neel rajar deshe – a re-review

Synopsis:

Neel Rajar Deshe (In the Land of the Blue King) is inspired from a film by Gabriele Salvatore called I'm Not Scared. Contrary to the title, which suggests a fairy tale based on fantasy, Neel Rajar Deshe is grounded totally on reality, revolving around an adolescent kid Raja and his adventures during his school holidays. Raja (Bobby) leads a gang of naughty and adventurous kids forever wandering in the foothills of the hills in North Bengal and playing games of tricky one-upmanship or ragging the fat one among them. Raja and his kid sister Chhoti (Tathoi) live with their parents in a bungalow at the foothills while their father (Ashish Vidyarthy) drives a taxi in Kolkata. He avoids going to the closest town Siliguri because he does not wish his kids to know that he is a cabbie. One day, Raja discovers a little boy held captive in a large hole in the ground at the regular jaunt of Raja and his friends. It takes the little boy, Neel, some time to warm up to Raja and for Raja to learn from television that a criminal has kidnapped the boy, the son of an industrialist in Kolkata, for a huge ransom. The chained Neel's body is filled with festering sores from the bites of rats and mice in the hole. Raja tries to help him but is shocked when he finds that the kidnapper, a sinister guy called Pandey (Rajesh Sharma) with one ear missing, has moved into their bungalow in the foothills as his father's 'friend.' The father in a moment of greed, agreed to dispatch the kidnapped boy in his taxi and gets trapped in Pandey's spidery web. Pandey now holds Raja's entire family in his vicious grip at the point of a gun. Raja manages to escape and rescue Neel from his hideout but gets shot in the leg by his own father in the process. Raja's mother (Indrani Haldar) shoots Pandey down and Raja's father learns his lesson.

Shot in the High-Definition Digital format almost totally in the foothills of the Himalayas in North Bengal, Neel Rajar Deshe offers some of the richest and most beautiful visuals of Nature seen recently in Bengali cinema. The mountain range in the backdrop, the cornfields at the foothills, the azure blue sky laced with smoky cotton clouds and the lush green mantle in the valleys of the tea gardens, with fanciful children seeing flying white horses among the cotton-candy clouds, almost overshadows the narrative from beginning to end. Ironically, this also becomes a reason why the film fails to live up to its own category of an 'adventure film for children.' There is plenty of adventure, true. But the other kids are marginalized soon after the story begins and Raja dominates the scenario till the end. His squabbles with his kid sister, the kids' relationship with their parents in normal times and during tension-ridden times have been handled with natural spontaneity as has the rising tension between Raja's desperate and frightened parents. Indrani Haldar and Ashish Vidyarthy are restrained and convincing. All the kids, except the one who plays Neel, are uninhibited and free in their debut appearances on screen. The script keeps Neel rather sketchy and confusing Some fleshing out could have done wonders not only to the character but also to the whole film. Rajesh Sharma looks more funny and eccentric than sinister though the character has its extremely scary moments for the children in the audience. The film has a dynamic pace and is full of action without a dull moment.

Bickram Ghosh's music is okay but nothing great and the songs do not add anything to the main narrative. If one agrees that Neel Rajar Deshe is a 'children's' film, then the target audience would have to be kids in the age-range of 14-17. Smaller kids in the theatre were very scared especially with Pandey's terrorizing acts such as picking the live goldfish out of the bowl and putting them right back, or revealing his missing ear to Raja with calculated slowness, and the scenes when Neel is discovered for the first time. There is too much of violence for Neel Rajar Deshe to be classified under 'children's adventure' though the motivation is commendable. Some cuss words and abusive language ought not to have been used in a children's film. There are logical loopholes too - no kidnapper who has his brains in the right place in the right proportion, would ever stake his kidnapped gold-mine-of-a-child by keeping him with little food and no water in a hole filled with rats and mice for days on end and thus write his own death warrant. The scared-to-death Pandey is busier escaping the clutches of the police than trying to organize the ransom and the safe delivery of the child to his parents. Or when Raja first discovers the hole, he sees a bare leg lying underneath. He sees it a second time too. Where did this 'adult' leg disappear? If he was hallucinating like a child does, it remains unexplained. The first time we are introduced to Neel, he comes screaming as if he was ghost. Why?

While maker Riingo deserves a solid pat on the back for deciding to make a film for children focussed on adventure in an ambience where children are constantly side-tracked by mainstream cinema across the country, at the same time, one must admit that in Neel Rajar Deshe, the cinematographer in Riingo almost completely overshadows the director and scriptwriter in Riingo. So while the film does offer some entertainment with a capital 'e', it is not as 'clean', and as 'wholesome' as it should have been considering its target audience.

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.