SWAPNER DIN (Bengali) (2004)

Multiple Awards winning Bengali Director Buddhadeb Dasgupta won National Award as Best Director in 2004 for this dark human drama of three human beings chasing their dreams in eternal flux of life. The film is screened in various Film Festivals around the globe and won critical appraisal everywhere.

The film is woven round the dreams of three different persons and their journeys in search of their dreams.
Paresh (Prosenjit Chatterjee), the central character, travels by a government jeep with a 16mm film projector. As he goes from one place to another screening government education films he falls in love with the image of girl in one of the films he captured and dreams of finding her one day.
Chapal (Rajesh Sharma), the substitute driver of the jeep, dreams of making it rich in Dubai by sneaking in a forged passport.
Amina (Rimi Sen), a pregnant Bangladeshi Muslim woman whose husband was killed in riot after they migrated to India dreams of returning to her own land to give her unborn child a definite, unquestionable identity.
The magical mosaic of their dreams constantly has to face the realistic conflicts of situational shocks like murder, the theft of the projector and ultimately the theft of jeep.

To watch this film you required hell lot of patience. I’ve seen ‘Kaalpurush’ and expecting some depth from this film but highly disappointed from the film. Even though its an honest attempt of Director, the whole film seems too pretentious and deliberate attempt to tell the sentimental story without much internalization. It fails to sympathize with any of three characters and that’s the biggest flaw of the film. It’s nice to see Rimi Sen in a completely deglamorized role but neither she nor the other two actors leave the memorable impression once the film is over.

I still remember that many years ago I watched a moving film on Doordarshan named ‘BaghBahadur’ where the hero entertains the village audience painting himself in tiger attire and with the coming of circus in the village people flocked to watch the real tiger leaving his disguised street show. To claim his audience back, he challenged to fight real tiger. It was much later I came to know that it is film Written and Directed by Budhdhadeb Dasgupta. I searched that Budhdhadeb Dasgupta in this film but disappointed.

Ratings- 6/10