Dir.
Sadik Ahmed, Bangladesh, 2008, 80 mins
Cast:
Tarik Anam, Rubel Ahmed, Tanveer Hasan
Review by
Christopher Upton
Writer, director and cinematographer Sadik Ahmed has certainly been a busy man. Taking on most of the major roles in the film, he has ensured entire creative control. Having honed his cinematographer skills on 2007's British vampire film Night Junkies, this is his first full directing job, since touring the festival circuit with his acclaimed short film Tanju Miah back in 2006. For this movie he's travelled to the marshlands of Bangladesh to create a contemporary western with a decidedly Death Wish feel.
The village of Doulathpur is controlled by two opposing forces. These are the charming yet arrogant public favourite, Chairman and the laboured local landowner, Thakur. The apparent solution to their feuding over land possession arrives in town one day brandishing a rifle and not much in the way of money. Both men attempt to purchase the services of this mysterious guard called Kala to deal with the other. However, Kala has returned for his own reasons and in the course of performing his jobs he must try to complete his own search for information to avenge his mother.
The cinematography is excellent but it'd be difficult to make this setting look anything less than impressive. What Sadik does is make the marshes a character in their own right. A desolate and lonely place, the marshes are strikingly similar to the desert towns found in old Wild West films, and Sadik obviously knows how to get the best out of them. They provide the perfect barren background for the haunted characters, each of whom has his own troubled past.
The story isn't exceptionally original, drawing as it does on so many films before it, but this would be acceptable if the film had satisfactory closure. The shots are kept suitably short to build the explosive atmosphere of the downtrodden villagers and, while there are minimal explanations, the story is told mainly through the cast's facial expressions showing their inner turmoil. This means the audience can only speculate at what darkness hides beneath the surface. This creates the perfect opportunity to make the most of the conclusion with a surprise fact emerging or a final showdown like the westerns it emulates. Unfortunately the only surprise we get is the fact that the ending is so quick and for such a well built up story feels under developed.
While it would probably be a bit farfetched to suggest that this and other films of its ilk, like John Hillcoat's The Proposition, are the harbingers of a western genre revival. It's clear that if there were one, it would certainly have migrated from the southern deserts of the U.S. to a world of fallibility, where no saviour rides in on a white horse. These films have transported the loneliness and despair from the plains to a new home, but in a film that provides so much visually, the story falters against it's magnificent setting, failing to live up to its early promise.
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