When Tagore dedicated his allegorical dance drama Tasher Desh to the young Subhas Chandra Bose, he reiterated his hope in youth, revolution and institutional change. Q’s forward-looking film pushes aside the countless, imitative stage productions of this drama and finds new, interpretive language to infuse contemporary meaning.

A lonely theatre director (Joyraj Bhattacharya) searches for his cast with Tagore’s text in hand. As he waits for the last local train on the platform, he dozes off and in that liminal space rise the fantastic images and dramatis personae of Tasher Desh. In handling a much known text, the director extends the metaphor of the romantic rebel against ageing institutions. He weaves the prince protagonist’s backstory and privileges the forsaken queen’s silent narrative. The contemporary story also unfurls the half-hidden, half-revealed young widow who must be saved by the artist.

To his young actors, Q’s brief was “Tagore on an acid trip” which underlines the hallucinatory texture and fragmented images. Two primary spaces, the prison palace and the island kingdom of Cards offer great scope for production design. The dark interiors of the palace and the startling openness of the land of cards offer great canvas for weaving motifs, props, colour schemes, choreographed action. Over all this, presides the Oracle, in her dramatic red flowing robes, heightening the abstract, fablesque narrative. And the never-ending nocturnal journey of the director in search of his story.

Visually stunning and seductive, the palace prison with its depressed queen (a stunning Tillotama Shome), dark and murky interiors, surprising colour motifs and the dramatic Oracle, all lend to cinematic myth-making at its best. It is this claustrophobic world of drug-induced inertia that the Rajputro (Soumyak Kanti DeBiswas) must leave behind to find action and adventure.

When the shipwrecked prince and his friend are washed up on an idyllic beach (Sri Lanka), they discover an army camp of cards (heavily referencing the Japanese army and its context). In this intolerant land of absolutes, the two youngsters bring laughter, imagination and music. Overtly stylised and indulgent sexual scenes serve as a metaphor for the legitimacy of desire and the validity of imagination. Sexual liberation keeps the gender debate vigorously alive in the contemporary backdrop of neo-fascism and violence against women. As horrific events unfold against our nationscape, the evocative image of the narrator stepping out with the entrapped widow holds promise and hope for artistic integrity.

And rising above it all is Q’s interpretation of the saturated soundtrack. His own familiarity with Rabindrasangeet permits him to push and break borders and the layered soundtrack features an unlikely medley of Asian Dub Foundation, Susheela Raman, Sam Mills, Anusheh Anadil and musicians from nine countries. Music may well be the territory over which this film may be fiercely disputed but the anarchic Q, much like his prince, is known to jolt convention. His cinematic craft (at moments self-indulgent), coloured mosaics and phantasmagorical motifs take the viewer on a psychedelic journey, much as his first underground film (Gandu) that made him a cult phenomenon.

This is not surface seduction or irreverence, at its core it is a deeply felt interpretation of Tagore’s Tasher Desh. While pundits may rage, I am inclined to think our esteemed Bard, who repeatedly celebrated young agents of change (Nuton joubeneri doot) and championed women empowerment (Gharetey bhramar elo gunguniye), would have been genuinely pleased. The finale song leaves its imprint as Baandh bhengey dao flows into Tagore’s own voice and then to Q’s own Bengali rap over contemporary images of Calcutta.

Amongst the plethora of cultural products which have marked Tagore’s anniversaries, this interpretation is perhaps the most imaginative, disturbing, volatile and boldly relevant. The dialogue delivery may serve abstraction but deflects from the narrative. And the languor of the first half shifts to delirious pace in the second, making it an uneven visual experience, but then the director’s intention is to pull you out of comfort viewing zones.

The trailer (which I saw at the Film Bazar, Goa 2012) dripping with colour, motifs and music had already gripped my imagination. The film has had its festival circuit starting with Rome Film Festival to the recently concluded London Indian Film Festival (LIFF). An NFDC/ Overdose Joint/ AKFPL/ Dream Digital/ Entre Chien Et Loup with an international cast/crew perfectly tips the cap to its primary author — a world visionary who had his feet entrenched in the soil of Bengal.