Osian Film Festival is in full swing in the Capital and Bow Barracks Forever was one of the movies shown there. Directed by ANnun Dutt, the movie has been released on to the multplses and here are some excerpts from the review done by Hindu.
A slanging match among an ensemble cast of seasoned actors, this film is a pathetic spectacle, and does enough to shake your faith in the medium for a while.For the record, though, it talks of a microscopic minority of Anglo-Indians, the guys who profess Christianity, speak English, live in the barracks of Kolkata and are as much Indian as anybody else. They are faced with threats of eviction as the forces of development threaten to usurp tradition. There are a handful of families, ranging from middle to lower middle class, earning their livelihood selling pastries, wines, antiques and the like. Each family has a problem of space. Each family has a dream to grow yet is unable to let go of the place. Interesting? Yes, as an idea Dutt’s film scores full marks. It is in the implementation that it falls flat.
A film with melancholy as an enduring feeling needed a gentler handling. Muted tones are there all right; what is missing is a soul. No story involves the viewer: almost every sub-plot is a reiteration of age-old stereotypes about the community. And where a word was called for, the director packs in a dozen. Where a whisper would have sufficed, he gives us a scream.
Really, though almost all the cast members scream their lungs out, Lilette Dubey as a woman who wants to shift to London is easily the worst culprit. She shouts and slaps her younger son. She out-shouts the neighbourhood woman, Neha Dubey, accused of using her son. She out-shouts Peter the Cheater: Victor Banerji in a role he did in a moment of amnesia. All this flaring tempers and sharp tongue business is an insult to the community it claims to give a voice to. Everybody here speaks at the top of his voice, leaving you longing for some moments of silence, some stillness, when the gravity of the challenge ahead of them can strike you. Sobriety was the need of the hour. It is not there even for a moment.
Since the film is in English, and talks of Anglo-Indians, Dutt tends to take that as a licence to talk of wine, to use frequent four-letter words — many of which are, thankfully, blipped — and even show nudity when completely uncalled for. If intimate sequences involving Moon Moon Sen are crude, the ones involving Clayton Rogers are absolutely forced.
A little suggestive gesture would have better conveyed the passion than slipped undergarments.Really, but this story of a woman who wants to go to London to escape the sadness of life in Kolkata, another who is a victim of marital violence, yet another who runs away from her man to find fulfilment elsewhere, is just so much of sameness. No pace in story-telling, no punch in dialogue, and, despite Usha Uthup’s appearance, a forgettable music score.
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