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[SIZE="4"]DDR Presents[/SIZE]
[COLOR="NAVY"][SIZE="5"]Agantuk - The Stranger (1991)[/SIZE]
[SIZE="3"](A film by Satyajit Ray)[/COLOR]
Bengali with English Subtitles[/SIZE]
[SIZE="4"][COLOR="DARKRED"]Ripped from the Eclipse Series -40 DVD (Criterion Collection)[/COLOR][/SIZE]
[COLOR="DARKGREEN"][SIZE="5"]DVD Rip - 1048 MB - x.264/mkv - AAC (Monoaural)[/color] [/size]
 
 
 
 
[COLOR="DARKGREEN"]The pictures are Thumbnails. Please click to see in original size.
Please Read Uploader's Notes Below[/color]
[COLOR="DARKRED"][SIZE="4"]Tech Specifications: [/SIZE][/COLOR]
[COLOR="DARKRED"][SIZE="4"]Synopsis: [/SIZE][/COLOR]
[SIZE="3"]Sudhin Bose (Dipankar Dey), his wife Anila (Mamata Shankar) and their little son Satyaki/Bablu (Bikram Bhattacharya) are an affluent middle class family. They are planning a holiday during the autumn/puja holidays, when Anila suddenly receives a letter from her long lost uncle (mother's brother) Manmohan (Utpal Dutt) stating that he had arrived in India and would come and stay with them for a week. Anila has never seen Manmohan and he has not been in touch with anyone since ages. Is the man an impostor then? When Manmohan arrives he tells them that he understands their unease, but his familiarity with the ways of Bengalis, despite his long absence, deepens her and Sudhin's suspicions. Not so with young Bablu and his friends, whose uncritical minds help them strike up an immediate chord with a man who as Bablu says, "may or may not be his grandfather".
Sudhin and Anila find out that the real Manmohan would be heir to a considerable sum of money. That increases their doubts about the motives of the man claiiming to be Manmohan. They enlist the help of their friends who cross-question Manmohan and then one of them, Prithwish, unable to break Manmohan's defence, loses his temper and commits a cardinal sin - He tells Manmohan to prove his identity or clear out of the house - something against all tradition of treating a guest with respect.
Next morning Manimohan is gone. The couple are driven with remorse at their behaviour. For, after all, the old man had just wanted to spend a week with them and nothing else. They try to find out where he had gone, hoping to bring him back. Will they be able to?..
[COLOR="DARKRED"][SIZE="4"]Comments: [/SIZE][/COLOR]
Agantuk has had very different reviews from different people. Some have found it very slow. Others have felt that the movie is short on theme, plot and pace. Yet others have been critical of the simplifications that Ray seems to revel in.... there is nothing remotely magical about a solar eclipse for example. Yet others have questioned if this can be called a swan song at all, because the so called profundity is actually quite shallow.. Yet others have called it his greatest film. They have been charmed by its philosohical discourse and the format of debate and discussion. They see it as a summation of his decades of humanism.
I see it somewhat differently. I see it as a film in which Ray is nostalgic about the ethics, the simplicity of life and the relationships he grew up with. He is stating that the inclusiveness of relationships in the past need to be rekindled and modern society is the poorer for the lack of it. True, the long sessions of repartee with its ironical humour - very typically "bhadralok" kind of "adda" would pall on some viewers looking for things to move on. But that was also Ray's main theme... what moves on are the peripheral elements. The deeper undercurrent of culture remains and must be preserved. It is indeed a film in which Ray expounds his world view, for, Ray knew that the end of his creative life was near (He died less than a year after this film was released and was increasingly finding it difficult to keep pace with the rigours of filmmaking). He could have made his point though a series of incidents, but obviously ill health prevented that and so, unlike in a "Pratidwandi" or a "Seemabaddha" chose the format of the drawing room discussion.And perhaps also because it is a film on philosophy, Ray chose the method of discourse rather than conflict as his medium of expression.
And remember, the beautiful last sequence through which Manmohan draws attention to our cultural roots is shot in Shantiniketan. In a sense Ray is taking us back to his roots too... Santiniketan is where it all started for him. He brings his own tale to a full circle.
Is it Ray's greatest film? I would hesitate to say so. I don't for example find the underlying philosophy very convincing. Ray seems to have reverted back to a world that really did not exist even in his youth. I also think that Ray wasn't too clear about what he wanted to say. He just shot sequences on a broad theme and then stitched them together. The film lacks the incisiveness of theme that we have been accustomed to in a Ray film.
But one of the best features of the film usually goes unnoticed. That is the music. At times playful and at others brooding and dark it combines so well with the narrative of the film that you never seem to notice its presence. Technically, camera work of Barun Raha is competent and not flashy.
Maybe not Ray at his best, but still a great film..
[COLOR="DARKRED"][SIZE="4"]Uploader's Notes: [/SIZE][/COLOR]
We must thank Criterion/Eclipse for bringing out this DVD. I hope they will, in time, bring out all of Rays's work in the highest of quality. Nevertheless, I was surprised at the high color saturation in the DVD. The rip tries to correct that. It also tries to enhance detail a bit. Except for these two attempts at rectification, both small, the quality of the rip matches that of the DVD and sometimes surpasses it.
[COLOR="DARKRED"][SIZE="4"]IMDB Link: [/SIZE][/COLOR]
Agantuk (1991) - IMDb
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[COLOR="DARKRED"][SIZE="4"]Sample (2min):Download from here [/SIZE][/COLOR]
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