Reveries

Laptop: a memorable montage; not quite a memorable movie

A few hesitant piano notes sound in the background, a cello groans into life and some random images flash across the screen. A despondent man rides in an open truck, surrounded by his belongings, a car cuts through lush tea gardens, a blind man taps his way through city streets, a child peeks at a stranger from his father’s embrace, a pensive boy lies alone on a train berth. 

And a few cryptic words appear discreetly on the montage – “shift”, “windows”, “vision”, “memory”. 

As the promo closes with the title Laptop, familiar keypad terms resonate with new meaning. 

Be it in terms of performances, dialogues, cinematography, editing or music, subtlety defines most parts of Kaushik Ganguly's latest movie venture.

A line, a word or a gesture, amply etches nuances of characters and relationships, as men and women from various social and psychological backgrounds momentarily intermingle. A lower-middle class father’s (Pijush Ganguly) joy after buying a secondhand laptop for his 

computer-student son, finds expression in a rather lavish purchase of mutton. A rude, overbearing tea planter (Saswata Chatterjee) exposes his softer side in a single line about his surrogate child: 

“ছুটে এসে যখন বাবা  বলে  জড়িয়ে  ধরে  . . . তখন  মনে  হয়  . . . আমার  ছেলে ”. 

A blind author (Kaushik Ganguly)   offers a unique “vision” of reality, claiming that his “characters” save him from loneliness. His subsequent rendition of “এই  লভিনু  সঙ্গ  তব  সুন্দর  হে  সুন্দর ”, enriches both the song and the scene.

Brilliantly understated performances from veterans (Saswata Chatterjee, Arindam Sil, Rajesh Sharma, Rahul Bose) and youngsters perfectly complement this nuanced screenplay. Special mention must be made of Pijush Ganguly’s breakdown, following accusations of stealing, and Aparajita Adhya’s quavering voice as she desperately asserts her husband’s dignity against Arindam Sil’s scathing charges. Kaushik and Ananya move effortlessly from tenderness to sentimental sulking to downright bitterness, capturing various shades of an undefined relationship between author and typist. Churni's artificial manner of speaking highlights her strain in maintaining the decorous veneer of a posh tea planter's wife. Gaurav balances the naïveté and street-smartness of Jion with perfect élan. His half-truths bring a smile while his helpless gasps following the exposé are heartrending.

Sirsa Roy’s cinematography and Mainak Bhaumik’s seamless editing create some lasting cinematic moments. A mundane close-up of milk blending in tea, suddenly morphs into a womb-image with an incessant heartbeat in the background. The author’s (Kaushik Ganguly) wonder about pervasive human fear of death, despite the everyday demise of our dreams and relationships, cuts to a long shot of Rajesh Sharma, a funeral truck driver. With Kaushik’s philosophical musings in the background, the camera slowly pans on Sharma, sleeping peacefully in the vehicle.  

Yet such crisp editing becomes a bane elsewhere in the movie, leaving several unanswered questions. We see Jion fiddling with the newfound laptop and staring at Raya’s (Ridhima Ghosh) photos in it. But we never know what exact information he derives from the machine and how. Consequently his discovery and pursuit of Raya remain completely unconvincing.

Glaring holes in the plot and unnecessarily dramatic twists further mar a potentially brilliant film. How does a poor driver (Rajesh Sharma) steal the laptop from a swanky medical clinic and that too from the director’s office?  Why does the clinic’s laptop contain information about the director’s daughter? The hurried pace of  the Jion-Raya track leave nagging queries in its wake. Arindam Sil orders Jion’s family to leave the city within a day and they conveniently move to their ancestral home in Malda. Such melodramatic twists destroy the otherwise realistic tenor of the film. In a bid to focus on the surrogacy angle, the writer rushes through the first half, ignoring significant details about the laptop’s initial journey. Thus despite many laudable elements Laptop remains a montage of a few moving moments but fails to be a memorable movie.