Review #950 - Television (2012)
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Review #950 |
THE SCOOP
Director: Mostofa Sarwar Farooki
Cast: Chanchal Chowdhury, Shahir Kazi Huda, Mosharraf Karim
Plot: As a leader of the local community, Chairman Amin bans every kind of image in his water-locked village in rural Bangladesh. He even goes on to claim that imagination is also sinful since it gives one the license to infiltrate into any prohibited territory. But change is a desperate wind that is difficult to resist by shutting the window.
Genre: Drama
Awards: -
Runtime: 106min
Rating: PG for religious references.
IN RETROSPECT (Spoilers: NO)
Bangladeshi
cinema has made considerable inroads into international film festivals in the
last few years, and one of the shining lights paving the way is Mostofa Sarwar
Farooki. His third feature, Television, closed the Busan
International Film Festival and was received warmly by audiences.
Now
making its way to Singapore as the Opening Film of Perspectives Film Festival
2013, the screening of Television is
an opportunity to catch a glimpse of a vibrant culture at the crossroads of
tradition and modernity. Television operates at the juncture of
this very Asian dialectical tension, often as a comedy, but not without its
dramatic intent.
The
premise is intriguing: A religious
village elder named Amin (Shahir Kazi Huda) bans still and moving images in his
community, considering them a sin, causing a variety of reactions from the
members of this community. It opens with
a seemingly documentary approach in an interview with Amin, creating a sense of
immediacy, but its aesthetic changes and we are introduced to the vibrant
cinematography and the colourful characters that adorn this picture.
At
its heart is a love triangle between two men and a woman, but the attempt to
unearth the film reveals an overarching theme of acceptance – or more
accurately, of the struggle to accept the need to change one’s beliefs and
thinking.
Television features performances
that are a tad too dramatic, though I don’t mean it in any way to be completely
negative… just merely an observation.
The cast delivers a fair share of laughs, sometimes
unintentionally. Although they draw
attention to themselves with their occasional superfluous acting, it is the
film’s refreshing and beautiful cinematography that immerses us into a foreign
world – at once exotic and peculiar yet filled with a warm sense of familiarity.
It
is not the familiarity of sights and sounds, but of connecting with universal
human emotions. The characters’
struggles to reject or conform to their beliefs reflect a world that we now
inhabit, where the winds of change dictate how we choose (or not choose) to
live.
Farooki
has made a largely entertaining film that closes quite transcendently, leaving us
with a final scene that gives us an important moment of contemplation. While its religious overtones are dealt with
comically, Television remains
culturally sensitive, and it is this balance that Farooki astutely brings to
this rich and lively feature.
GRADE: B+
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