Synopsis
Piyali (Roopa Ganguly), who had discovered
some rather unpalatable truths about the underhand
dealings going on in her laboratory in the name
of clinical trials on unsuspecting patients involving
genetic manipulation, dies under mysterious circumstances.
Roopa (Rituparna Sengupta), her sister who lives
in Kolkata and works in a MNC, has to fly to the
US to perform the final rituals. But to her shock,
she discovers that her sister did not die of natural
causes or as the result of any accident but was
murdered in cold blood. As she begins to investigate,
she learns that her sister had recorded her findings
in a CD that can be accessed only through a password
that died with her. While in the US, she interacts
with the other characters in the film –
American, NRI Indians and even some Black people.
The CD is not to be found. The password is also
lost...
Contemporary Bengali cinema is conspicuous for
its lack of suspense thrillers. No one has tried
to fathom the reason why. In this ambience of
straightforward masala films and off-mainstream
cinema, Raj Basu brings a ray of hope with his
new film, Piyalir Password. The film
is a murder mystery-turned-suspense thriller shot
totally in the US. Produced under the banner of
Guiding Star Films, Piyalir Password
is Raj Basu's second full-length feature film,
this time in Bengali and shot completely in Maryland,
Rockville near Washington D.C.
 Raj
Basu, a graduate of the Hollywood Film School,
left his hometown in Kolkata in 1981 to study
at the University of Maryland and stayed on in
the US. He is a computer science professional.
His debut into films was with the feature film
Wings of Hope, more the result of an
enduring emotional passion than a need for work.
“The concept behind Wings of Hope
was to give Asian immigrants in the US an insight
into their individual culture – the good
as well as the misunderstood.” Raj Basu
familiarized himself with the moving image with
two independent works for television. In 1998
he directed Dwando, a suspense thriller
and Aghaat, a Bengali tele-series.
“In Wings of Hope, I tried to
portray the diasporic restiveness Indian youth
in the US faced in the 1990s. The change in their
attitudes towards life, love, relationships, parents,
themselves, the constant conflict between the
older generation of Indian immigrants who insist
that their children stick to Indian morals, while
the children believe that born and bred in the
US, they are too Americanized to stick to Indian
morals – these were the facets of life I
wished to bring out. Drugs, pre-marital sex, and
abortion – these may be PG-rated in America.
But these issues are a real problem for the first-generation
Indian-American. The challenge for the characters
in Wings of Hope becomes a movement from confusion
to clarity. This is a story of redemption,”
explains Raj. The NRI label seems to help
young professionals who suddenly decide to turn
to filmmaking. Basu cannot be accused of toying
with films because he took care to do a course
in film before he ventured in television serials
and then graduated to filmmaking. “My film
is an expression of the conflict of values first
and second generation Indian-Americans face. I
was not really aware that homebred Indians too,
have the same problems. Some parts in the film
are experiences picked from my own life as a young
man trying to cope with values in America. If
it looks like any Hindi film, it was definitely
not by design and I shall try to be original with
my next film,” he sums up, closing further
discussion about Wings of Hope.
Coming back to Piyalir Password, "The
Indian cast has established actors like Sabyasachi
Chakrabarty and Koushik Sen. Though I do not intend
the film to be a musical, I am trying explore
music as a metaphor and music as an exploration
into the psyche of the characters for this film.
So, I came down to Kolkata to close the deal with
Bickram Ghosh who is doing the musical score for
the film,” says Basu.
“Noted singers Lopamudra Mitra and Swagatalakshmi
Dasgupta are lending their voices to the songs
of the film and I am going to use all kinds of
music from Rock to Bangla Band to fusion, to Tagore
songs, alternative rock, operatic flavours, Jazz
Blues, Western music and more of string sections
than keyboard. Raj is very erudite about the music
he wants and it is more conceptual music than
the music that goes in a musical film. We plan
to release a stand-alone CD of the music track
along with the film’s release in November.
I am impressed with Raj’s focus on music
for a suspense thriller,” says Bickram Ghosh
who is also doing the background music for the
film.
 “I
have been strongly influenced by the world of
Alfred Hitchcock and Alan Parker and The Untouchables
(1987) has been a personal favourite. Bibek
Banerjee has done the cinematography for the film
and I have written the story and the screenplay,”
observes Basu. “This is perhaps the first
Bengali film to have been shot entirely in the
US,” he adds.
From the 14-minute raw footage of the film that
we got to see, an interesting revelation was Basu’s
subtle way of touching other social issues such
as domestic violence. Piyali was the victim of
domestic violence and was separated from her husband.
Divorce, child custody, the vacillating nature
of Piyali’s friend and colleague (Sabyasachi)
and the character played by Koushik Sen extending
all support to Roopa (Rituparna) in her search
for her sister’s killers touch upon emotions
like friendship, fellow-feeling and so on. “I
have tried to bring up important problems of life
of NRIs living in the US in a very unobtrusive
way so that the film reaches the heart and does
not stop at being a mere murder mystery,”
says Basu. Sam Neogi is the production designer
for the film. Koushik Sen and Roopa Ganguly have
been given completely new looks in the film thanks
to the professionalism of Neelima who did the
make-up. Koushik looks macho for the first time
in this film.
“We hope to finish the music and the post-production
work to time the film’s release in November
this year,” sums up Basu.
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.
|
