Chittagong Review

Chittagong:

Chittagong is not so much about watching an engrossing movie (which it surely is). It is about treading a hidden reality. It screams an occurrence that your history teacher did not tell you in school and the history text book forgot to print. It ingeminates that history honours the victors and relegates to the trashcan martyrs whose battles of sweat and blood are sometimes not even footnotes. Unfortunately the historian plays cinematographer cum editor, he can wish away what does not fall in place with the larger picture of his story.
The uprising in Chittagong in the 1930s is one such historic incident. Surjya Sen (Manoj Bajpaye) lead a revolutionary movement against the British. His trained men were not those who went to a great military school – they were all children and with the right gusto and patriotic fervour that characterised the polity many decades ago and alas has since faded substantially.
Chittagong is a sheet stolen from history and relived with real life shortcomings, raw appeal and earnestness. It is gripping and engaging, dramatic without much exaggeration. As the filmmaker confessedly said: it was about maintain the balance between the narrative and reality. This tight is well walked by Director Bedabrata Pain. He calls for a relook – nay just attention at that translucent fabric we euphemistically call history.
The part abortive revolt against the British, witnessed an amateur revolt leading to ransacking the British armoury, destruction of the railway line telephone and telegraph offices in this picturesque part of the North East. The British were taken by surprise and reacted with customary response of an insensitive unaccountable imperialist.
About a hundred odd people got the pleasure of watching this film which obviously was denied main stream release status. Like the tale it tells it gets the step brotherly treatment even in the art form, largely because it is devoid of stars and the other caparisons that Bollywood thrives on. At one level that is also the strength of the film. It is blissfully devoid of the Ashutosh Gowarikar’s Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Se trappings. What the narrative lacks in finesse it makes up in sincerity. Hopefully the film will get its due and people starved of good cinema will get to seeing it. It is unfair to restrict the privilege to the 100 odd who got to viewing it – thanks largely to the efforts of Moving Images.
Narrated through the voice and eyes of the protagonist Jhunku (Delzad Hiwale) a lanky adolescent unwilling revolutionary. He demands attention for translating with maturity the role of a 15 year old who is slowly coming to grips with the social circumstances, is unwilling to accept it and unable to change it. Events force him to walk the part and change camps from a typical rich aristocrat family to the life of a revolutionary. The evolution is wonderfully portrayed and is reflective of a huge source of talent.
Chittagong is also about some fine-tuned performances. The cast brings to the narrative a credibility that permeates the near documentary hang over with the film maker some times slips into intentionally or otherwise. Nirmal Sen (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), Ambika Chakrabarti (Dibyendu Bhattacharya), Ananta Singh (Jaideep Ahlawat), Lokenath Bal (Raj Kumar Yadav) and Ganesh Ghosh (Vishal Vijay) add their mite to the script and help in making the film an enduring experience.
The film leaves untouched the larger question of involving children in a war. That for another time and another script perhaps.
Grab the opportunity when you get it to see the film. This is cinema is many senses of the term. Not just entertainment. A whole generation of viewers who know not of the Chittagong uprising leading to the Tebhaga peasant movement in the mid 1940s will at least get a nodding familiarity with pages of our past. Even cinematically it has its fine moments and great performances.
Chittagong is also about the promise of its debutant Director Bedabrata Pain and the brilliance of Delzad Hiwale playing Jhunku Roy and the gorgeous Vega Tamotia playing Pritilata Waddedar.
Chittagong as I said earlier is not just about watching good cinema, it is about getting a what if late peep into the annals of our own history. That much we surely owe to the martyrs of the cause of free India.

L. Ravichander.