Director: Sudipta Chakraborty
Writer: Sudipta Chakraborty
Cast: Pranesh Chatterjee, Tanima Chatterjee, Sraman Chatterjee
Running time: 6mins
Indy Film Library is now in its sixth season of films. Over the years I am proud that we have collected a number of familiar talents, coming back repeatedly to show us how their abilities have grown with their latest project. But while The War Within is Sudipta Chakraborty’s fourth submission with IFL, I see him less of a returning filmmaker, more of a repeat offender.
Regular readers will not only recognise Sudipta Chakraborty, but his entire cast and crew from projects including The Toy Story, Tilted, and Triyaka. None of those films came close to telling a compelling story, while the re-assembled team of terribly-dubbed talents universally failed to make anything memorable of the material they were given (which admittedly was already of a poor standard).
Again, Chakraborty insists on writing his own ‘script’ here, and routinely feeds his cast what football fans would understand as a ‘hospital pass’ – leaving them scrambling to cover up the weak passes rolled vaguely in their direction. In the case of lead Pranesh Chatterjee – playing David, a man suffering from an unspecified form of dementia – he does a broadly passable job; though that may be because this role puts his usually uneasy screen-presence and confused delivery to semi-legitimate use.
The rest of the cast are less fortunate, having been cast as people apparently in full control of their mental faculties. As David’s son, calling home from an unspecified war, Sraman Chatterjee really struggles to get to grips with his dialogue, often to comedic effect. With a script that probably does not have much in the way of [Beat.] stage directions, he fails to properly pace what he has to say – and when one sentence leaves no room for build-up between a meek line of questioning, and a colossal plot revelation, the sudden strain placed on his vocal cords elicits something approaching an impression of a panicked Kermit the Frog.
“Rememberwhenmymotherwashitbythebulletsandshediedbecauseofnofaultofhers?!” he honks breathlessly – and not remotely in sync with his on-screen mouth.
The fact all of his – and everyone’s lines – was re-recorded in post, makes the shoddy quality of his delivery even more perplexing. But such is the churn-out rate of Sudipta Chakraborty’s films, that he most likely only gave himself time to record one complete take per line.
As is often the case with these productions, it is the editor who I feel most sorry for. Milton Biswas would clearly have chosen a better take of Sraman Chatterjee’s ADR, if one were available. He would also probably have chosen to have some visuals of the duck that Sudipta Chakraborty has insisted should be incessantly quacking in the background – despite the bench where everything takes place being surrounded by miles of well-trimmed and vacant lawn. But no such footage was recorded – and one jarring use of stock footage was already enough of an eye-sore at the film’s opening.
In that opening, after a series of grey shots from a piece of greenbelt in the overcast Netherlands, the bland and flat imagery is suddenly displaced by a burst of wonderfully sharp, HD stock footage. Spent bullet casings tumble to the floor against a darkened background, a cascade of rich gold amid a foreboding void. As is so often the case when independent films use stock footage, it very clearly has no business being in the same film, and immediately primes us for amateur hour.
Usually, I’m reticent to say things like that, because the term ‘amateur’ is often a label used to demean independent art – as if someone being paid to produce shit is inherently more worthy of your time than someone doing it for free. But if you’re inflicting films on other people, expecting them to use up some of their finite time taking what you are doing seriously, at some point you need to take into account what they think you can do better. If not, you’ve probably earned the title of amateur.
Over the course of four projects, Sudipta Chakraborty has stubbornly refused to learn from any of his previous outings. If anything, this latest one seems markedly worse. A hackneyed storyline about dementia and wartime trauma utterly mishandles two extremely sensitive subjects – in service of an utterly pedestrian and predictable ‘twist’. There is not even a second location. Just the same park bench which half of Triyaka was also set on.
This is still not the worst film Indy Film Library has ever screened. But it is by far and away the laziest. While previous efforts from Sudipta Chakraborty and co. at least appeared to have some kind of ambition, or desire to tell (moralistic and convoluted) stories, it does not even seem like that is the case here. In lieu of any effort to actually convey a message in the story itself, here, the eye-for-an-eye quote from Ghandi is stapled to the end of the film – with as much contextual relevance as one of those “Live Laugh Love” plaques you would find hanging in your mum’s kitchen.