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Bow Barracks Forever review |
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Sunday, 29 July 2007 |
Bow Barracks Forever
Directer: Anjan Dutt
Cast: Victor Banerjee, Lillete Dubey, Moon Moon Sen, Neha Dubey and others
Rating: ***
 Anjan Dutt’s film Bow Barracks Forever has been on the film festival circuit for a couple of years now, and finally sees a proper release — a little after The Bong Connection, which was made later.
His first film Bada Din was also about the Anglo-Indian community in Kolkata, and he returns to it with Bow Barracks Forever (is there a trilogy planned?) — this time setting in a real place — a ramshackle building that reminds you of a Mumbai chawl (a better looking one, even in dilapidated state). The characters could also have come out of any old Bandra or Mazagon (in Mumbai) settlement. Old heritage structures everywhere are giving way to apartment blocks without character, and when the residents of Bow Barracks in the film resist the land sharks, it is not so much the building they are protecting, but a sense of community and identity that will be lost if they are uprooted and scattered.
Dutt strikes the emotional chords, but he has so many characters and so much happening in the film all the time, that it loses that connection the plot idea builds up so charmingly. His Peter, Emily Anna, Rosa, Rita just seem like so much padding to the plot instead of people you can relate to. And instead of a gentle sense of melancholy that the idea of a settlement like Bow Barracks evokes, is kind of lost with Dutt’s melodramatic treatment.
Emily (Lillete Dubey), Anna (Neha Dubey), Rosa (Moon Moon Sen), Rita (Rupa Ganguly), are the women of Bow Barracks gamely fighting the battles of life. Then there’s Peter (Victor Banerjee) an old trumpet player and petty crook, Tom (Sabyasachi Chakravarty), a smuggler and aspiring musician Bradly (Clayton Rodgers) straining the leash. It’s an interesting bunch of actors, Lillete Dubey is particularly well cast. The music (Neel Dutt) matches the mood of the film. |
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