Synopsis
Feluda and his two companions, the young
Topshe and the good old Jatayu, a writer of detective
novels with funny names, take off for the famous
Ellora Caves to nab a notorious antique thief
who goes by the name of Chattaraj. It all begins
with a plane crash that kills everyone on board
including a white man who was carrying the head
of the famous Goddess Yakshi from the Rajrani
temple in Bhubaneshwar. This ‘head’
goes missing and while they are scouting for this
‘head’ that must be saved and handed
over to the powers-that-be at all costs, Feluda
uncovers a diabolic plan to rob another famous
antique from the Kailash temple at the caves of
Ellora near Aurangabad. They find Chattaraj has
preceded them to the same place. With his fund
of encyclopaedic historical and architectural
information, Feluda manages to outwit him and
hand him over to the local police but only after
the evil man has thrown an innocent but curious
Bengali professor to his death.
Can there be a thriller without suspense? Sandip
Ray’s new film Kailase Kelenkari,
adapted from a novel of the same name from Satyajit
Ray’s famous Feluda series, proves there
can indeed be such a kind of thriller. The film
is a detective-action thriller centred on Feluda’s
razor-sharp intelligence and ready wit that helps
him solve many a major crime with national and
international implications. Kailase Kelenkari
deals with the theft of antiques from ancient
temples and architectural heritage sites and selling
them off clandestinely to international buyers.
The film opens dramatically enough to hook the
viewer with the plane crash followed by an endless
chain of actions and reactions from the detective
on the one hand and his opponent on the other,
racing against each in a battle of wits and ego
with Feluda understandably carrying home the trophy
of success. But a good detective thriller should
have a water-tight plot, grip the viewer and should
not make him question the logic of events even
if they are illogical. Alfred Hitchcock was a
master at this. Here in Kailase Kelenkari,
too many questions get raised about the logic
of several incidents. Why did the Indian professor
from Michigan follow Chattaraj into the caves
in the dead of night? How do Feluda and his companions
talk about secrecy in the presence of the hotel
bearer? Who commissioned Feluda to solve the mystery
of the missing ‘head’ and the anticipated
theft at the Kailash temple in the first place?
Did he venture out on his own out of some patriotic
fervour? And worse, what really kills whatever
positive elements in the film is the lack of suspense.
In Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) for
instance, one gets to know the killer halfway
through the film. But this does not take away
from the thrills, the actions and the suspense
even with the hero sitting with his fractured
leg near the window right through the film. North
by Northwest (1959) is a textbook case in
thrills, chases and suspense. Will Sandip Ray
please take a page out of these films before embarking
on his next Feluda film?
Another problem the film faces is that there
are more detectives in this film than criminals
of which, one comes across the one and only Chattaraj
thus reducing his effectiveness as a strong adversary
to Feluda. Feluda himself is too verbose and vocal
which works very well in a literary work but not
cinematically. He is forever spilling out historical
and archeological facts on the Ellora Caves and
the Kailash temple, which makes the film far more
‘talkie’ than necessary. Feluda spells
out some of his strategies in solving the crime
rather than these being treated visually, a much-needed
element in a thriller. The car chases are too
many, too long drawn-out and amateurish as are
the fight sequences shot in the dark.
One other major drawback of the film is the shooting
of the commercial in the temple complex shown
towards the closure before the climax. Obviously,
this was put in conditionally to satisfy one of
the sponsors of the film, a noted jewellery house
in Kolkata. But it stands out like a sore thumb
and is shot very amateurishly with the intended
sarcasm falling flat on its face. Sad that a serious
filmmaker like Sandip Ray is forced to accept
sponsorship from a jewellery house and make such
a cheap compromise.
On the positive side, the histrionic work of
the main actors is a big plus for Kailase
Kelenkari. Sabyasachi Chakraborty as Feluda
(Prodosh Mitter) carries on brilliantly from where
Soumitra
Chatterjee, who portrayed the detective in
the Feluda films directed by the senior Ray, left
off. But there are lines on his face that clearly
belie his physical dexterity in the fight scenes.
Parambrato Chatterjee as Topshe comes out with
a seamless, natural performance as do Biplab Chattopadhyay
as a small-time detective and Dipankar De as Chattaraj/Rakshit.
Haradhan Bandopadhyay as Feluda’s generous
uncle and Tom Alter as the foreign buyer are also
good in their brief roles. I have always wondered
why the character of Jatayu, both in the original
literary novels and in the film, needs to be caricaturized
to look like a buffoon. Is it to throw in relief
the magical intelligence of Feluda? Or is it to
spike the intriguing happenings with some humour?
Never mind the reason but the effect fails to
carry the argument forward.
Sandip Ray’s screenplay is crisp and terse
enough though as mentioned earlier the dialogue
element could have been edited and trimmed. Special
mention must be made of the cinematography in
its capturing of the visual beauty of Ellora Caves
in all its splendour be it day or night. The music
credited to Sandip Ray keeps rising and falling
with the changing moods of the film but has generously
borrowed from Satyajit
Ray’s original compositions.
However, critics need not bother Sandip Ray because
the first week’s box office collections
have created a record by the standards of Bengali
cinema. By the end of the first week, the film
has fetched about Rs 45 lakhs from multiplexes,
stand-alone theatres and Nandan whihch has made
the producers increase the number of prints in
the second week from 12 to 15. After all, one
must grant it to Kailase Kelenkari because
all said and done, it does offer ‘wholesome
family entertainment’ with all the masalas
put together. This is something not easily seen
in Bengali films today.
Shoma A Chatterji is a freelance journalist
who specialises in cinema and gender. She has
won the National Award for Best Writing on Cinema
twice.
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