Chupkatha is a Bengali short film that looks at the COVID-19 pandemic and the struggles that come along from a completely different angle.
Can a pandemic situation trigger the creative side of a person, inducing him/her to bring out the best among the best of his/her respective creative genre?
The answer to this question is probably a big yes! And I have my own reasons to say so.
Most of us must have read Gabriel García Márquez's Love In The Time Of Cholera- a novel that had created a sense of curiosity and astonishment when it had hit the bookstores!
‘Cholera’ was also a situation of scourge and anxiety and no one could think of ‘Love’ in such a difficult situation.
The COVID-19 pandemic may have thrown life out of gear but this has also been a time when we have witnessed some of the finest creative works.
Many creative persons have already tried and many are still trying to capture the various shades of the consequence of this traumatic cognitive content in their own effectuate manner.
Most of these attempts may not be well called great works of art, yet these demand grandness for capturing some moments of the dumbfounding time.
As said earlier, Chupkatha is such a short film that has been made earnestly with such a creative endeavour.
The main pillar of the narrative of Chupkatha is that of a young working couple and the relationship they share with their deaf child.
The nervous strain of the pandemic, the problem of the working parents reach the extreme point of tension while they had to keep their daughter separately at a different place.
The narrative is a fabrication of several crisis points that makes the theme captivating for the audience.
Issues like how will a cute deaf girl communicate her feelings with her dear ones, the pain she feels while she is separated from her parents as she has not attained the age to understand the panic situation is shown sublimely in the film.
This principle plot genuinely captures the traumatic state of affairs created by the pandemic and at the same time, it also depicts the experience of the girl in an elusive way.
The story-screenwriter did praiseworthy work by penning down a chapter on the effect of the pandemic in a middle-class family.
Chupkatha speaks about the situation in Kolkata, but essentially, the same scenario is common in every major Indian town.
The screenwriter deserves the credit for this literary attempt to capture the various moods a person has faced or is facing because of the pandemic.
Even though is a well-written piece of work, however, visually Chupkatha could have been more appealing as this would have made the story more free streaming and credible.
The director of the film also tried his best to create and recreate the tension the plot demanded.
From the acting point of view, the lead characters have done a commendable job and the effortlessness is reflected in front of the camersa.
Each and every one of them enjoyed essaying their parts and this elevates the film to a completely different level.
Chupkatha, in a nutshell, is a sincere attempt to capture a part of social history with fitting technical support.
Cast - Rahul Banerjee (Husband), Basabdutta Chatterjee (Wife), Kiaana Mukherjee (Daughter)
Story, Screenplay & Dialogues - Debarati Bhowmick
Direction - Saumya Sengupta
DOP - Indrajit Majumdar
Editing, BGM - Arindam Saha
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