Cast: Swastika Mukherjee, Ritwick Chakraborty, Debleena Dutta, Kharaj Mukherjee, Sumit Samaddar and others
Direction: Partha Sen
Genre: Drama
Duration: 1 hour 41 minutes
Storyline :
Anubrata (Ritwick) confronts his nemesis, death, every day, as his wife, Neeta (Debleena), fights a losing battle with cancer. His life changes when his path crosses that of Jaya (Swastika), whose husband is fighting a lung ailment in hospital.
Anubrata Bhalo Acho? Movie Reviews :
Anubrata Bhalo Acho? is a mixed bag. On the one hand, it's a dull canvas that's coloured by sterling performances, and on the other, it's a painting ruined by a flawed sketch. The actors are a treat to watch — right from Debleena, who is extremely convincing as a cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy, Ritwick, who feels death hovering close and watches helplessly as his wife suffers, Swastika, who feels angry and lonely while tending to her ailing husband, to Sumit, who is constant complaining about the healthcare system.
In fact, the first half of the film is good — with Kharaj Mukherjee adding a dose of subtle humour as the pipe-smoking loner, Mr Lahiri. But despite emotions running amok and wonderful performances, some basic ingredients are strangely missing. While Sumit's character goes on and on about foot-long bills and how the hospital fleeces its patients, Anubrata seems blissfully above such mundane worries. He doesn't have a car, lives in a house that screams lower middle class, hasn't seen Mount Everest in his whole life, and yet, acts like he doesn't need to pay a penny for his wife's insanely expensive treatment process. He even refuses to take money from Jaya for purchasing her husband's medicines. And all this when Neeta is housed in an apparently premium cabin that includes life support equipment, including a ventilator!
Then comes the jolt called the second half. What looks like a healthy friendship between two lonely senior citizens suddenly turns into an amorous affair, with two 60-odd-year-olds making love on the floor! And bam, a good, almost sane storyline goes for a toss! True, both are lonely and depressed, but do such feelings drive two 60-something persons, who, had supposedly led loyal married lives till that moment, towards sex? Bizarre, and somewhat revolting. Suddenly, Anubrata and Jaya lose years and seem to become the age of the actors playing them. And speaking about age, another really baffling aspect of the whole film is the strange casting. Why have Ritwick, Swastika and Debleena been cast as characters a few decades older than them when there's no flashback in the entire film? They are old all through the film, except some blink-and-miss dream sequences. So, why choose young actors; aren't there older ones around? The plot gets more and more convoluted.
But the biggest question mark in the film hangs over Anubrata's character. He keeps waving away an imaginary fly, stays blissfully distant from all things mundane, falls head over heels for the first woman he gets acquainted with at the hospital and bombards her with text messages and phone calls, wears to hospital the same shirt he borrows after a night of wild lovemaking with his 'newfound' ladylove and drops insane questions on unsuspecting acquaintances. Is he really sane? He looks 60, acts like he's 40, dreams like he's 25, has no defined background and no friends — the only thing we know about him is that his wife loves the sea. That definitely makes Anubrata a really vague protagonist.
The background score by composer Mayukh Bhoumik, however, is not vague at all. He has really done well, creating a score that waxes, wanes, accelerates and slows down just like heartbeats, and emotions, do.
Watch Anubrata Bhalo Acho?, and witness actors putting in their best to salvage an otherwise bizarre storyline. And thankfully, they've at least managed to make the film watchable.
Anubrato Bhalo Acho Trailer - Swastika Mukherjee , Ritwick Chakraborty , Sumit Sammadar
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