The last time we saw the grossly underused Danny Denzongpa in a lead role, it was in the Bengali film Lal Kuthi. Denzongpa was a powerhouse of volcanic eruptions in this forgotten film.
Bioscopewala, which offers Denzongpa a chance to be at the helm, is all about guilt, almost-forgotten memories and the power of nostalgia to invoke the purest form of desire, which comes only to those who know how to give unconditional love.
Straightaway Bioscopewala lodges itself into the recesses of our parched hearts. With its artless, freewheeling audacious adaptation of Rabindranath Tagore’s deeply moving story Kabuliwala, the film sets up a wistful picture-perfect world of regret and heartbreak.
The permanence of a relationship that grows between an Afghan migrant Rehmat Khan (Denzongpa) and a little girl Minnie (played by the wonderful Miraya Suri) forms the crux of the story.
In Tagore’s original story, an Afghan fruit seller forms a bond with a girl because she reminds him of his daughter; here the story is brought forward into a different timeline.
It was with trepidation we approached the film, wondering how the relationship would look in the present-day context of sexual predators. It was a different world when the iconic Balraj Sahni befriended and bonded with little Minnie in Bimal Roy’s Kabuliwala.
However, first-time director Deb Medhekar tears through all cynical readings of Tagore’s classic story to tell us that the age of innocence is never over. There is always room for compassion and camaraderie, no matter how low the moral aspirations of a civilisation falls.
Medhekar, in a script co-written with Radhika Anand, brings about tenderness and empathy in every frame. A sizable portion of the film’s aesthetic astuteness is attributable to Rafey Mehmood’s cinematography.
Mehmood makes every frame a vista of reined-in emotions. There is certain restrain and temperance in the storytelling, rarely seen in films about human relationships.
Here is a film that is as beautiful in feeling as it is in appearance. And no small gratitude for this gem of a treat to the performers.
Seasoned actors Tisca Chopra, Adil Hussain and Geetanjali Thapa pitch in with fluent performances. But it is Denzongpa who stands tall in a role immortalised by Sahni. He is at once virile and emotional, child and man, yin and yang. He sweeps the character’s inner world into his own persona to render a character that Sahni and Bimal Roy would have recognised.
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Don’t miss it!
Bioscopewala is screening now in the UAE
