Sorry Mr Dutt, my fault

It happened simply by chance. Watching two films back-to-back is nothing singular. But when the two are such that they deal with almost the same subject, the occasion requires mention. Something that happened to me a few days back. The first film was ‘Chalo, Let’s Go’ directed by Anjan Dutt. The second ‘Into the Wild’ directed by Sean Penn.

I was at fault. I shouldn’t have watched the two films back to back. Otherwise, I would have waxed eloquent on CLG. I couldn’t. Because Sean Penn and Jon Krakauer’s powerhose idea of an adventure/travelogue movie simply swept me off my feet.That, despite the various limitations of a home video watched on a fourteen inch colour television, which was no comparison for the Gold Lounge comfort of Fame that Anjan ensured for his exclusive wine and kebabs Thursday gathering of elite pressmen and presswomen.

So why did I like ITW more than CLG? Not because the former was technically better than the latter. Neither because Alaska on the small screen looked more breathtaking than Dooars and the hills on the big. And of course not because ITW is a Hollywood product, while CLG was from Tollywood. None of that! In fact, I immensely enjoyed the comfort of urban Bengali pidgin that was impossible with ITW.

It was actually the ‘idea’.

So where does the idea come from? From Jon Krakauer of course, who is capable of turning a narrative on a failed Everest expedition into a breathtaking thriller—so much so that his 1997 book ‘Into Thin Air’ is now accepted as a masterpiece of travel writing. He does the same with the screenplay of ‘Into the Wild’— based on his 1992 bestseller of the same name. And Sean Penn’s camera and visual narrative does the rest. ITW therefore becomes a very honest account of a man’s search for life’s meaning—both by excluding society and including it.

Something that to my limited understanding was also Anjan’s idea. Four friends—ala Ray’s ‘Aran-yer Din Ratri’ trying to break free in Kolkata 2008. The problem is, it’s not a radical idea. So you need to package it in a different way.

The Jon-Sean duo has been able to do it. When Chris MacCandless, the central protagonist, denies to part ways with his weather-worn Dutsun, burns his change, and finally sets off on a hitch-hiking venture to Alaska, there is a slow build-up to the character—a rebel who is totally frustrated with the American living and like a headstrong romantic, decides to give up a promising career for a life of hardship—facing nature bereft of all the trappings of human civilisation except for the basics.

Anjan tries to do it in his own way. The four friends, trying and failing at all possible off-track careers, finally choose to start a travel agency. However, getting roughed up while performing a song that by all standards was pretty good in lyrics and music, did not seem to be enogh reason for the four to radically shift gear and start a travel agency. Then there’s the story. While ITW leaves a scope for society to drift in and out of the narrative, thus allowing for a variety of characters and resulting in a breadth of vision, CLG becomes static with a set of tourists who follow the four friends as their travel agency clients.
That is where CLG starts sagging. It becomes nothing different from a very smartly made big-screen fictional version of Dutt’s very own non-fiction TV show—’Chalo Anjan’ (if I remember correctly).

And I reiterate—I should not have watched ‘Into The Wild’ soon after ‘Chalo, Let’s Go’. My fault!