wreeviews

I remember Bhooter Bhabishyat coming out when I was in class 12 or 11. can’t remember. didn’t have the luxury of watching films back then. when i went to college and had access to better internet, I pirated it.

even then i remember not getting satisfied with the story, however, haven’t seen a bengali movie with such interesting dialogues before. it was a semi musical, where characters spoke in couplet. and yes, the crude sexual puns were funny to me as a teenager.

However, now that i’m edging 30, a raging tranny, and have much more idea about caste identities, and feminism, i wanted to revisit the film to see whether the film has any value or not. part of it was also there to see a funny movie, that is widely praised as good bengali new generation film.

sadly, i was deeply disappointed. things that i missed as a teen was here in such a capacity, i couldn’t ignore them anymore. satisfaction can go fuck itself, i was deeply uncomfortable almost the whole movie. the film tries to be a parody, but all it does is point out the deep rooted misogyny, casteism, and hollowness of urban bengali upper caste intellectuals.

lets start with parambrata. it is evident after hearing first couple of his dialogues that he is pretentious. he has no idea about making films, but gives large talks just like a ju filmbro bodda who asks teenagers in his empty flat to discuss godard. he is making a film of which he doesn’t have the ending to. that simply points out to him being an unoriginal writer copying from some other film, who needs to change the ending to not directly plagiarise the film. any writer worth their salt comes up with the conclusion much faster than the literary devices they have to set up to reach there. it’s only copied work that struggles with ending, because reimagining ending to something you know takes a lot of experience. this is even more evident when sabyasachi offers him a story and he just agrees to it without even bothering to ask his name. i mean he wasn’t gonna credit him anyway, so why bother asking for the name? he also mentioned he wants to have a masala film. there are filmmakers who earns money to make films, and then there are filmmakers who make films to earn money. calling the latter’s work film is a reach, it is basically a product devoid of anything artistic. we can start to see which category parambrata falls in and by proxy the director himself. Parambrata quotes Tarantino, but tarantino worked oddjobs for years to collect money to make his first film, and specifically didn’t give handjobs to corporate. parambrata or by proxy the director comparing himself to tarantino is just delusion of grandeur.

let’s talk about sabyasachi. the unreliable narrator present to package the story in a sellable manner. who was apparently killed by police during naxalite movement. i mean kolkata police did kill a lot of lower caste immigrant students in kolkata for sport, and some of those police officers are now famous writers. biplab is literally an heir of a zamidar family whose ancestors built their estate by stealing from others, and he never even tries to redistribute that, never even acknowledges that. he calls himself a communist or a naxal and tries zero reparations. charu mazumdar was never killed, he was let go by the authorities, and he is called the father of naxalism. i hope you all see the casteism of bengali kayasthas and how they appropriate and take all the credits of ideas that people from the grassroots come up with. all other people associated with charu and the naxalbari movement was brutally assassinated. charu was only kept alive and let go because of his surname, he was the elite, CPI could only claim power by using his name as the ideator for the vote bank, jangal santhal or shanti munda would not have gotten the votes. nobody even knows the names of nine tiller women who died in naxalbari. whose deaths were weaponised and politicised by charu who didn’t even live there. hence sabyasachi dying in a police encounter cannot be true. charu himself died in police custody, not shot. it is simply claimed oppression, rewriting the narrative to fit the revolutionary fetishisation of the bengali upper caste. moreover, he goes to forests to teach maoists how to make bombs, but gives the blood money to parambrata to make the movie after meeting him for the first time? without even trying to get to know him better or his politics?that is just caste nepotism. if he gave that money to maoists, it would have serve the society much better, but he won’t do that. because he is not a revolutionary. he only cares about the class and caste. communist my ass. he is a liberal, who is left leaning in talk, but actually a conservative when it comes to money.

now let’s talk about the women of the movie. they are peak example of “r/menwritingwomen”. there are only two women in the main ghost cast. one is a kept woman of the family from a bygone era, and the other one is someone who committed suicide from modern times. they did not allow the middle aged man who committed suicide, but the old man melted seeing this young kid and remarked how she reminds him of his granddaughter. that is just fucked up. even from the dialogues she loses the individuality.

here, both the women are always accompanied by men, and the only time they are alone for a single scene, they talk about men. yeah, the movie doesn’t even make an effort to pass the bechdel test. a famous topic among the film bros of kolkata who use it to shit on bengali tv serials. there are two more women, one of them is enamoured by parambrata, something self aggrandising men think about women who work around them, and the other is a marwari housewife who does an item song. there is no reason or justification as to why this happened except a one sentence explanation by the narrator later. this is known as insulting the audience, and in fan culture it is called an asspull. as the defining moment is done off screen, it is firstly bad writing, and secondly it considers that the audience is not smart enough to realise that. also, why would a housewife do an item song just for revenge and let him go after? what kind of story is it? you are literally setting up what teenagers call a KLPD? ending doesn’t even make sense

i cant even write much about the women because there is nothing interesting happening with them or by them anyway. they are always dependent on the men around them. it’s one of the most misogynistic movies i have seen. some of the dialogues literally refer to swastika’s vagina to illicit laughter. was the script written by virgin incel teenagers or what? the women has only one purpose in this film, either act like a bimbo to illicit laughter or sexualise their own bodies for the gratification of men. there doesn’t happen anything else with them, there is no character growth for any of them. not that other characters have any, but they still get some kind of roll to play. in the climactic scene, both these main ghost characters are missing anyway.

all the other characters except parambrata and sabyasachi are shown as stereotypical examples of their community. their services satisfy the patriarch, and that is why they get to stay in the house. much of the comedy of the film stem from this stereotype, which basically is punching down. it is akin to gay men who think it is their solemn duty to shit on women because they don’t fuck one. however, the lack of self awareness of the director makes both parambrata and sabyasachi the stereotypical bengali intellectuals whose politics is only at a surface level, mired with upper caste ignorance and positivity that lacks working knowledge of politics. even satyajit ray did the same mistake in ganashatru, he completely removed the politics from the original story he adopted it from, trying to make it about religion, something that doesn’t really affect the bengali upper castes. it comes from a saviour complex mixed with chasing trauma.

all of this comes from unchecked privilege. the guitarist dude can talk about how casteism and untouchability is bad and how the rickshaw driver should be allowed upstairs, but it is just a talk, nothing really changes for him. he is at the bottom rung and your think that living for eternity would make the ghosts more socially aware, but it seems bengali upper caste men are more interested in maintaining the social hierarchy even after death. making the bengali adage that your behaviour doesn’t change even after your death a reality.

the film makes it a point to mock people with disabilities, and people from lower class. it makes pramod pradhan with speech disability to reduce his name to pond (asshole). and he would say wrong educational stuff to showcase how illiterate he is. similarly, TK Guchhait has that particular surname just before which he stutters to make a poop joke. this film is more like Prem Aggan, where there was a joke about how jay mehra should be gay mehra. one of the worst script writing in my honest opinion. whoever wrote it didn’t understand the assignment and failed in his job. to quote tom cruise, “a nutless monkey could do this job better”.

Privilege is when you willingly get beaten by police in a protest march for political clout knowing full well that come what may, police wouldn’t kill you because of your surname. grassroots activists do not have that luxury. thus upper caste upper class urban educated people can appropriate their work and pretend to be woke by talk, but they aren’t really interested in changing the system. upper caste men are the oppressors. they can’t be left leaning without giving up their family, surname and all other privileges. thus almost any communist from upper castes with good family relations are there to muddy the movement and derail it. the guillotine doesn’t judge the caste.

parambrata getting the money and kickstarting his career is more comparable to how upper class upper caste worthless men launch their filmmaking/photography career with their family’s blood money. who has to appropriate others’ stories to fit their own narrative. by proxy it is the director himself.

the only redeeming quality of this movie is its dialogues. most of which is punching down comedy anyway, but the couplet system was something new in bengali cinema itself. i guess that is the reason the film was popular amongst the urban upper class folks. this movie has been remade in hindi and has been a resounding flop. understandable, good films has good content, this has nothing. certain highly memed tv serials has better content than this garbage, as they get translated to multiple other regional languages and always does well with the audience.

i’ll not increase the review much. for a vapid film i have already word vomited a little too much anyway. i’d give this film a 1 out if 10, if i were to give a round number.

see you all soon.