SVF

Uber auteur Srijit shaped Rudranil and Ritwick ‘übermensch’

Kolkata, Apr 15 : The man who advocated ‘übermensch’, Friedrich Nietzsche once said, “Art raises its head where creeds relax.”

Here lies the crux-stone of Srijit Mukherji’s thriller ‘Vinci Da’. Srijit, who is not a conformist from the inception of his career again begrudged for a path artistes of his calibre hardly opted.

After successfully delivering thrillers like ‘Baishey Srabon’ and ‘Chatuskone’, ‘Vinci Da’ is nothing but a thrilling homecoming for director Srijit Mukherji. With his third thriller Srijit emerges as the undisputed king of the genre. It is not an edge-of-the-seat thriller rather it explores issues like discrimination in Bengali Film industry and several social dichotomies. It’s very tough to capture audience concentration when you are not hiding any fact in a thriller as everything and strokes is in front of the audience and here is no award for guessing the culprit but audience will love to stay glued with Srijit’s perception and here comes the winner ace.

The film is loosely based on a bitter occasion of ace make-up artiste Somnath Kundu, as he narrated that to Rudranil Ghosh. Then the main storyline has been conceptualized by Rudranil Ghosh who himself played the character of Vinci Da in the film but narrative of the film rotates and revolves like a trademark Srijit flick.

The mounting of the film is not a complex one but the approach of the gone conflicting with the rolling minutes. Starting as a simple story of a deprived make-up artist the narrative elevates creating layers and ended up as one of the most successfully executed layered films ever made in Bengali language. Through some point to point dialogues the film eventually emerges as a counterpart of any societal victim. The film proves the phrase, ‘everyone is capable of becoming something monstrous.’

The film revolves with focal characters Vinci Da and Adi Bose; played by Rudranil Ghosh and Ritwick Chakraborty respectively. Undoubtedly this is one of the finest performances till date by Rudranil Ghosh and Ritwick Chakraborty delivered a performance people expect from him. His unique attire says ‘make crime pay; become a lawyer’. This is the second time after ‘Nirbaak’ Ritwick enters team Srijit and Rudranil a regular contender but they both simply creates magic on screen.

Anirban Bhattacharya is as usual dominating on screen as police inspector and in a short entry Rana Basu Thakur shines. Sohini Sarkar has not more to do but apt as per screenplay. The surprise package is a cameo by Riddhi Sen. He made audiences go gaga through his short term presence on screen.

Once there was a buzz that one of the one of the main cheat code of Srijit’s success is he works with crowd-pullers like Prosenjit Chatterjee, Abir Chatterjee or Jisshu Sengupta but defying all odds this time Srijit lead the art to conquer the audience.

As the film poster comes with a byline ‘The Art of Revenge, The Revenge of Art’; and here the uber auteur Mukherji artistically certified ‘Revenge’ as an ‘Art’ form.

The film will evoke some questions. Is eventuality is a circumstantial evidence? When only the ‘Revenge’ is an ‘Art’? Is killing always a sin? Who is the criminal? Psychic Adi Bose or Vinci Da? As Adi Bose says himself a killer but is killing is his main vice? I will go with Clint Eastwood. He said, “Stealing of the innocence is the most heinous crime, and certainly a capital crime if there ever was one”. Is Vinci Da is victim? Adi Bose, is he guilty or moderator? Here lies the success of the maker that in open eyes anyday which is sin; he forced to think otherwise.

Srijit himself played a cameo but not goes at par with the performance label of other characters. He seems very keen to show his face on every movie he is directing. But it’s not necessary to act every film he directs.

In ‘Uma’, his cameo mesmerized us but in ‘Shahjahan Regency’ and in ‘Vinci Da’ he fails to do so. He should resist from doing so or should write a better role for himself.

I like to quote John Douglas from ‘Mindhunter’, “Manipulation. Domination. Control. These are the three watchwords of violent serial offenders.” Srijit manipulated psychological souls, dominated the narrative plots and controlled his calm over angst and thus the film turned treacherously beautiful.

Like every society has the criminals that it deserves, every film should have audience it deserves. Now it’s audiences turn to experience this must watch. (UNI)