The one thought that constantly played on my mind, and
made me mentally squirm, is how morose ‘Take One’ is. The heroine, top actress
Doel Mitra, mopes about most of the time, smoking and drinking, her face
drained of all colour and emotions other than a world-weariness that is as
irritating as her messy hair-do.
It’s true that Doel is under siege after shedding
her clothes and inhibitions (for an international movie) in a regional film
industry that still swears by its sarees and salwar-kameezes, though artfully
worn/tailored to show skin. She may even be booted out of a film she is making
on the Ramayana, where she plays that paragon of pure womanhood, Sita. And her
actor boyfriend is two-timing her with a starlet.
But none of this can be an excuse for the gloominess
of the movie, mercifully relieved by the warm mother-daughter episodes and
scenes where the Ramayana movie’s director, played by Arindam Sil, badmouths
Doel. Thank God for the foul-mouthed humour.
The randomness of the narrative structure is another
irritant. People seem to meet up in street corners very conveniently so that a
certain plot point can be achieved. For instance, the journalist (Rahul
Banerjee) bumping into his ex-wife and her fiancé so that the journo can know
she is going to remarry. Bizarre!
This is the weakest point of Take One, that there is
no natural unfolding of the narrative, no clear continuity. It is episodic in
nature, a put-togetherness that doesn’t go with the story. An episodic
narrative may have its virtues but this story calls for a conventional,
straight storytelling.
The entire effort at intercutting Doel’s travails
with Sita’s from the Ramayana movie appears a waste. Do you really need to underline
the point when it has been spelled out in words at the beginning of the film?
That’s another failure of Take One – its artifice. Shorn
of the forced narrative structure, the Ramayana movie footage and Doel’s
incessant moping, Mainak Bhaumik’s fifth Bengali feature would have made for a
good watch.
The film’s high point is Doel’s (Swastika Mukherjee)
family time with her daughter (real-life daughter Anwesha). There is no
artifice here, so the warm relationship steals your heart. Swastika is also impressive
in her drunken confrontation with the starlet though it is stagey. One still feels
little empathy for Doel because there is almost no backstory to her life.
Rahul Banerjee is convincing in his short screen
time though his role is stereotypical. Arindam Sil provides the humour. Wish
there was more of him.
Mainak does raise a pertinent point – whether an
audience (including media and film industry insiders) has any right at all to judge
an actor/actress who may shatter stereotypes in pursuit of a dream role. Only,
the interesting subject needed a storytelling that would have been a nice fit. Better
luck next time.
For all that, Take One is worth a watch, if only for the mother-daughter scenes and the foul-mouthed humour. It scores a 6 on 10.
