CLERK – AN EXERCISE IN CELLULOID SURREALISM

Clerk is a 2010 Bengali Movie starring Prosenjit. Read the critic’s review of the wonderful Bengali film by Shoma Chatterji.

Clerk Movie Details:

• Story: Subhadro Choudhury and Sarthok Roy Choudhury
• Editors: Shyamal Karmakar and Subhadro Choudhury
• Sound: Tirthankar
• Cinematography: Sirsho Roy
• Music: Raja Narayan Deb
• Art Direction: Tanmoy Chakraborty
• Script, Direction: Subhadro Choudhury
• Cast: Prosenjit Chatterjee, Anindita Bose, Debobroto Chakraborty, Ruma Bondhopadhyay, Chunilal, Sophie, Kalyan Gupta
• Produced by: Nitesh Sharma
• Banner: Bangla Talkies
• Date of release: January 15, 2010
• Rating: 07/10

Prosenjit in Bengali Film Clerk 2010

It is not easy to use surrealism in an entire film. Specially when the protagonist is a voluntary schizophrenic who lives in two worlds – the real world of his office and the surrealistic world of fantasies. Biplab, a clerk in a dilapidated office that is about to lock up for good, makes a conscious and deliberate shift from his daytime world of office-based reality and his nighttime world of surrealistic journeys. Subhadro Choudhury takes a bold and creative leap into the strange world of a social introvert who comes alive within the poster-filled four walls of his apology of a room. Clerk is about a man who seeks to escape the world of anonymity and boredom through imaginary monologues on the telephone, as antique as his flat is, with Kareena Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra, Rani Mukherjee and Urmila Matondkar.

The world is not devoid of characters like Biplab so the conception is grounded in reality. Nor is the office where Biplab works, or his bored-looking, unambitious colleagues who seek union agitation as a form of escape, exceptions to reality. The Bollywood actresses who make up Biplab’s clandestine social world are real too. So, what is it that is unreal here? Unreal is the world Biplab creates in his very intimate time and space. He lights big candles across his untidy room, rests his drinks on a low centre table, and begins to turn the numbers on the big dial of his antiquated black telephone. He sometimes forgets the difference between the actor he is talking to and the character she has portrayed in a given film. So, he tries to rescue Kareena Kapoor from the brothel she lives in her film Chameli. He talks to Rani Mukherjee walking miles to bring him his lunch, refusing to ride pillion on his bicycle and walking back, refusing to marry him because that will spoil the love they share. When Biplab realises that these stars are not interested, he coldly pulls almost all the posters down and replaces them with a large B & W poster of Aishwarya Rai. He now sits nude and wet in his decrepit bathtub, dripping wet, talking to “Ash” and even proposing marriage. He shops for his wedding. But when he overhears talks of Ash getting married to one Abhishek Bachchan, his dream world comes crashing down forever. He slashes the poster with a small pen-knife. One does not see the slashed poster, only gets to hear the sound. The cat comes on the window sill for its bowl of milk Biplab keeps out everyday. But it is missing. Biplab sets about putting his house in order, probably going away into the country to set up home and perhaps, a new business in selling aquarium fish with the pretty girl next door. But this could also be a part of his new dream world, his new window of escape.

The film winds its way through the narrow bylanes of Biplab’s mindset, lifestyle and social backdrop, through illusion and reality. During this winding and zigzagging journey, the script sheds light on minor characters like the old man who snoozes all day in his aquarium fish shop and hands Biplab his daily newspaper. He has an orphaned niece who keeps spying on Biplab but he does not even throw a glance. His office colleague, the not-so-young widow is steeped in her sea of loneliness, uncertainty and sexual frustration. The middle-aged drunkard Biplab meets every evening at the seedy joint talks into his cell phone with no one at the other end, boasting about giving away his share of the property to others. Late at night, his young daughter comes to fetch him home. The elderly executive who drives to the fish seller first with a prostitute he has picked up, and then with his young wife, does not really belong to the film. His is the only jarring note. The gossipy housewives in the building add some colour to this rather colourless story of the Black Mollys in the fish aquarium and the lonely life of Biplab.

Sirsho Roy is brilliant with his camera, capturing the dark tones of a seamy but real side of the city. With its mobile posters of film stars, near-empty tramcars Biplab commutes to and from office in, the ill-maintained staircase and interiors of the office building, the union meetings where an old man dozes off while standing, Biplab enjoying the luxury of his bathtub, Roy brings to life a city shorn of its glamour and glitz and strobe lights of shopping malls, the high-rises and multiplexes. The darkened room with its candles and lantern throw shadows on the wall posters, lighting them up at strategic points. Roy is helped along the way by Tanmoy Chakraborty’s art direction while Tirthankar’s sound design embellishes the texture of the film by almost becoming a character. The tap-tap of the typewriter in the office, the clambering of footsteps on the staircase, the plop-plop of water in the bathtub, the turning of the numbers on the dial, the ringing of the telephone, the bursting of bombs form an imaginative sound design supported by a very low-key background score. The editing is intentionally structured in collages that is imaginative but difficult to comprehend.

Prosenjit’s magic works again after Dosar, Khela, Shob Choritro Kalponik and Houseful. It is not easy to carry an entire film on solitary shoulders, even for Prosenjit. So, there is one sore point – he works as a typist but he does not know touch-typing! His switch-off, switch-on mode is incredible, zeroing in on his versatility.

Clerk is a very good film. But its pace is very slow. One understands that the pace is in keeping with the hero’s lifestyle and mindset, but the audience tends to get impatient because the storyline is slender. Choudhury has appeared in two small scenes in the film following the styles of directors led by Hitchcock. The only problem with his rich directorial quality is that very few people will watch it and fewer will understand the links between and among the collage he has created with great love and greater care. But then, as he said in the film, he hates Bollywood!

The songs of this movie are not available at this present point of time but you can surely expect it in the near future... I you have them with you and like to share with other visitors of this blog, you can upload the file to any media sharing website like Rapidshare or Media Fire, or some other and then post th elink as a comment to this post...... Awating your response................