Mayurakshi Analysis

Mayurakshi

Written & Directed by: Atanu Ghosh

Starring: Soumitra Chatterjee, Prosenjit Chatterjee

National Award for Best Bengali Feature Film

This film is the story of a father and a son, the father is Sushovan, he is 84 and is starting to show symptoms of geriatric dementia and cognitive dysfunction. His middle aged son, Aryanil, visits him from the US. This film is about the inevitability of not being with your parents when you move out with your nuclear family. We've seen this in the 2018 commercial pot boiler film in Telugu, Prathi Roju Pandage. Both the films, depict this problem well but both of them don't try to address the problem or solve it. This film depicts a realist ending, where the son leaves the father and goes away because he can't risk losing his job. One strength of this film are the performances, they convey a lot beyond their dialogue, especially Aryanil, played by Prosenjit Chatterjee. He is not a bad person, but he creates an aura with his performance that this person is not approachable, which probably explains his personal life. This comes out of nuance and it is not easy to do that for an actor, without changing the character drastically. I felt the same with Payman Maadi's character in A Salesman, there too he is not a villain; but he portrays the grey shades very well.

The film isn't shot in an Avant-garde abstract style, there is usage of voice over and a decent amount of backstory and the plot is revealed through dialogue and yet the film making takes a lot of scope for visual storytelling. The milieu of Bengal is portrayed well, the mise-en-scene elements in the house, the set, the props all reminded me of Satyajit Ray's Agantuk - The Stranger. It is minimalist and decorative. The editing doesn't call attention to itself, but there is a sense of trust that is created in the beginning of the film that I'm watching a good film and that's because of the pacing of the film. The pacing matches the mood of the scene. This film doesn't have a conventional structure, it shows some characters and takes us into their world for sometime and let's us think whatever we do about the world. It doesn't have a beginning, middle and an end in the conventional sense of the terms.