DABARU: This movie is a mixed fare from the production house of Nandita and Shiboprasad. Based on the life and times of the chess grandmaster Sourya Ganguly, this movie is likeable in parts. The first thing that is a letdown is the jarring background score paired with the incessant flow of songs that is present in almost every reel. The first half would pique your interest and the editing is crisp and smart, but the second half fails you with insufferable melodrama and hits a trough. The movie has several cameos by Kharaj, Biswanath, Kaushik Sen and others while the lead actors Rituparna, Chiranjit, Dipankar and Shankar stay true to their craft with their stellar performances. The main protagonists who play Sourya in his childhood and teenage years are superlative. The love track looks forced and unreal. There is a flitting reference to Dibyendu Barua, the ace chess player from Bengal and the serial Mahabharata that was aired every Sunday morning in the early nineties. The movie spans from 1988 to 2001 and ends with Sourya becoming a grandmaster in one of the toughest games of all time that requires mental effort, focus and patience. Surprisingly, there is no mention of IBM’s Deep Blue defeating grandmaster Gary Kasparov in 1996. You will probably enjoy the movie if you carry a pair of earbuds.
AninditaRoyMusings 