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Brimming with thrills and spills

Lord Curzon was the youngest viceroy of India and he cherished the position as he loved the pomp and ceremony…

Brimming with thrills and spills

(Photo: Facebook)

Lord Curzon was the youngest viceroy of India and he cherished the position as he loved the pomp and ceremony that went with it. India was the most-treasured jewel in Queen Victoria’s crown and he served as Governor General and Viceroy of India from 6 January 1899 to 18 November 1905.

But his active part in the policy decision leading to the Partition of Bengal in 1905 resulted in deep discontent and the upsurge of a revolutionary movement in the country. This led to him earning the sobriquet, “the most unpopular Viceroy of India” and his tenure is called Curzon shahi (akin to Nadirshahi).

Many years later, stripped of his political positions, Curzon became an excellent and enlightened chancellor of the University of Oxford and filled many other important offices. A new Bengali film called Curzoner Kolom (The Pen of Curzon) is a fictionalised thriller based on a fantasy premise. Soon after the Bengal Partition in 1905 and just before his return to England the same year, Lord Curzon had occasion to attend the Durga Puja festival in the mansion of a noted zamindar of Calcutta known as Mitra Bari (the house of the Mitras).

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The prologue explains the backdrop and historical setting of the story against the Partition of Bengal signed by Lord Curzon on 16 October 1905. The Partition separated the largely Muslim eastern areas from the largely Hindu western areas. The Hindus were outraged at what they recognised as a “divide and rule” policy, though Curzon insisted that it would produce administrative efficiency. Eventually Bengal was reunited in 1911 in an effort to both, appease Bengali sentiment and bring order to the administration.

Within this ambience of political disturbance and civic unrest, the film opens with Lord Curzon gifting his golden pen to the zamindar himself. It was the same pen that he had used to sign the Partition deed. His visit however, creates a great furore and a crowd gathers outside the Mitra home, with arms and weapons. In the melee, the head of the Mitra household, Panchubrata Mandal, hides the pen somewhere and then forgets all about it. He remembers the pen on his death bed and leaves two intriguing riddles as clues for his successors to find it.

No one can locate the precious pen that has archival value, antique value and most importantly, historical value. “From this point on, the film takes a time leap to the present when the Mitras are in dire straits financially with the golden pen being their only point of rescue. So, the present family of the Mitras, comprising three brothers, their wives and growing kids begin their hunt for that precious pen,” says director Souvik Mitra.

“Firstly, they must continue with the annual Durga Puja for which funds are necessary, and secondly, they must locate the lost pen within the five days of the festival. Can they locate the pen within those five days?” he asks, leaving the question hanging in the air. The story revolves around the family members, especially Pupu (Poulami Das) the eldest daughter of this generation and her boyfriend Tatu (Saheb Bhattacharya).

They try to crack the clues and save the house and their Pooja. However, news spreads in all the dailies that a historically valuable pen is in Mitra Bari and men with evil mechanisms sneak into the house to steal it. It is a thriller pegged on to a fictionalised slice of history and will take the audience back to 1905.

“We had to rope in a formidable cast of actors across three generations. There is the veteran actress Lily Chakraborty as the matriarch with Paran Bandopadhyay playing an important character. His three sons are portrayed by Koushik Chakraborty, Debdoot Ghosh and Rajarshi Mukherjee. Their wives are Pushpita Mukherjee and Mallika Ghosh. The eldest son’s daughter is portrayed by Poulomi Das, who is the major character, trying to solve the riddles along with her boyfriend played by Saheb Bhattacharya. Others in the cast are Kanchan Mullick and Kharaj Bandopadhyay along with two child actors and one of the two producers, Pawan Kanodia is in a cameo. Dilip Shome is the other producer. We wish to take our audience on a truly entertaining journey of wholesome entertainment with lots of fun and some wonderful music,” says the director.

“A north Kolkata home was chosen as the setting of Mitra Bari that offers an old-world feeling of a truly Bengali household where everyone sings and enjoys the Pooja together. Even the villains are funny in my film,” Mitra adds. Debajyoti Misra who has done the music said that he enjoyed the story and script by Padmanava Dasgupta because it gave him the opportunity to create music that would take listeners on a journey through music in old films including a flavour of Satyajit Ray.

The film is a laugh riot and a comic noir that both thrills and leaves ones in splits. Will the family Pooja be saved? Will Pupu-Tatu succeed in their amateur sleuth apprenticeship? Will the bad guys be punished? Will Mitra Bari regain its former glory?

Mitra says, “This is a family drama that harks back to another time, which is looked back on even today as the Golden Era of Bengali Cinema. It has both thrills and chills wrapped in a flippant funny jacket.” Supriyo Dutta is the cinematographer, while Anindyo Chatterjee has edited it with art direction done by Annanda Addhya and sound design byTirthankar Mazumdar.

Curzoner Kolom promises to be a mainstream film with a difference that has ingenuously used slices of Indian history with a contemporary Bengali time-space ambience spilling over with humour, satire, a bit of romance and a lot of thrills and adventure.It is slated for release on 3 November.

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