Dibakar Banerjee's Bakshy is no Byomkesh

The credits of Dibakar Banerjee's Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!, right in the beginning, read "based on the characters and stories of Saradindu Bandopadhyay". That, as all who have read the Bengali author's Byomkesh Bakshi books, would agree, is only about 20 per cent true. The rest of the film is anything but Sharadindu Bandopadhyay's work.

Before anything else, let's give Dibakar and his team the credit where it is due. The film scores superbly on the cinematography, set and art design fronts. From the hoardings by the tramway in Calcutta to the Chinese lanterns on the way to the Mahamaya Boarding House, every bit is baroque, detailed well. Sushant Singh Rajput as Byomkesh deserves adequate praise for being able to carry off walking and running in the dhoti-kurta with practised ease. The interiors of the boarding house, Putiram the cook, the residents of the house, the food - from aloo bhaja and tea to the machher jhol-bhaat… Dibakar's skill is in getting the details well. But then, as far as this film is concerned, this Banerjee staggers and stumbles, and falls flat on his face in the process of bringing to life one of Bengal's first and most iconic detectives.

The film is called Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! - where the humble 'i' in Bakshi has been given a (Gen-Y?) twist and changed to a "y", complete, with an exclamation mark. Therein lies the most obvious deviation from the original Byomkesh - apart from the "i" in the name - the word "detective" to denote Byomkesh. In Sharadindu's books, if there is one thing that Byomkesh detests and refuses being addressed as, it is this "Detective". He prefers to call himself a "Satyanweshi" - a truth seeker - because he forages for the truth.

In Sushant Singh Rajput's Byomkesh, one fails to see the intensity that the literary Byomkesh has been so endowed with. Sharadindu's "Satyanweshi" is not fragile; he doesn't throw up on seeing a decomposing corpse, and doesn't shy away from the sight of blood. In many of the writer's stories, Byomkesh is actually seen taking much interest in dealing with a dead body, while the cops are busy conducting their own investigations at a scene of crime. The book Byomkesh is sharp… unlike this detective, who, in frustration, at a point in the film, calls himself "Bewakoof Byomkesh Bakshy". There sure are instances in the writer's stories where Byomkesh's grey matter takes some time to catch up with the pace of the incidents happening all around, but the Satyanweshi needs just a smoke and some time with himself to clear that haze… and the truth, based mostly on a heady cocktail of hunches-guesses-conjectures, presents itself to him. Not quite, in this version.

The film boasts of an ensemble cast, and people like Neeraj Kabi, Anand Tiwari, Swastika Mukherjee, Divya Menon and Meiyang Chang - all do a decent job of playing their roles, but fall short of making the kind of impression on the mind that the characters in the 1899-born Banerjee's books do. The messy, blood-and-gore climax does nothing to salvage that, either. The plot of the film is over-ambitious in certain parts - and Dibakar puts his fingers in too many pies without being able to do proper justice to them. The 1939/42 Calcutta is beautifully portrayed on screen, what with the Yugantar and The Statesman getting the Palmolive and Johnson and Johnson ads too somewhat accurate, or the Lipton's signboard near the entrance to a certain dentist's chamber. But then, a film cannot be carried solely on the fragile shoulders of cinematography and costumes and other superfluity. At the core of Dibakar's Byomkesh is a wide, gaping vacuum.

What is acceptable in a book - the leisurely pace at which Byomkesh unravels the mysteries that he is involved in - is not quite palatable in a film, which is being presented to the 2015-based, multiplex-going audiences. In fact, towards the end, when Sushant begins the task of undoing the knots, one ends up feeling extremely restless - and no, not out of mad anticipation, but out of sheer boredom.

Sharadindu's mischief-makers are inherently dark characters, and they range from commoners to convicts and doctors to anonymous men and women. In Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!, the need for an archetypal archfiend - the villain - acts as a major letdown. In creating a larger-than-life Yang Guan, one who rules over underworlds, knows Japanese arts of assassination, is a polyglot, uses people like marionettes, the film ends up shredding to pieces the literature… For in Sharadindu's universe, the villains are not really so - they are dark within, and delivering that darkness on the screen is where Dibakar fails miserably, the numerous un- to not-so-lit frames in the film notwithstanding.

What a Byomkesh fan regrets at the end of the film is that this - as of now - is what the non-Bangla reading world will think Sharadindu's Bakshi is all about. The translations of the stories are few and far between, and much is lost in translation, any which way. There's so much to the Satyanweshi that has been flattened in the process of creating a film fit for this era. For all you care, calling the film "Detective Rahul Malhotra" too wouldn't have made much of a difference. A period film, a bête noire, a thriller - this creation by Banerjee attempts to be a lot of things. While it does manage to check some of those boxes right, where it plunges low is in bringing one of Bengali literature's first and best-known sleuths alive on screen.

It is a respite of sorts for Byomkesh lovers that the author had been cremated, and not buried… else, Sharadindu must surely have turned in his grave at seeing his creation demolished beyond recognition.