original to be able to break free cinematically

It’s been by all accounts the most-awaited film of the year, a cultural marker as it were – the first-ever adaptation of Satyajit Ray’s celebrated stories featuring the eccentric scientist Professor Trilokeshwar Shonku. Ever since the first Shonku story appeared in 1961 in Sandesh magazine, this globetrotting inventor of some of the craziest gadgets the human mind can conjure up has fired the imagination of an entire generation of readers of science fiction in Bengali, and later in English translations. (I am not sure any other language or author in India has engaged with science fiction writing of this class.)

It’s been by all accounts the most-awaited film of the year, a cultural marker as it were – the first-ever adaptation of Satyajit Ray’s celebrated stories featuring the eccentric scientist Professor Trilokeshwar Shonku.

What’s fascinating about these stories are not only the inventions but also the exotic locations that this reticent scientist from little-known Giridih visits in the course of his fantastic adventures – at a time when Google, Google Map and Wikipedia were as much in the realm of fantasy as Professor Shonku’s inventions. The stories enable readers to give free rein to their imagination and explore these aspects in their own way; I for myself remember often closing my eyes and trying to visualize the world of Professor Shonku, ensconced in a charming time wrap.

So, it’s with some trepidation that one ventures to a screening of Sandip Ray’s …Click here to read the full story