Why it's rewarding to watch Bioscopewala
Memories — they can hold you together and yet rip you apart. Memories are an integral part of Deb Medhekar’s directorial debut Bioscopewala, an adaptation of Rabindranath Tagore’s much-loved short story, "Kabuliwala".
In the 95-minute drama, they appear in various manifestations – letters, documents, objects, photographs and moving images – and they take control of the characters.
Predominant among them is Minnie Basu (Geetanjali Thapa), a filmmaker who has a fraught relationship with her photographer father (Adil Hussain), one which Medhekar never quite digs deep into. Having just lost him to an air crash, Minnie returns to Kolkata to embark on a journey in which she tries to make sense of her father’s unfinished quest and the story of a man who was an indelible part of her childhood. That man, Rehmat Bhai aka Bioscopewala (Danny Denzongpa), was an Afghan immigrant who would navigate the streets to regale kids of the neighbourhood with his device on which he played images from Hindi and Hollywood classics.
“He told me how to tell stories and make things up,” Minnie tells her French boyfriend after she discovers that the Bioscopewala has returned after over two decades, this time, as a frail man battling Alzheimer’s and bedridden in hospital. Minnie takes over from Bioscopewala to become a storyteller herself. Her subject is the Bioscopewala himself whose story she learns with the help of people’s memories of him.
Flashbacks come and go and conversations with familiar strangers reveal truths that hurt more than comfort. He was a cinema owner in Afghanistan. He lost it to become a bioscopewala. He was a generous and caring person. Significantly, he was a father to a daughter. He migrated against all odds.
There are interesting characters that merit more deliberation that are frustratingly unfinished. Medhekar, still finding his feet as a filmmaker, chooses to focus on Minnie’s own quest to seek redemption in a relationship beyond repair.
As much as it is a story about the father-daughter bond, Bioscopewala is a film that reminds viewers of mankind’s cherished gift – its ability to create new memories to resurrect itself from loss and grief. They make you laugh and cry. And in co-producer Sunil Doshi’s story, they are reason for our existence itself.