Trailer Talk- Detective Byomkesh Bakshy

There is something to be said for a filmmaker who has dabbled in design.

Dibakar Banerjee, one of the most artistically-gifted directors in our current times, had started out at NID (National Institute Of Design) before dropping out and dabbling in advertising. So, while his films do carry that incisive, sneaky, truth-squeezing grittiness of powerful advertisement, they are also exhibits of unique design in themselves.

So, we saw the color and frolic of Delhi’s suburbs come alive in little visual nuances in his first two knockouts- ‘Khosla Ka Ghosla’ and the particularly-smashing ‘Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!’, in which he made the gaudy bars and restaurants as well as the artistically decorated plush apartments of the city’s urban classes. And we also saw the brittle, shaky and constantly edgy world of scratchy surveillance cameras Tom-peeping into the private damaged selves of the characters of ‘Love Sex Aur Dhokha’, as well as Costa Gavras’ immortal classic ‘Z’ imagined as a modern-day tale of Indian corruption in a seedy everytown called Bharatnagar in the gripping ‘Shanghai’.

But when it comes to period cinema, well, sir, design matters a lot.

And so, when the titles of the teaser announce ‘1943- Calcutta’, we are instantly hooked, expecting that something unusual, never-seen-before will unfold in front of our eyes.

The City Of Joy might have become a new rage among filmmakers but honestly speaking, the city has been merely captured as a superficial façade- with only one film- that is Sujoy Ghosh’s ‘Kahaani’- just actually getting into the nooks and crannies, its overflowing sewers and its languid lethargy. Often, most of us have been merely contented with lazily wandering trams, yellow cabs and of course, the boats below Howrah Bridge, bobbing on the waters of Hooghly.

Which is all very fine and good but trust Banerjee to give it all a superb, stylish twist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3sv6Frp8qw

The Calcutta of the film is in the throes of the effects of war- with British troops marching down its streets- gearing up against the Japs at the Kohima border while somewhere in the colorful Chinese quarter of the city, a mystery is waiting to be unfolded.

The trailer is snazzy in cutting and editing- with the mesmeric visual palette reeking of lurid sin, bright stained reds and yellows,  shady corners and Angle poise lamps and menacing Chinese men wielding daggers and more while at the edges looms a svelte femme fatale with her shoulder blades alluringly filling up the frames.

Whoa!

Banerjee has always a gift for making the mundane look exceptionally striking and impactful but here the tools at his disposal are already striking to begin with and he caresses them almost sensually.

So, along with a femme fatale, we have old, creased maps, corpses, the folds of a dhoti, a sneaky detective peeking through a carved window and all this comes before your jaw actually hits the floor.

And to let the audience guessing, albeit a little fruitlessly- for we all already know it all- Banerjee refuses to show us his leading man- merely focusing on his dhoti-sheathed legs on a moving rickshaw through the streets and it is only as we hear his voice as he watches the skyline of a war-battered city at his disposal that we feel totally convinced.

It was already a big event that Aditya Chopra signed up Dibakar Banerjee to helm a film that seems all set to revamp the image of Yash Raj Films, from a studio happy enough in releasing rehashed throwbacks to the iconic films of yore into a seriously reliable churner of intelligent entertainment.

With ace directors like Shimit Amin and Habib Faisal already on the payroll, they seem to have now brought in the big fish with Banerjee’s unconventional style a healthy contrast to the safe play that the studio’s outings have always done.

But now with this smartly cut, sleek and dazzling teaser out on display, looking more like a lavish Tintin comic set in an authentically retro-fitted Calcutta, it looks that we are in for a delicious, luxurious meal of mystery, murder and ‘Macher Jhol’ served in truly vintage style.

Dig in, people. Hold your hands for the big release next year. And expect that Dibakar will more than whet your appetite for something fishy.