Review: Royal Bengal Rahasya (রয়েল বেঙ্গল রহস্য)

First thing first, this is totally director’s movie. To me Royal Bengal Rahasya (Bengali: রয়েল বেঙ্গল রহস্য) is the best Feluda movie ever from Sandip Ray. The story based mainly on solving a puzzle, which will lead us to a death,  show hunger for appreciation, light and shadows of a long time relationship, and hidden truths of the royal families.

Muro hoye buro gach/ hath gon bhat panch/Dik pao thik thik jobabe/falgun tal tor/Dui majhe bhuifor/Sandhane dhondaye nababe.

Answer to the puzzle will lead you to a treasure. So while you are solving the puzzle, let me light up on other aspects of the movie.

In the acting section as usual Sabyasachi Chakroborty (Feluda) is undoubtedly good, Shaheb Bhattacherjee (Topse) had nothing to do other than nodding his head, Bibhu Bhattacharjee (Jatayu) is usual with his high dramatic theater style of acting. But the two actors whom we should not forget to mention are Paran Bandopadhyay, and Bhaswar Chatterjee. Paran Bandopadhyay as a mental patient did the best, no overacting, no shouting but with facial expression, and I will never forget how his right hand was continuously shivering. On the other hand Bhaswar Chatterjee perfectly portrayed a needy guy, who is thankful to the royal family for giving him daily bread.

The screenplay is more than enough to make you sit throughout the picture, and respected the story of Satyajit Ray.

The picturisation where I felt could have been improved with little more concentration and seriousness. Most of the picture had shot in F/32 and even in portrait focusing it was not more than f/8. The focusing in low light condition most of the time is not proper and the main subject was always little soft focused (which is not looking good at all), eyes of the main subject “out of focus” is big no no to me. It seems the shots were taken by some drunken cinematographer. The focus movement is poor, actually there is no focus movement at all. The focus was pre set and cinematographer was expecting, subject to come to the focus point by themselves, a little here and there resulted out of focus picture. And when subject is moving towards the focus point, everything is out of focus. I didn’t like the use of wide angle in moving landscape shots, the trees were changing shapes while coming from right/left to the center point.

The animation is also not so good and when the tiger jumping towards the audience, one can easily tell its an animation.

But overall it is a good package. It has everything required, story, screenplay, acting and the technical parts can be easily overcome by appointing a good cinematographer, and spending little more money, which is actually depends on the producers, directors can never get money expected. You know Laxmi and Saraswati has long time well known fight.

Must mention: Feluda is famous among 8 to 80 years old. To keep children in mind director never shown a dead body, although there is one.

My rating: 4.5/5 (A must watch).

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6 Comments

  1. In ROYAL BENGAL ROHOSYA, Sandip Ray had done material mistakes like Mohitosh Babu should be giving to Feluda two skins of Royal Bengal Tigers as gift, one of which he further gifted to Lalmohan Babu and the sword of Adityonarayan and not the silver coins which feluda had refused to take earlier. The tiger shown in graphics does not match the standard quality and seemed to be very near to the men who stared at it very fearlessly as if it is a toy. The tiger should be shot dead by Sasanko Babu in the story and not running off. Showing off Sasanka Babu going to the forest at the night before the climax could not sustain the suspense and coming out of feluda with the long cobra in his hand is also not acceptable as to handle these poisonous snakes special training should be given. Feluda should be coming out with the pot full of silver coins by shooting the snake dead with his revolver in the story.

    Sandip Ray needs to have written a new screenplay introducing more new and interesting facts rather than to carry on with the same speeches as dialog as it is written in the book just as Satyajit Ray had done in Jai Baba Felunath for instance, the knife throwing or the camel ride in Sonar Kella. Without a proper screenplay, all the films have remained only being just an audio-visual transformation of the story lacking in facts and figures and killing the suspense in its entirety by an incompetent casting. I want to have a reach of my comments to Sandip Ray and expect to make over the drawbacks and sustain the suspense in all future Feludas. He wants to do JOTO KANDO KATHMANDU TE, CHHINNOMOSTAR ABHISHAAP, etc as queuing up for next but finding a new Jatayu would be a big problem.

    The work of the camera, the scenes from the train and car in the way to North Bengal, the new music, silence of the jungle and the small bits of comical essence is really awfully created by Ray.

    Even I myself is interested to act in one of the feludas in an important role if Sandip Ray considers so. I am presently working in a company in the lighting and display industry and if Sandip Ray require anything from me or my company he is always free to contact me at 9163312549.

  2. The commentators writing here seem to know more about cinema than anyone else. But if they are asked to shoot even a two -minute film, they would wet their pants.

    Particularly comical is the fact that they are pointing out where the script deviated from the original story and in the next paragraph asking for additional characters to be introduced. Typical pseudo-intellectual babble we get infront of every local club after getting high.

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