 "Detective Byomkesh Bakshy")
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Dibakar Banerjee is not Satyajit Ray. Nor is he even Basu Chatterjee. After watching Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!, a film Banerjee has made on detective stories by Bengal's acclaimed writer Saradindu Bandyopadhyay, you are likely to wonder if he was attempting something different from what even Anjan Dutt achieved a few years ago with distinction.
Ray's Chidiyakhana (The Zoo) was perhaps the first cinematographic adaptation of a story featuring Byomkesh Bakshi, a private detective who spoke softly, used his razor-sharp intelligence to solve intricate cases and preferred to eschew violence. At heart, Byomkesh was a middle-class Bengali bhadralok. Ray made that film in 1967, three years before Bandyopadhyay died.
In the 1980s, Basu Chatterjee, the acclaimed film maker, came out with a simple but intelligently made and hugely entertaining television serial based on Bandhyopadhyay's Byomkesh stories. That was also the first time the Hindi audience got a taste of why Byomkesh described himself as a Satyanveshi (a truth seeker) and not a detective.
In Bandyopadhyay's first story published in 1932, Byomkesh explains to his newly acquired friend, Ajit, that he hated to be called a detective and was keen to be seen as a seeker of truth.
Anjan Dutt's Bengali films on Bandyopadhyay's stories followed the same pattern, remaining as faithful to the storyline and characters as delineated by their creator.
Banerjee's biggest challenge, therefore, sprang from what also was to be his biggest strength. This is a dilemma that Banerjee faced, and the manner in which he has tried to resolve it may not have worked to his advantage. He was keen on exploiting the immense popularity of Byomkesh, enhanced in no small measure by the lucid narrative of Bandyopadhyay (who also was a screenplay writer for films in Bengal and Bollywood) and the Byomkesh films made by Ray, Chatterjee and Dutt among others. Yet, he wanted to strike out on his own to leave his own imprint on the recreation of the main character, the storyline and the events that unfolded in 1943 in Calcutta (as it was known then) in different Byomkesh stories. That is what Banerjee gambles with and it may have been a costly game.
Banerjee's film is, therefore, based on the works of Bandyopadhyay to take advantage of the cache of goodwill and brand equity their star investigator enjoys, but it is not a faithful adaptation of any single story of his. Hence, perhaps, the film uses Byomkesh's name in the title, but with a different spelling and indeed after prefixing it with a descriptor that no Byomkesh fan would be comfortable with.
Byomkesh's name naturally raises expectations. Comparisons will always be inevitable and when they are made, Banerjee's Byomkesh Bakshy! seems hardly a patch on the Byomkesh of Bandyopadhyay, Ray, Chatterjee or even of Dutt.
Banerjee would, of course, argue that he was not trying to render any one Byomkesh story, but relied on a few of the developments in some of Bandyopadhyay's stories to present a more complex and yet integrated storyline. For instance, the Byomkesh-Ajit relationship that grew out of mutual affection and compassion at a boarding house has been replaced by Banerjee with one that had a stormy beginning, but was often marked by utilitarian and transactional values.
The servant, Putiram, appeared in the film like a man from a north-eastern state, but hardly looked the way Bandyopadhyay had characterised him in many of his stories. Where Banerjee has stuck to Bandyopadhyay's script is the way he depicts Satyavati, the young helpless girl who sought Byomkesh's help in rescuing her brother from a hopeless situation. Satyavati's character remains largely the same in Banerjee's film and she eventually marries Byomkesh.
The thriving opium trade in the city of Calcutta in the 1930s is the backdrop Bandyopadhyay often chose for many of his stories. To add to that effect, he would also bring under focus the impact of the Second World War on Calcutta as the Japanese planes would bomb its many localities and the communal riots that preceded India's Independence in 1947. Banerjee's film focuses only on the opium trade and the impact of the War on the city.
A character who would trade in opium or in poisonous matchsticks and would not hesitate in killing people in Bandyopadhyay's stories retains the same name in Banerjee's film, but is seen to be part of an international conspiracy to destabilise India. The film suddenly acquires the scale of a story where an Indian is trying to conspire against Indians with international co-conspirators and Byomkesh unravels that and exposes their deeds.
The final sequences of the film will stretch your credulity. As they require you to willingly suspend your disbelief, the storyline moves further and further away from Bandyopadhyay's simple stories of human frailties, sins and criminal intent, exposing all of which would make Byomkesh excel as a Satyanveshi.
Apart from his Byomkesh stories, Bandyopadhyay also excelled as a writer of historical fiction. After watching Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!, you might get a sense of what fictionalised history would look like.
