Abosheshey (At the end of it all) is a film that has touched me deep.
My heart went out to the characters, my heart melted with the protagonist's passion and zest for life. It is indeed one of the best Bangla films made in recent years. Interestingly, the film marks the debut of director Aditi Roy, aided brilliantly by the principal cast, the flawless cinematography of Ranjan Palit, and the praiseworthy musical soundtrack designed by Prabuddha Banerjee.
It is essentially a mother-son story, and as a special friend of mine has rightly observed that mother-son films seldom fail, principally for us Bangalis who (much like the Irish and the Hispanics have a cultural tradition that is steeped in special mother-son bondings). However, this film - despite the much-recognized motifs - is much more than a mother-son story. It deals with emancipation, loss, identity, legacy and continuity.
Ankur Khanna plays the son who connects with her estranged, and now dead, mother, Suchishmita (Roopa Ganguly) who has left a long letter for him, desperately hoping that one day he would return to his city of birth and would make an effort to know the city and also his long lost childhood from which he had been detached since his departure along with his dad (to America). The son eventually gets to know her, through all those intrinsic contents that made her the person that she was, of which he had been completely oblivious, and he is also able to discover the many unknown facets that intertwine though time.
The fact that the film celebrates nostalgia is reason enough for someone like me to love it. I can't help shamelessly craving for nostalgia. People who know me well say, that I am a sucker for nostalgia and, according to a dear friend, it is on account of my being a sucker for romance. I love serenading the nature, and the hills form the idyllic setting in my dreamscape, though in reality I have never been to a hill station, not yet. I have a love-hate relationship with the city of Kolkata, where I have been almost all my life, and the film has Kolkata as a character. The things said through words, and visuals, about the city of Kolkata are something that I fully empathize with.
Apart from Roopa Ganguly and Ankur Khanna, the cast includes Raima Sen, Sudipta Chakraborty, Suman Mukherjee, Manasi Sinha, Arijit Dutta, Ronjini Chakraborty, Bodhisatva Majumdar, Kamalika Banerjee, Avijit Guha, Amitabh Bhattacharya and Deepankar De.
Endnote: Nothing remains forever. But the memories linger on. Memories haunt and reshape the minds of those who are left behind by the dear departed. Sieving through memories may be a mellow process, but need not be steeped in melodrama, the narrative even unfolds a wee bit of suspense which steps up the dramaturgy but it never allows melodramatic excesses. In fact, the director, with the help of the editor Abhro Banerjee, has shown exceptional control and restraint.
