There is a reason why tickets for Bonolota Express, this Eid’s film directed by Tanim Noor, is like a manna from heaven.
After being deluged by too much blood, gore, machismo and mobster violence-based films, the audience now wants movies that resonate and reflect the spirit of Eid.
They want to connect with the characters of a movie, find similarity with their own lives and then, shed a tear and come out feeling exuberant because like in the films, in real life too, humans often go beyond their calculated mundane routines to do something extraordinary.
That exceptional deed is not blowing up the hideout of the super villain or delivering bravado-filled dialogue standing on a heap of dead bodies.
They are acts which happen all around us – stopping the car to help someone who has had an accident, helping a few visually impaired men to cross the road even when one is pressed for time, sharing a Coke and a burger with the guy who collects your rubbish or, just paying a visit to the wife of the driver who just had a personal loss.
The list is a long one!
In Bonolota Express, the goal is to save a newborn baby and her mother.
Sounds simple but in the course of achieving that aim, lives, fears, uncertainties and shortcomings of people from various spheres of society coalesce to create one united entity – the force of humanity.
The storyline’s biggest power is that it resonates with many of our own real-life experiences, maybe not on a train, but perhaps on a bus, a launch or, even of a plane.
If Ramadan is about soul searching, reflection and moderation then Eid is about celebrating social bonds, reinforcing our human instincts and reaffirming our pledge to stand together when someone else is in peril.
That’s exactly the core message of Bonolota Express.
But let’s get a bit deeper in the movie and see what worked really well, what received audience approval and what could have been better.
Falling in love with the train
In marketing there’s a term called subliminal messaging and while Bonolota never asks the audience directly to board a train, the invitation is all over it.
While it’s a fictional story, there’s real history in the movie, the coach housing the minister is a real one made for Queen Elizabeth when she reportedly came to the then East Pakistan in 1961. Actually, the Queen also came a second time, in independent Bangladesh in 1983 and visited an ideal village called Bairagir Chala in Gazipur.
That journey was also by train although we do not know if she was in the same mahogany furnished coach featured in the film.
Whatever the case, after the movie, one feels an inner compulsion to take a train ride.
Interestingly, at the beginning of the film, there’s a reference to first-generation handheld cameras of the early part of the 20th century, capturing railway stations and trains – a testament to our enduring fascination with the mode of transport.
This is perhaps why, so many well known movies had train journeys at the centre of their plots: ''The Train'' starring Burt Lancaster, where a US soldier saves stolen European art work form being shipped away by Nazis, ''Strangers on a Train,'' the Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece where two murders are conceived on a train, ''The Lady Vanishes,'' another Hitchcock espionage thriller where general travellers in a train try to solve the mystery of an elderly woman traveller who disappears, ''Murder on the Orient Express,'' the Agatha Christie whodunnit with mind blowing twists, ''Dr Terror’s House of Horrors,'' the Hammer horror where a mysterious clairvoyant comes into a compartment and tells each passenger their dark past, and ''The Cassandra Crossing,'' the all-star cast 1976 film in which a plague spreads inside a train.
Also there is ''Death Train,'' the 1993 film starring Pierce Brosnan and Patrick Stewart.
In Bangladesh, we have the cinematic masterpiece ''Golapi Ekhon Train-e'' – a critically acclaimed work which portrayed the socio-economic turbulence of the 70s.
Off the top of my head, I recall, a famous BTV drama of the late 70s, ''Shaatjon Jatri,'' based on Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors.
The underlying message from Bonolota is that train journeys are never one dimensional, they bring people closer, provide unforgettable experiences, some pleasant, others totally the opposite and some, surreal.
Bonolota showcases people from several layers of society: a teacher, a middle-class couple, a young doctor, a minister of the government, a common thief, the stylish and the insouciant young plus the canny and astute government official.
A microcosm of society is found in a night bound journey and slowly but inexorably, the people, not connected to one another, start to develop a human bond – a chance conversation leads to the opening up of the soul which then strikes a chord with someone else and then a few very banal incidents compel people to slowly come out of their cocoons.
The film is based on late raconteur Humayun Ahmed’s story ‘Kichukkhon’, meaning a little while in English and the name actually indicates that on a train, for a short while, all passengers become a community.
Sidelining the demons to be human
The storyline’s biggest power is that it resonates with many of our own real-life experiences, maybe not on a train, but perhaps on a bus, a launch or, even of a plane.
Talking about human interactions on a plane, the 1963 film VIP’s, starring Richard Burton, Liz Tylor, Rod Tylor, Orson Welles, Maggie Smith, Margaret Rutherford, Louis Jourdan, comes to mind.
A plane stranded at Heathrow due to heavy snowstorm forces passengers to remain at the lounge and then at the hotel. During this interval, the personal demons of each and every person comes to the surface, circumstances compel people to be drawn to one another and in the end, when the snow clears and the plane leaves, the overpowering message: every cloud has a silver lining.
Exactly the same way, in Bonolota, when the people board the train, they are distant from one another but as the night progresses and the train chugs along, the barriers break, souls touch and, most importantly, epiphanies take place.
Will not spoil the joy by giving you the whole plot but will say this, in the end, everyone feels lighter, the inner beasts/turmoil seem insignificant with the realisation: helping hand often comes when one least expects it!
The only fault of Bonolota is that it could have been half an hour less in length. Although once, three-hour time was the staple for films, in the current context, two to two hour fifteen minutes is enough.
The stellar cast deserves kudos, the forest shots create a dreamy haunting aura, and Mosharraf Karim proves why he is called the maestro.
Chanchal Chowdhury’s character of the minister is suave, reserved and certainly calculating but with a dash of suppressed kindness. Someone should use this particular character for a six or seven part OTT political thriller series. Something similar to the role of Francis Urquart (played by Ian Richardson) from the acclaimed 1990 BBC TV series House of Cards
But in my opinion, Zakia Bari Momo also deserves kudos for playing the role of a heavily pregnant mother to perfection.
Bonolota Express is not just a movie but a cinematic acknowledgement of all those small humane things that happen around us every day.
In spite of the rat race and the competition to beat the other person, sometimes, many of us do take pleasure, not seeing the downfall of the adversary or by flaunting-material possessions but just by being the good Samaritan, who says without hesitating: "Bhai, no chinta, ami asi apner pashe!"
* Towheed Feroze is a former journalist!