New Delhi: Dibakar Banerjee's next, the highly awaited 'Detective Byomkesh Bakshy' is making all the right noises in the industry. The You tube teaser of the film has crossed well over a 1,000,000 views already. The film is adapted from Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay's crime thriller novels which have the Bengali detective Byomkesh Bakshi as the protagonist. Though the director has bought the rights for all the 33 novels featuring the Bengali sleuth, he is reluctant to say that his film is first of a series.
At the first ever Crime Writers Festival held in New Delhi he got down to talk about crime as a genre and Byomkesh Bakshy. Other panellists included actor Rajit Kapur who played the detective's role in the 1993 TV series and Bengali veteran actor Dhritiman Chaterji who will soon play the detective in an upcoming Bengali film. Dipakar confessed that he was very nervous about his film when asked about it by the fellow speakers.
"I have been fascinated by the stories and by Byomkesh's character since I read it for the first time. And when I read it I read all the 33 novels all together it took me maybe two to three years but I remember how deep an impression it had on me. So when I thought of making it as a film I was nervous. It was going to be my second film but I did not think I was mature enough as a film maker to take this on at that time," answered Dibakar when asked about his film and the experience of making it.
Talking about his adaptation of the character he said that he did not have much room for making creative changes and neither did he want to make any changes. "I am a probashi Bengali. I was brought up here in Delhi and so for me Kolkata is the one I read in the books. I did not want to change the period or anything because it is not possible for me to imagine Byomkesh in another period than the Kolkata of 1940s. You think of Sherlock and it is in the Victorian period. So I went along with all the details I could get form the particular book which is set in 1943 and other research we did."
Banerjee admitted to his fixation for the DD series 'Byomkesh Bakshi' and the books, and stated how he would look just like Rajit Kapur. "People would come up to me on the streets and ask me if I was Rajit Kapur, some would even ask if I was Byomkesh Bakshi. Once a man ran across the street screaming with excitement, and was nearly ran over by a DTC bus, just to ask me if I was Rajit Kapur. I would even wear the glasses like Byomkesh," narrated the Dibakar.
Banerjee's film is an adaptation of the first Byomkesh Bakshi case. Byomkesh in his film is young so he is making mistakes and 'messes up some times'. "That is also why I cast Shushant Singh Rajput to play the lead as he is young and not yet reached his full stardom" said the filmmaker and added that "the telling of the story is completely contemporary but as far as the content and details is concerned I have stayed true to the book and our research."
Dibakar also commented on the simplicity of the stories and said that he has tried to stay true to that. While Dibakar stated that the film does not have any songs, to which Rajit Kapur interrupted and asked if it at least had an item number. Dibakar laughed and said that it did not, but it does have a femme fatale character which is being played by Bengali actress Swastika Mukherjee.
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