Bob Biswas
Director: Diya Annapurna Ghosh
Cast: Abhishek Bachchan, Chitrangada Singh, Samara Tijori, Ronith Arora, Paran Bandopadhyay, Indira Verma
Bob Biswas, essayed by Saswata Chatterjee in Sujoy Ghosh’s 2012 Kahaani (headlined by Vidya Balan), is etched in our minds even after almost a decade of the film’s release. Chatterjee/Bob’s viciously evil smile when he introduces himself as “Aami Bob Biswas…Ek Minute” (I am Bob Biswas…One minute) before shooting down his victim at point blank range is spine-chilling. His never misses his targets.
It is this character, Bob, created by Sujoy, Advaita Kala and others, that helmer Diya Annapurna Ghosh introduces in her ZEE5 title, Bob Biswas, and weaves a whole story around him (Abhishek Bachchan) – turning him into a pure personification of poison. He does not bat an eyelid before the bullet from his revolver flies, knocking a man or woman dead and cold. His aim is bang on, and he never regrets his bloody actions. But this was before he slipped into a coma after a nasty accident in Diya’s (Sujoy’s daughter) debut thriller. When he wakes him, he has lost his memory, and Diya makes him softer, gentler, pruning his maleficence to a great degree. We almost begin to nurture an empathy for him, and want him to live.
Diya’s work begins with Bob waking up. He has been in a comatose state for eight years, and when he gets up he is completely lost. His wife, Mary Biswas, played brilliantly by Chitrangada Singh, takes him home. They have a little son, Benny (Ronith Arora), and a teenage daughter, Mini (Samara Tijori). She is studying to get into a medical course, and her neighbour, practising for a musical competition, disturbs her concentration every night. He is dogmatic and would not listen when asked to keep his volume low or shut his window looking out at Bob’s flat. He shoots him dead in what seems like a reflex action that comes naturally to him!
The screenplay is compelling, well-helmed and crisply edited with some very interesting characters like Kali Da (Paran Bandopadhyay), who runs a homeopathic pharmacy – where Bob is ordered by some strange looking men to get his “Nux-Vomica”. The packet he gets contains not the medicine but bullets and a gun. Bob, still clueless about who he is, gets pushed around into doing what he is not comfortable with. He is given the photograph of the man or woman he is to assassinate. And he goes on a Kill Bill spree. There are a few scenes which reminded me of Tarantino ‘s style.
The plot is neatly tied, no loose ends here, with some mind-blowing performances; Bandopadhyay’s is certainly one, and Singh undoubtedly another. She is captivating as a woman mystified by Bob’s mood swings. Bachchan Jr is good, perhaps one of his finest performances, but viewers would tend to compare him with Chatterjee. Abhishek is no match for the vile that Kahaani’s Bob exuded with a smile that hid the Devil. He showed no emotion, only a cold and calculating demeanour. Diya, by clothing her Bob with humanness robs the character’s core strength of being a ruthless murderer. In fact, very few are likely to remember her Bob, and Bachchan could be eclipsed by Chatterjee. I still shudder when I think of that murderous glint in his eyes.
(Gautaman Bhaskaran is an Author, Commentator and Movie Critic)
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