Direct action!

(R-L) Director Parambrata Chatterjee and the ‘noose’, Rajatava Datta, Sudipa Basu and Kanchan Mullick. PHOTO: SANTANU CHAKRABORTY

Is there anything like too young to be a director? Not any longer, not with the Bollywood brat pack beginning to rule the roost now. But it still did come as a surprise when the brightest spark among the young male leads on the small screen, Parambrata Chatterjee, got to helm a telefilm. “This was a role that I had been waiting for,” smiled a seemingly calm Param at the shoot, “since I was in class VIII.” With a lineage that leads back to Ritwik Ghatak and parents as film students/critics, it shouldn’t actually have come as a surprise. But the 24-year-old is making hay while the histrionic sun shines, and so plunging into Premer Golpo ? which is the title of the telefilm commissioned to him ? does seem coming a little too soon. But patience is hardly a virtue of creativity.

So here it is, Premer Golpo. A story also developed by Param, along with Aditi Majumdar, and scripted by Aditi, there was an expert crew at hand and veterans like Sudipa Basu and Rajatava Datta and Kanchan Mullick to lend a receptive hand. And Param had his vision all right before him, but was not averse to taking any expert cue from the experienced artistes. And they were subtle at the cues, too. Not as if we didn’t notice Rajatava whispering a suggestion and looking away wistfully at the mangoes hanging in the compound orchard ? not part of the scene, but outside it.

Anil Grover

Scheduled telecast: Tara Muzik; Nov 20; 7:30pm