What comes to your mind when you, as a Bengali, hear the
word, ‘Aamra’? “We”, as it is called in English, this beautiful word stands to
mean “us”, the accumulation of life as a whole or a certain set of communities
where I, most necessarily, must belong to. It is a word for unification and
generalization and holds a plethora of other meanings which could, if you
really wanted it to, depending upon your perspective, express the patriotic
version of yourself as well.
But in this innovatively directed and scripted movie by
director Mainak Bhowmick, Aamra holds
a new meaning in the name whatsoever. This is a movie shown and shot in the way
of a documentary and is primarily directed at questions regarding what we mean by love and sex and all the
other hyper rated things we want to involve ourselves in. It is based upon the
lives of six unrelated characters. Well, to say ‘lives’ would be a bit too
much. The perspective is huge tough. It was released back in 2006, and when I
was scrolling down my movie directories, I never thought that this would be a
movie so baffling. Indeed, this is an experimental cinema and probably the
first sex-comedy in Bengali. It is also one of the first digital cinemas in
Bengali. And the way it is shot, I would still maintain, most other filmmakers
will not even dare to walk that road even to this day, almost nine years later.
Shots of Music World in Park Street and Calcutta when it
wasn’t shrouded with blue and white remind the good old days when rape and
murder wasn’t so common. The shots also hold potential to bring back many other
long lost memories. The script is very
well thought of and implemented. The story brings out the necessity for us (Aamra), normal people to explore
ourselves and push the boundaries of taboo established by the society. Back in
2006, it was a pretty tough job to do, I must mention. The beeps in dialogues
clearly show how afraid filmmakers were of the Censor Board back then. Being a
sex-comedy, the movie doesn’t have one sexually implicit scene. This was the
level of strictness that the Cesor Board maintained. Times have changed so
much!
The cast is well picked. Parambrata as a jobless rock star,
Kaushik as a sexually enthused professor, Jishu as a filmmaker, Ananya as a
school teacher and Arpita as a house wife bring out the depravity and
frustration slowly building up in their lives due to the established taboos in
the society. Rajatava, Rudranil and a special appearance by Pallavi also add to
the catchy script and storytelling. However, Jishu, to me, wasn’t the most
suitable for his role. A Jeet would have been fine, but that’s just me.
Just like a chemical reaction, a movie script also has a
mechanism and dynamics that everyone knows of but doesn’t mind speaking out.
Establish an order, create disturbances in the prevailing order so anarchy
prevails and then eliminate the anarchic elements to bring the system to order
once again. Well, that’s just a movie script served in a scientific way. Just like the rate of a reaction varies with
the way the steps are completed, a movie is judged by the way these steps are
implemented in its script. And in Aamra,
things are just as fine.
I would not speak anything here regarding the story of the
movie because that might hamper your interest in watching it. I would really
like you to watch it. It’s a blast from the past, it speaks about things you
would rather not and to look back to those days of tightened taboos, you’d be
really happy the way society has shaped up now.
Acting: 3/5
Script: 3.2/5
Direction: 3.5/5
Overall: 3.2/5
Verdict: A must watch for everyone.
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