Srijit Mukherji is arguably the most prolific filmmaker in Bengali cinema. His prodigious output inevitably raises questions about his versatility and creative consistency, just as his impressive tally of awards invites scrutiny of his artistic credentials. Yet his recent films, Shotti Bole Shotti Kichu Nei and Padatik, a bio-fiction on filmmaker Mrinal Sen, demonstrate his creative range and assured choice of subjects. With Winkle Twinkle, Mukherji reinforces his standing as one of the more distinctive and enduring filmmakers in Indian cinema. Sixteen years after his directorial debut, Autograph, a personal take on Satyajit Ray’s Nayak, he continues to experiment with form and subject. Like several of Mukherji’s films, Winkle Twinkle draws inspiration from a celebrated Bengali play of the same name, written by Bratya Basu and staged in 2002. Basu, a formidable figure in Bengali theatre before turning to full-time politics, had drawn on Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle, first published in 1819. Irving’s protagonist falls asleep and wakes up years later to discover that the world has changed beyond recognition while he remains essentially the same. Mukherji and screenwriter Padmanabha Dasgupta transpose this premise to contemporary Kolkata, turning it into a sharp political allegory. Sabyasachi Sen, a committed Communist activist, is presumed killed in police firing during the Emergency in 1976. His body is never found. In reality, he falls asleep and awakens in 2002, physically unchanged but confronted by a world that has moved on without him. The shock begins at home. His wife has aged, and his children have grown up. His son, Indro, who idolised Che Guevara alongside his father as a child, has become an active supporter of the Trinamool Congress. He has little patience for his father’s unwavering allegiance to the CPI(M), a party whose ideological universe has been shaken by the collapse of the Soviet Union. His daughter, born after his disappearance, studies at Indira Gandhi University, a name that evokes for Sabyasachi only the prime minister associated with the Emergency. Posters announcing Mamata Banerjee’s rise confront him on Kolkata’s streets. The political landscape has changed beyond recognition, but Sabyasachi cannot accept that the movement to which he devoted his life has lost its former certainty. Technology bewilders him. More distressing, however, is the discovery that an old party comrade has become a leader of a new political formation and amassed wealth through dubious means. The revolutionary’s world has not merely changed; its moral foundations appear to have crumbled. His wife, once his comrade and fellow traveller, offers him refuge, welcoming his return with affection. Their son, however, refuses to accept him readily. The father-son conflict becomes a confrontation between two political generations: one shaped by ideological conviction and sacrifice, the other by a more pragmatic politics of power. The film moves back and forth through time, mirroring Sabyasachi’s bewilderment and drawing the audience into his confusion. Politics, technology, education and popular culture have all changed, often in ways he cannot comprehend. Some of the sharpest moments are also the most humorous. Sabyasachi recalls filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak marching in a Marxist procession, unaware of how cinema has changed and that another Hrithik — Roshan — is now the more familiar name. When a man at a tea stall expresses astonishment that he has never heard of Sachin Tendulkar, Sabyasachi walks away, explaining that the only Sachin he knows is Sachin Dev Burman. A particularly telling image captures the film’s political imagination: a street magician’s scarf changes from red to green. The symbolism is unmistakable. The red of the Left, once dominant in Bengal, gives way to the green associated with the Trinamool Congress. The cinematography is equally impressive, particularly the transition from colour to black-and-white when the narrative revisits the past. Ritwik Chakraborty is outstanding as Sabyasachi, convincingly conveying the bewilderment and stubbornness of a man unable to reconcile his convictions with reality. Anasuya Majumdar as his middle-aged wife and Sohini Sarkar as her younger self provide strong support. The sudden violence in the father-son confrontation is perhaps the film’s principal weakness, disrupting an otherwise nuanced exploration of ideological estrangement. Yet, Winkle Twinkle remains one of Mukherji’s finest films. Its central insight is both poignant and political: Sabyasachi’s tragedy lies not simply in having lost years of his life, but in discovering that history has moved on without him and that the revolution he believed would change the world has itself become a relic of the past. (The writer is an National Award-winning film scholar.)
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