The game is not worth the candle

The last time I visited Prosenjit at his Ballygunj residence, I saw him glow in optimism. He spoke at length about his upcoming films. The subject of Clerk came up and he described how he managed to pull off what could be the tightest schedule of his life so far; the film’s shooting was reportedly  completed in a mere seven days. He also talked about how he was trying to be in films that allowed him to act. And Clerk, he said, was one such film.

Two months on, when Clerk fell flat on his mountainous expectations, he wasn’t around to receive the first blow of failure – he was still shooting for Goutam Ghosh’s Moner Manush in Bangladesh. When he came back, he got himself updated fairly quickly and decided to be in a special screening at Priya theatre along with the film’s director, photographer and the rest of the crew. But even the free screening and his rare appearance before the media, aimed at preempting supposed wrong anticipations, couldn’t salvage the film. It was too late by then.

I watched the film at Nandan one day after its release. There were about 20 people in the hall, humbled before Kolkata’s best cinemascope screen till date and on it was the recluse – played by Prosenjit. The character works in a factory that’s facing closure due to union problems, but the developments therein don’t impact the world he lives in – the one that comes into being as he lights candles in his creaky lair and the posters of Bollywood beauties he fancies become visible. Then he starts calling them up; Kareena, Rani and Ash – who he finally plans to settle down with! He completes shopping for the wedding, does up his bathroom and spruces himself up a bit. But reality plays spoilsport – Ash selects Abhishek Bachchan for marriage. The ensuing sequences, er, visuals, show him come to terms with the real world.

You don’t need to be in a mood for euphemism to reckon on the concept’s cinematic possibilities, but they needed apt handling. Sirsho Roy’s inspiring photography, expectedly, sets the right tone. But for all his efforts, the brilliant images remain set pieces; they don’t brew the cinematic feel as one would expect them to. Similarly, a sincere and intuitive performance by Prosenjit is wasted on an insipid course the script takes.

Clerk is pretentious and amateurish. Its look belies its hollowness and the slapdash efforts that went into its making. It’s more a show-reel by a film-school pass-out than a real film. It’s also a reminder that making a good film is no easy job. Prosenjit is known to be one who understands the technical merits of a script. His walkout from Sandip Ray’s Hitlist was fully justified, his decision to be in Subhadro Choudhury’s Clerk is not.


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