Bengal’s iconic sleuths still pack a punch

Feluda has not lost his charm over the decades, neither has Byomkesh, Kakababu or Shobor. Actors changed and so did directors in their reel avatars, but the Bengali audience remained loyal to their local sleuths. Thanks to the craze, movies based on these fictional detectives never stopped making money either.
Giving flat drama a tough competition — from the thrill of finding out the guilty to the adrenaline rush of the chase, sometimes accompanied by an appetizing romantic trajectory and, of course, some forthright wit — these spine-chilling detective movies never lost their captive audience in Tollywood.

Packed with a screenplay adapted from the ample literature around the topic to almost flawless acting by those who might not have otherwise done their best at dancing around the trees, the Bengali detectives have not created any less craze than Bond.

From Uttam Kumar to Saswata Chatterjee, every versatile actor in Bengal’s film industry has donned the detective’s hat at least once in the career in Tollywood. Backed by powerful literature like that of Satyajit Ray, Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay, Sunil Gangopadhyay and Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay, Feluda, Byomkesh, Kakababu and Shobor have emerged as the four most sensational heroes of all time.

Producing at least 10 films in the category every year, and finding fans not just in the local crowd but the Bengali diaspora across the world — this is Bengal’s new idea of parallel cinema.

“Close to 12-15 detective thrillers are made in Tollywood every year and these thrillers pull the Bengali movie watching crowd to multiplexes. The films serve them the spice they look for in their flicks,” said Krishna Daga, vice present at the East India Motion Pictures Association.

“The urban audience, especially the multiplex goers, love the detective series because these films are not just simple revisiting stories or vanilla narration. Production houses have gone the extra mile adding that extra punch to the films with exotic locations and increasing the production value,” said Mahendra Soni, director at Shree Venkatesh Films (SVF).

SVF has a host of thrillers in its production bag, be those from the Feluda saga, Byomkesh stories or Kakababu tales. SVF’s Mishawr Rawhoshyo took the protagonist (Kakababu) to Egypt in search of the truth, while the next production in the series, Paharchuray Atonko, will be shot in Switzerland and will cost more than Rs 4 crore, significantly more than what these films normally do.

The films do not cost any less than Rs 2 crore each if they have all the elements of good production involved, Soni said. Some have a different take at the whole success of these thrillers.

Director-prouder Anjan Dutt, who had bought the franchisee rights of 10 Byomkesh films and gave a good many thrill-packed films including Byomkesh Bakshi, Bymkesh Phire Elo and the latest Byomkesh O Chiriyakhana said even plain old-fashioned story telling works when it comes to Byomkesh, because the stories are strong enough.

“These films are the stronghold of the Bengali intellectual cultural force and we cannot hit it with mediocrity,” he said.

According to Dutt, his films concentrate on strong narration and acting. These cost him no more than Rs 1 crore each and get close to Rs 3 crore in box office collections. Dutt’s next production would be Uposhonghar, again from the Byomkesh series.

The word of success seems to be spreading far and wide, at least to Bollywood for the time being. The Satyanweshi detective Byomkesh, who is popular for solving his cases with “magajastra’ (brain weapon), made an entry into Bollywood with Dibakar Banerjee’s Byomkesh Bakshy in 2015, starring Sushant Singh Rajput.

Next in line is Feluda, the character created by Satyajit Ray and first appeared in children’s magazine Sandesh more than half a century ago. Sandip Ray, the film-director son of Satyajit Ray, has sold the Hindi rights of Sonar Kella to Prineeta director Pradeep Sarkar earlier this year.

Having tried out everything from witty to bold, the detective plots in Bengal have shown the confidence of running a film without any commercial music and also the courage of throwing in reasonable amounts of sex. While producers raked profits and directors did justice to the script, the films have been an actor’s delight too.

Having played the Bengali counterpart of both fictional detective genius Holmes as Shobor and his friend and biographer Dr Watson as Ajit in the Byomkesh series, actor Saswata Chatterjee holds his stints with the thrillers close to his heart. The detective in every curious Bengali drags them to the theatres, he said.

“As kids we used to read the last page of the thrillers first just to know who the culprit was. The Bengali audience has that spirit to be the detective himself when they are watching the film. The literature that backs these films, it is very difficult to make the film go wrong,” he said.

“Having played everything from the detective to the assistant to the writer friend, I have learnt from every character I played. Everything from the wit, the smartness to the heroism of these characters still leaves the audience in awe,” he added.

Chatterjee, however, doesn’t like the idea of calling this the parallel cinema. “These movies are pulling crowd and also making money. Why label them as parallel cinema,” he asked. “This is rather the perfect examples of a complete commercial cinema.”