Film: Rosogolla
Cast: Ujaan Ganguly, Avantika, Kharaj Mukherjee, Kaushik Sen, Aparajita Adhya, Rajatava Dutta and Bidipta Chakraborty, Shantilal Mukherjee, Subhashree Ganguly, Chiranjeet Chakraborty
Director: Pavel
Rating: * *
The much revered Bengali sweet ‘Rosogolla’ becomes the focus of this Pavel directed biopic that traces the humble origins of its creator Nabin Chandra Das (portrayed by Ujaan Ganguly) whose single-minded pursuit redefined the very nature of ‘mishti’ as we know it today. Even fellow inventors of other famous Bengali sweets, like Bhola Moira and Bhim Chandra Nag, are featured in the film.
It’s not a film about food as much as it is a vain attempt at galvanizing a spot in posterity for the ubiquitous rosogulla. Pavel’s narrative hightailing Nabin Kumar’s so-alluding, a tryst with destiny, is pretty much hare-brained and illogical to boot. He is the poor relation with a widowed mother and his obsessive pursuit of culinary skill is frowned upon by his richer relatives. Of course, his widowed mother will turn heaven and earth to help him to his eventual goal. Stereotypical characters, heavy melodrama, and ridiculous set-ups are par for the course here. Nabin Kumar is portrayed as dim-witted, lacking in social graces, and all too easily conned. His mother mouth-feeds him even at age 20 which is a bit ridiculous even if we consider its setting of a distant past. In fact it’s hard to believe in a film about food where the creator himself is never shown tasting his own creation. There’s a sequence in the film where Nabin Kumar makes special sweets for a marriage party and is subsequently beaten up because the guests start vomiting blood. We see his partner accidentally dropping a few opium seeds into the stir-pot and this causes the inadvertent poisoning, we are made to believe. A few seeds in a boiling cauldron of sugar water meant to feed a few hundred guests are certainly not capable of creating this kind of health hazard.
In fact much of ‘Rosogolla’ is drenched in symbolic fervor and copious sentiment. Nabin Kumar doesn’t even belong to a sweet-merchant family. He barely apprentices at a sweet shop and even there he doesn’t create any sweets of his own, neither does he make the regular ones. So his skill in that department is entirely questionable. Pavel in fact merely taps into Bengali sentimentality to hit his sweet spot. The spongy reverence does not allow for gritty emotional attachment either. The performances are juvenile, the direction is ham-handed and the unremarkable pacing and plotting don’t allow for much attachment.
We’re well aware of the recent skirmish between Bengal and Odisha regarding the ownership of the rosogolla. And the much more recent development of celebrating an annual Rosogolla Diwas, also lends immediate poignancy to a film on its so-called origins. Pavel’s film is neither realistic nor gritty drama – it’s merely fantasy prodded on by an intent to create a universe for the sweet that has taken the course of ‘legend’ in the east.