Sunday, July 17, 2011

EK DOCTOR KI MAUT (1991)


Recollecting the memory of watching this film years ago in Golden Television years of Delhi Doordarshan. In those days films made by NFDC and parallel filmmakers were quite frequent on Saturday after primetime serials. In those days there’s no option of switching channels as satellite television invasion was not so common in every home. As far as I can remember the movie brought my attention then due to the presence of the man who made the first suave carrot eating detective ‘Karamchand’ well and famous in form of television serial but as film got over, it made me so sad. For years I hunt around to search the film…finally ending up with poor digital format copy dubbed from VCR print.
The film was written, directed by Tapan Sinha and as clarifies in the end titles, it was based on a true life of a doctor who committed suicide few years back; though the subject of research was different. The film has one of the most under noticed brilliant act by Pankaj Kapoor as Dr. Dipankar Roy, a government doctor/scientist completely lost and absorbed in research on vaccine for leprosy. For years he kept on experiments on mice in his small homemade lab. Finally he got success on it and at the same time he found interesting finding about possibility of curing human sterility. Soon the news spread to media and he has to make ready his papers to submit the government health department. His success and outspoken and short temper attitude brought jealousy to the nexus of good for nothing Government Director of Health and interfering Gynecologists lobby calling his research a publicity stunt and hoax. As its universal history of mankind that whenever either in science or arts any genius had made invention and experiments, the silly society initially rejected and cursed their achievements. The Doctor was transferred to remote to village and he has to finish his research papers within stipulated time. Next he has to face an inquiry committee consists of men who are termites of society.
One has to watch this film to know what a gem of actor Pankaj Kapoor is! I would rate his act here as one of the first-rate in Hindi films and he brought to screen both normal and abnormal sides of his character. He is an intense, unsocial rational man of pure science burning midnight oil to complete his work, devoid of any publicity and ultimately a talented man broke down by the mediocre basterds of the country! It’s shame and unfortunate of our country that Government and bureaucracy never gave due credit to its own genius scholars until foreign recognized and awarded their original achievements. The film has fine supporting acts by Shabana Azmi as concerning wife along with young and talented Irrfan Khan as a reporter of thinking generation.
Highly Recommended watch.
Ratings-9/10

1 comment:

Luv said...

One of the best films I have ever seen :)