Priyadarshan’s latest haunted house comedy Bhooth Bangla drew inevitable comparisons with the slightly differently spelt Bhoot Bungla (1965), directed by and starring Mehmood and Tanuja. Priyadarshan’s laboured, slapdash effort was also a reminder of another, far superior, movie set in a house occupied by the undead: Anik Dutta’s Bengali-language Bhooter Bhabishyat.
Released in 2012, Bhooter Bhabishyat (The Future of Ghosts) led to a mediocre Hindi remake in 2014, titled Gang of Ghosts. The Hindi version completely missed the rich and innovative satire in Dutta’s script, sticking instead with only the broad theme of spirits banding together to save to their abode.
Bhooter Bhabishyat can be rented from Hoichoi, which is also available as a Prime Video channel. The film is being streamed without subtitles on JioHotstar.
Anik Dutta’s clever script simultaneously sends up and reinvents the haunted house movie. During a film shoot in a rambling mansion, an actress faints after seeing an apparition in the mirror. Months after this incident, advertising filmmaker Ayan (Parambrata Chattopadhyay) turns up there with his crew. An atheist and a rationalist, Ayan scoffs at the suggestion that the house is haunted.
As Ayan sets out to write a script for a planned film titled Badly Bangali, Biplab turns up. Biplab (Sabyasachi Chakrabarty) spins a yarn about another haunted mansion whose occupants include the original house owner and a host of others. From a cook for Siraj-ud-Daulah to a Leftist revolutionary, a British officer who was around at the time of Partition and a Partition refugee, victims of caste oppression and betrayed lovers, all of them took shelter in Chowdhury Mansion, Biplab tells an increasingly wide-eyed Ayan.
The sprawling cast includes Paran Bandopadhyay, Swastika Mukherjee, Mumtaz Sorcar, Saswata Chatterjee and Kharaj Mukherjee. Past and present collide when the ghosts try to save their house from being torn down.
Through carefully chosen archetypes, cutting dialogue and a deliberately exaggerated acting style, Anik Dutta skewers the average Bengali’s tendency to cling to the past, while also pointing to Kolkata’s turbulent history. Chowdhury Mansion stands in for Bengal itself, stuck in old memories and struggling to adapt to a present that wants to erase all symbols of its heritage.
In 2019, Dutta made another comedy about ghosts in Kolkata, called Bhobishyoter Bhoot (Ghosts of the Future). More overtly political and pointed in its satire than the previous film, Bhobishyoter Bhoot ran into trouble with the Trinamool Congress government. Criticism is never welcome, even when it emanates from the afterlife.
Also start the week with these films:
In ‘Khalid Ka Shivaji’, the true meaning of the emperor’s legacy
