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An Eyesore

Watched Chokher Bali by Rituporno Ghosh and felt the deepest disappointment. Taking artistic liberties is one thing, but to reduce a psychologically complex story to quasi porn is quite another. Ghosh borrows shamelessly from Satyajit Ray's Charulata but does not have anywhere near his genius.

He tries to project Binodini as the sultry siren (which is the farthest from Tagore's Binodini) and waif-like Aishwarya Rai is miscast in that role. For a character that demands a amazing range of emotions, her vapidness is hardly useful. It does not help that her body language is just as deficient. It takes an extraordinary actress (Smita Patil comes to mind) to get under Binodini's skin.

Earlier today I was doodling on retrievr. If my random globs of color defined the Choker Bali Rituporno Ghosh has created, each of the beautiful images that it retrieved could have been Tagore's story interpreted in celluloid by an abler director. Ghosh clearly bit more than he was able to chew - surely his disappointment is greater than ours if he has read the orginal story.

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