ওয়াশিংটন বাংলা রেডিও Washington Bangla Radio USA

If you agree that the language of music has no boundaries, you would probably love the song "Jao pakhi bolo" from the film ‘Antaheen.’ It is a modern love song, hence the abstract lyrics… it means something like this: go fly bird and tell the breeze that the window panes are all misty; have Ilost myself at the curve of the road or is it just a fairy tale unfolding; fireflies glow in my palm; I don’t hear anything else as the clouds gather on the window panes to chat; go cloud go, keep a watch on my emotions…

Antaheen (Endless), is the National Award Winner for the Best Film in India for 2009, the story of endless longing and waiting for love and is also the second film of director Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury, the first being Anuranan (Resonance, in Bengali), another sensitive story of relationships.

The film introduces us to three couples, waiting endlessly for love. The first couple, even though I am not sure if the audience will agree to call them a couple, is the hero of the film, Abhik Chowdhury (Rahul Bose), playing a tough cop, and Brinda Roy Menon (Radhika Apte), a daring journalist. The second couple is Paromita (Aparna Sen), a senior marketing executive of a television channel, and her husband Ranjan (Kalyan Roy), and the last one is Abhik’s aunt (Sharmila Tagore) and an unknown caller.

ANTAHEEN - Theatrical Trailer

Abhik is a tough super cop who has seen relationships in life so closely that somewhere in his mind he no longer believes in them. He, therefore, enters the social networking chapter in hislife where he befriends a young woman and develops a sort of relationship with her without even knowing anything about her. This young woman is none other than the journalist Brinda who responds to Abhik’s friendship, and without realizing it, falls in love with him in the virtual world. In the real life, however, when they meet without knowing each other’s real identity, their ideas don’t match and what they exchange is only bitterness for each other.

Rahul Bose is a versatile actor. He played a negative character in Govind Nihalni’s Thakshak (Cobra-a poisonous snake), a comic role in a commercial potboiler by Pritish Nandi called Pyar ke side effects (literally translated, Love’s Side Effects), and the role of a very reserved, Muslim, wild life photographer caught in communal riots in Aparna Sen’s much acclaimed Mr. & Mrs. Iyer. And it goes without saying that he essayed each of his roles flawlessly. The audience will definitely enjoy seeing a different Rahul Bose in Antaheen playing a cop by day and a romantic person while talking to his friend in the world of virtual social networking.

Radhika Apte is a Maharashtrian actress, and her mother tongue is not Bengali. Yet she does a superb job of portraying the role of Brinda Roy Menon, a character with two last names. These two last names signify that Brinda is half Bengali (Roy) and half Keralite (Menon), and this hybrid identity explains her not being fluent in Bengali and not having the proper diction. Going by commercial films’ standards, she may not be heroine material for the usual commercial films, but she is very beautiful, and is a great actress.

The second couple, Paromita and Ranjan, are an stranged couple but still in love with each other. I would not dare to comment on Aparna Sen’s acting as she is an international figure in the world of Cinema. To her, acting comes very naturally, and she will probably never grow old. The element of surprise is Ranjan (Kalyan Roy) who is also her real life husband and a professor of English at CCM (County College of Morris), New Jersey. Not being a professional actor, what he delivers is absolutely fantastic. With his deep voice and affectionate tone for everyone, he steals everyone’s heart.

With her dimpled smile Sharmila Tagore would perhaps still break some hearts… She is Abhik’s spinster aunt who takes care of her nephew like her own son. She also waits for a phone call from an unknown caller with whom she had casually got into a conversation because he dialed a wrong number and reached her instead of the person with whom he intended to connect. The affection for her nephews, Abhik and Ranjan, and even for Paromita, is beautifully portrayed by India’s one of the most talented actresses.

The story flows smoothly as the audience feels the wait for love. Brinda’s daring move to expose a builder and the gradual development of her closeness to Abhik in real life is shown very naturally and whether they meet or not is for the audience to find out.

Cinematography is by Avik Mukhopadhyay, and I would give it five stars. Endless roads, streets of Calcutta, and even simple things like rain drops on window panes are captured and shown so beautifully that it leaves the audience asking for more. Besides Best Film, Antaheen also won the National Award for Best Cinematography. It bagged the award for best Lyrics (Aninda Chattopadhyay and Chandril Bhattacharya) and Best Female Playback Singer (Shreya Ghoshal) for her  mesmerizing songs.

Overall, it is a wonderful film and a great gift to the world of Indian Cinema.”

This was first published in PVLD, Cine Monde.