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PADAKSHEP
Director: Suman Ghosh
Cast: Soumitra Chatterjee, Nandita Das, Sabitri Chatterje, Tota Roychowdhury, June Maliah, Shweta Dutta, Bibhash

Chakraborty, Jagannath Guha, Ashok Sharma.

In Suman Ghosh’s Padakhep, widower Soumitra is a retired banker who potters about the house rearranging candle-stands and calendars. Daughter Nandita is an efficient woman trying to balance responsibility towards father and stress of profession and secret rapport with Muslim boyfriend. And super-considerate, agitated retainer Sabitri completes this latest Indian nuclear family unit. Youthful NRI duo reverse-migrate to the motherland, the town and moves in next door and into their monotonous life. Their small girl-child is a breathing of clean air in Soumitra’s gradually more stiffing old age, contracted by blocked arteries, monotony and dissatisfaction at his incapability to carry on with a fast changing world around him.

The movie has a straight plot. No theatrical twists or elevated melodrama. Controlled pace and average slow story pace-only a precise 93 minutes long, thanks to Editor Mainak Bhowmick. What works noticeably for Padakshep is the film’s sincere, unassuming rising.

Normal conversation, natural performing, feeling and humour in real-life situations, using little common particulars of every day life to tell a straightforward, responsive slice-of-life story. In a sight where Soumitra and Bibhas take part in a rapid game of chess out-of-doors, the two thespians do extremely well in their skill. As their apparently insignificant discussion about old age sickness, insurance policies and a latest pastime called stock-market develop into really a metaphysical conversation on significance of existence and will to be alive.

The film’s mostly instrumental music track is a bit clawing because of its continuousness. But singer Moushumi Bhowmik’s ditty-ballad is modestly suggestive, juxtaposed with apparently ordinary imagery of people at a tranquil picnic-spot. As song ends, resemblance of serenity is broken by blatant resistance amongst characters. We’re enforced to tackle and come to conditions with our unipolar globalised world where endurance is the new-old name of an amusement we every one participates.

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