Director Rajib wants Amanush to have at least a 100 day run. Will it? If looks are to be relied on, looks like it will. Amanush is somewhere between a love triangle and a psychological thriller. It succeeds as a love triangle, though one must reach the interval to know it is one.
Copyrighted from the Tamil hit Kaadhal, Amanush is totally a hero-centric story revolving around Binod (Soham), an orphan who is forced by the Father of the orphanage to come to the city to study engineering. But his crude manners, rustic behaviour and introvert nature makes him an unwilling victim of ragging. Matters become worse when the class discovers that he is a mathematical genius.
Ria (Srabonti), impressed by his academic excellence, takes him under her wing. With her invisible magic wand, she changes him from an ugly duckling to a beautiful swan.
Binod wins a coveted scholarship to study abroad. Before leaving, he tries to propose to Ria only to discover that she has fallen for Aditya (Abhijit Roy), a class fellow pursuing her for a long time. Binod’s dreams come crashing down. Till this point, Amanush offers very good entertainment with good music, dynamic action, visually rich song sequences and a delightful storyline where lack of logic does not matter.
The psychological thriller takes the audience on a rocky journey with Binod. The film gets into the psychopathic mind of Binod, back to his old, crude looks, his deadly obsession for Ria that motivates him to destroy anything that comes in his way.
The two song sequences shot in Mauritius run completely against the grain of the dramatic content of the film at that point. Soham does his best in a solid, author-backed role but goes slightly overboard at some moments. His powerful performance is weakened by the script’s attempt to rationalise his crimes.
Srabonti as Ria is her beautiful self -natural, dominating, bold, fragile and fearful by turns. In a character supposed to complement the hero, she makes it grow on its own. Her unshaken faith in Binod towards the end lacks conviction.
Sometimes, the graphic violence like the arson in college after midnight, or the long-drawn fights in the basketball sequence where Binod’s spectacles remain firmly perched on his nose are unwarranted. Ria’s dress lacks continuity when she regains consciousness in the hospital.
The brilliant camera work (Kumud Verma) in the jungles of North Bengal and the electric background score (Jeet Ganguly) with the emotionally scary signature tune for Binod’s disturbed state of mind try to undercut the lack of logic.
The flashback into Binod’s tortured childhood in a brick kiln followed by the stint at the Missionary orphanage fails to link to his engineering genius. When did he ever go to school? When and how did Binod build the forest hideout where he and Ria take shelter in? What happens to his foreign scholarship?
The production values are excellent and the lavish mounting, barring the Mauritius scenes, elevates the film’s box office ratings. Yet, one insists that Amanush would have been a much more aesthetically fulfilling film had Rajib not confused himself between a love triangle and a psychological thriller.
Critic: Shoma A Chatterji
Comments
0 comment