Dhaka, May 21: Opar Bangla has beaten Mamata Banerjee’s Tollywood culture clan to the draw, but critics wonder if the shot will hit the mark.
The first feature film based on the new Bengal chief minister’s life will be made in Bangladesh where the firebrand “Didi” is extremely popular.
However, director P.A. Kajol’s announcement in Dhaka yesterday ran into a wall of scepticism, with local film critics pointing to his reputation for making “vulgar” movies and his choice of a B-grade actress for the lead role.
Model, movie starlet and TV actress Romana is a far cry from Suchitra Sen, whom Gulzar had turned to when he made Aandhi, based partly on Indira Gandhi’s life.
Romana has only acted in bit roles so far. Film websites in Bangladesh describe her as “hot” and “sexy”, an image that the critics say doesn’t go with Mamata’s personality.
In Kajol’s Bodley Jao Bodley Dao (Change, and bring change), Romana will have to portray a woman from a lower middle-class family who grows up in a slum, comes to the city in search of a job, and gradually turns vocal against social injustice.
“It’s a great honour to work in a film based on the life of Mamata Banerjee,” Romana told reporters.
It’s just a matter of time before Mamata-inspired biopics hit the screen in her home state too, judging by the support she seems to enjoy among the Tollywood fraternity. Filmmaker Goutam Ghose has already announced he would be shooting a documentary on her.
But what is worrying movie critics here is that Kajol’s credentials are nothing like Ghose’s. “He is known for making smutty commercial movies. Kajol may undermine the great image of Mamata because of his complete lack of knowledge about the life of this political legend,” one of them was quoted by a local tabloid.
Another scoffed at Abdullah Zahir Babu, the scriptwriter drafted by Kajol for the movie, saying he had just one claim to fame: his ability to write “scripts for vulgar movies”.
Although none of the critics would come on record, many of them feel that the director and the scriptwriter are merely trying to cash in on Mamata’s success in the polls.
It’s not clear if the director has sounded Mamata out about the film as a matter of courtesy, or whether he has ever met her in person.
