Prabhat
Roy's films are noted for their social concern.
Laathi, on the cruelty of children towards
their old parents was a big hit. With Shesh
Thikana (2000) however, he went a bit overboard
with his concern for women and the film did not
do well either. He then made Subhobibaho
partly borrowed from Hum Aapke Hain Kaun (1994)
and then trailing off to a different story spilling
over with sentimental melodrama. Several of his
films, among them Shweth Patharer Thala (1992),
have won the Best Feature Film Award (Bengali)
at the National Awards. He makes the right connection
between mainstream masala and his mass audience
and yet gets his message across.
 Pitribhoomi,
produced by Gautam Kundu under the Rose Valley
Productions banner, is based on a novel by celebrated
Bengali littérateur Prafulla Roy. The film
explores the contemporary issue of ancestral homes
placed under the axe by desperate descendants
of aristocratic Bengali families. Promoters, eager
to pounce on these beautiful houses, are ready
with the big bucks plus plush apartment blocks
in newly constructed skyscrapers. The 'desperation'
of these heirs springs from their love for lethargy,
alcohol and parasitic lifestyles. The heirs of
this once-affluent Duttas – two brothers
(Dipankar De and Arun Bandopadhyay) and their
families - live in one of the most beautiful mansions
in the city. Their old mother (Lily Chakravarty)
is banished to the attic, with no one to take
care of her, except a kind granddaughter who eggs
her on to talk about her younger days. The youngest
brother is dead and his widow (Naina Banerjee)
and little son have been driven away from this
home. One brother lives in the US and his signature
is needed to close the deal. His tall, fair and
handsome son Jayanta (Jeet) flies in to do the
needful. Does he?
On his first ever visit to his ancestral home,
Jayanta faces a series of shocks beginning with
a cousin walking in to ask whether he has hidden
some Scotch among his gifts. Jayanta discovers
that all that his father had told him about his
family back home is not true. So, he gets about
to set things right. Along the way, he falls in
love with Bipasha (Swastika Mukherjee) a pretty
social activist he had met on the plane from Mumbai
to Kolkata. After crossing seemingly insurmountable
hurdles, Jeet agrees to sign the deal for the
selling of the house on several conditions –
his widowed aunt must get her lawful share of
the proceeds; his older cousin must marry the
girl he ditched when she got pregnant; and his
grandmother will have the right to live with dignity.
The film closes with the beautiful mansion preparing
itself for the promoter's axe, and Jeet flying
away to US, leaving his girlfriend behind to wait
for him. Surprisingly, the rooted-in-tradition
Jayanta does not make any attempt to save the
grand mansion – a tribute to archeological
beauty in an urban metro threatened by shopping
malls and multiplexes defining ugly examples of
modernization and ruining the cityscape forever.
The mansion is also a celebration to his grandfather's
memory and his father's nostalgia.
Despite logical goofs and convenient melodramatic
coincidences, Pitribhoomi stands out
for Roy's restraint and control in handling his
subject. The colours are sedate and sober, (Premendra
Bikash Chaki's camerawork), the locations, shot
mainly in Bolpur near Santiniketan, are beautiful,
(Swapan Chakravarty's production design) and the
music (Kalyan Sen Barat), works extremely well.
The theme song is interspersed with a line from
a famous patriotic song by Tagore. Some lines
of dialogue are filled with a blend of acid and
frothiness. Roy's generous use of satire in the
scenes where he tackles the issue of duplication
and triplication of wills executed with mastery
by a diabolic lawyer (Biplab Chatterjee) are both
hilarious and hard-hitting.
Jeet, the youngest member of the matinee idol-triumvirate
of Bengali mainstream comprised of Mithun, Prasenjeet
and Jeet, performs brilliantly as Jayanta. Thanks
to the director, he has stripped himself completely
of his 'jhinchak' image with jazzy costumes, jangling
jewellery and stylized shoes. We see a new Jeet
here who, with his blue-tinted cosmetic lenses,
offers a glimpse into his histrionic potential
and his ability to work really really hard. He
has worked hard on his dancing as well. The other
highlight of the film is the blooming romance
between Jayanta and Bisakha handled with a subtlety
rarely seen in commercial Bengali cinema. The
romance evolves slowly and runs just under the
surface of the main theme, almost like a sidebar,
but neither jars nor takes over the main theme
of the film – the rescue of a family in
decay by its NRI heir. Roy tends to lose control
over his subject in the scenes shot in the plush
apartment of the Dutta's Westernised sister (Moumita
Bose). The women's NGO bit appears heavy handed
and superfluous. Roy could have dispensed with
the Hindu girl-loves-Muslim boy sub-plot considering
that he shies away from taking it to its logical
conclusion.
These however, are smaller glitches in a film
that exudes warmth as one leaves the theatre.
Jeet deserves special congratulations for gifting
his fans with a completely new screen persona.
Pitribhoomi is unadulterated commercial
cinema that carries Roy's mandatory signature
of wholesome entertainment sans sex and violence.
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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