The world is a vast cauldron of violence where an insatiable lust for power, supremacy, and brutality exists. Trust and betrayal exist simultaneously, and energy flows from the barrel of a gun. It is a world where crude human nature exists in virgin form.
The extravagant fictionalization of an underworld, actors, and actions has been portrayed in mainstream Hindi cinema since immemorial. Shakti Samanta’s China Town aptly portrays the underworld in the 1950s. For the last four and a half decades (from the 1970s onwards), this hidden, invisible world of smuggling, dacoity, burglary, horror, bloodbath, and terror associated with it has been exposed to us in the form of entertainment utilizing Hindi films such as Deewar, Don, Amar Akbar, and Anthony, Don, Shakti, Hum, Vastaav, Satya, Gangster, Once Upon a time in Mumbai, Sarkar, Ek Villain, etc., etc.
The audience is thrilled to view such films in the cloisters of theater halls. Noted journalist Hussain S. Zaidi has immortalized the underworld in Mumbai through his well-researched books, such as Byculla to Bangkok, My Name is Abu Salem, Dongri to Dubai: Six Decades of Mumbai Mafia, Mafia Queens of Mumbai, Black Friday, Mumbai Avengers, Headley, and I.
In Bengal, too, the underworld, both colonial and post-colonial, has been researched. Suranjan Das and Jayanta Kumar Ray’s book The Goondas: Towards a Reconstruction of the Calcutta Underworld and Sumanta Banerjee’s book The Wicked City: Crime and Punishment in Colonial Bengal are seminal works on the underworld in Kolkata.
Basudeb Chatterjee’s work covering police in Bengal also has facts and information on the underworld. Debraj Bhattacharyya’s article Kolkata Underworld in the Early 20th Century, published in Economic and Political Weekly in 2004, is well-researched and worth reading. Kudos to Srijit Mukherji for endeavoring to unveil this ‘invisible’ world through his latest directorial venture, Zulfiqar. The teaser on social media mentions that in the land of bridges, Rabindranath Tagore, there is another land where illegal activities and parallel economy reign.
In the City of Joy, the crime syndicate operates in full swing. The film has a port area comprising the majority Muslim population and a considerable section of the Hindu population. It has dominant Muslim gang members with a Hindu Villain and their turf war for supremacy. Along with land-grabbing, extortion, smuggling, drugs, and prostitution, the director has included the jihadi-terrorist aspect. Such a context, especially when India and Pakistan are on the brink of an undeclared war, will escalate the TRP of the film, draw crowds, and make the movie more palpable to the audience Jav Leech.
The film has many emotions: hate, friendship, betrayal, death, revenge, lust for power and carnal instincts, supremacy, fights, actions, etc. However, the ‘real’ underworld is where quintessential traits such as specialization of skills, intelligence, information networks, human resource management, and organizational ability are required to survive. However, the film fails to hint at these aspects. The underworld subculture, including the code language used by gang members, has not found visibility or audibility in this film. It has failed to grasp and portray these inner, subtle nuances prevailing within organized crime and among its main actors.
Though dockyards are an important area for such illegal activities, the historiography of the underworld in Kolkata includes places such as Cossipore, College Street, Taltala, Baranagar, Thakurpukur, Haridevpur, Rajarhat, etc. Though geographical ghettos exist, their associated inherent violence lies mostly in the human psyche. The crime syndicates are not geographically positioned but scattered throughout the length and breadth of the city. The areas indicated in the film are mainly Kidderpore, Metiabruz, and Garden Reach, different from the glitz and glamor of mainstream Kolkata. However, this area has its local history, apart from illegal activities. According to information on Wikipedia, Kidderpore – ‘this’ part of Kolkata produced three jewel poets: Rongolal Bandhopadhyay, Hemchandra Bandhopadhyay, and Micheal Madhusudan Dutta.
The general population will admire the film with claps and whistles. It will make the movie a commercial success. Yet, for people with intellectual understanding or English literature students, ‘Zulfiqar’ as an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra will be a bolt from the blue. In 1981, Shashi Kapoor produced a film, Kalyug. As the film’s director, Shyam Bengal had masterfully borrowed and captured incidents from the epic Mahabharata. He delicately touched upon human relationships’ nuances, crafting moving scenes. However, such crafting of characters or scenes that touch our hearts is not found in Zulfiqar.
The posters of the film, especially Nusrat Jahan, wearing a blue sari with a rose in her hand, appear obnoxious. Even the poster Prosenjit as Zulfiqar (Julius Caesar) surrounded by gang members with guns failed to capture the curiosity, thrills, and horror of a film on the underworld. A larger-than-life image of Zulfiqar in the movie is not established. Prosenjit as Zulfiqar (Srijit’s take on Julius Caesar) is full of mannerisms.
His costumes, especially using shoe laces for kurta buttons and make-up in the form of jatra-type beards, are a total misfit. The scene where he is gunned down by Basheer Khan (Brutus) and other syndicate members appears too simplistic. According to Syed Tanveer Nasreen, Professor in the Department of History, University of Burdwan, ‘the film points out how little two communities in Bengal know each other. People do not attend a janaza with their shoes on. Covering just the head is not enough.
Dev, the ‘Mahanayak’ of Bengal, as Markaz Khan, is a mute character. Years ago, in a Hindi film, Khamoshi, Nana Patekar enacted a deaf and dumb role. But Nana Patekar’s expressions and acting skills were impeccable even in that mute role. Dev lacks Patekar’s acting skills. He appears very muscular, with monotonous facial expressions and eye movements. Parambrata Chatterjee, as Tony Braganza, has played his character, though we expect more from him as the audience. Kaushik Sen, a theater personality and a seasoned actor, modulating his voice, making it husky, simultaneously portraying the negative and positive shades in the form of Basheer Khan, is appreciable.
Srijit always gives Jisshu U Sengupta a complete makeover with a different role from the rest, and this film is no exception to the general trend. Sengupta, as Kashinath Kundu, with a paunch and marks all over his face, enacts his wicked, wily, manipulative character with subtlety and intelligence.
One fails to understand why Ankush, as Akhtar (Octavius) from the next generation, who takes charge of carrying the family legacy of crime, adopts the stereotypical clothes and make-up of his previous generation. The director fails to portray him as a modern gangster. Hence, the image and character building with time does not happen as the film comes to an end.
In a film such as Zulfiqar, where the heroes are the protagonists, heroines appear to serve as interludes and mannequins. Nusrat Jahan, who plays Rani Talapatra (Srijit’s take on Cleopatra), appears more of a model than an actress. She is very stiff, unable to express the most complex emotions of suffering, helplessness, loneliness, and longing through her silence and eyes.
Some of her scenes with both Zulfiqar and Markaz appear too theatrical. Shedding the sari and showing cleavages are not enough to portray molls. Emotions of suffering and sensuousness were required simultaneously, which she failed to enact. However, in special appearances, Paoli Dam enacting the character Karishma Ahmed (Caesar’s wife), hallucinating, deserves praise.
The script, as well as the story-telling, could have been better. The director shows bike racing, but such a scene could have been more realistic had the bikers jumped over burning tires (in reality, this is practiced at night in many places of Kolkata). A few of the fight scenes appeared to be amateurish. It could have been well-directed. The audience in Bengal has viewed slums and dilapidated buildings.
READ ALSO :
- India v England: Hardik Pandya handed maiden Test call-up, Gautam Gambhir retained
- Moto Z, Moto Z Play Now Available in India: Price, Specifications, and More
- India’s biggest virtual property fair is here!
- India vs. England: Yuvraj Singh unlucky to miss out; Hardik Pandya’s call up a big surprise
- A teaser of Hrithik Roshan’s ‘Kaabil’ is out today
Only the Swing Bridge, a crucial link between Garden Reach and the central and eastern part of Kolkata that opens at an angle of 60-70 degrees between midnight and dawn to allow ships to sail, perhaps has been shown for the first time in the history of Bengali films. The present generation of youngsters will admire Anupam Roy’s songs, though the background music is too cacophonic. The photography is above average.
There is no shortage of gangsters in Kolkata. Gopal Pathak, Hemen Mongol, China, Jishnu, Ghutghutey, Phata Kesto, Idris Ali, Sridhar, Swapan Saha, Gabbar…the names are endless. Each life is a tale of the emergence and decline of a gang lord and has the potential to be made into a feature film. The director could have fictionalized such characters. But the incident that received huge media coverage and is etched in the minds of people is the IPS officer Vinod Kumar Mehta and his guard Mokhtar Ali, getting butchered in the by-lanes of the port area in 1984.
Srijit Mukherji or any new genre of director trying to make films should consider the 1984 incident, a watershed incident in the history of the underworld in Kolkata. In the annals of Bengali film, Zulfiqar will be regarded as a mediocre film but marketed very well by the director and the production house. Srijit Mukherji, through his star-cast storyline, once again proves that he remains a popular filmmaker but not a serious one.
And Tollywood still lacks a realistic gangster film.
