Shubhasish Mukherjee in and as Herbert; (below) Suman Mukhopadhyay

After a roller-coaster ride on a wave of protests sparked by a ban, theatre director Suman Mukhopadhyay?s debut feature film Herbert is releasing this Friday at Nandan.

The film had run into rough weather when the Nandan screening committee stopped its release, allegedly because it would send a ?wrong message?.

?The Nandan authorities did not specify what the wrong message was but they have now decided to screen it,? says Mukhopadhyay. ?Herbert is a political novel and a critique of the establishment. I have followed the novel pretty closely. The Naxalite movement is a strong character in the film as I have used the political history of this period as a backdrop.?

Herbert is based on Nabarun Bhattacharya?s Sahitya Akademi Award-winning novel of the same name. Spanning the 1950s and the 1990s, the film focuses on a little lettered man Herbert (played by Shubhasish Mukherjee), who lives in a joint family in north Calcutta and dabbles in supernatural practices. When cornered by rationalists Herbert commits suicide, sparking a police investigation that all but brands him a terrorist.

?Herbert had wanted to live normally like the rest of us, but he couldn?t. I wanted to read his mindscape and left several open endings in the film which are there in the novel,? adds Mukhopadhyay.

Though Vijay Raaz of Raghu Romeo and Monsoon Wedding fame was slated to play the lead, the Bollywood actor was dropped after he was detained in Dubai early last year. ?The shoot schedule was going haywire. So, I took Shubhasish, whom I had in mind even before approaching Vijay Raaz. The fact that both Vijay Raaz and Shubhasish are fine comedy actors is just a coincidence. I was drawn to the similar physical profile they had? Sharp features and the element of nonchalance in their acting,? says the theatre director who studied film direction at the New York Film Academy.

Till 2000, Mukherjee directed several documentaries and telefilms. One of his major works has been the serial Tarkash for Zee TV, featuring Naseeruddin Shah.

?I had read Herbert in 1993 and it has been in my thoughts ever since? I was deeply impressed by the content. I had the hunch that it could be transformed on to celluloid. It had cinematic appeal,? says Mukhopadhyay.

But why choose Nandan to screen the adaptation of a political novel? Money matters, clarifies the film-maker. ?In fact, I didn?t want Herbert to be associated with the Nandan brand of films that are only watched by a select audience. I didn?t have any specific audience in mind and I wanted Herbert to reach the common people. But we didn?t have the money to go for a commercial chain of halls and so we thought of Nandan,? reasons Mukhopadhyay.

Plans are afoot to release Herbert in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore next month. ?We are also chalking out plans for international commercial release in Tehran and France sometime in May-June,? says executive producer Abanti Chakraborty.