Sonar Kella (1974)
Cast: Soumitra Chatterjee, Santanu Bagchi, Ajoy Banerjee
Director: Satyajit Ray
Country: India
Genre: Adventure | Family
Official Site: Here
Editor’s Notes: The following review is part of our coverage for TIFF’s The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray. For more information on upcoming TIFF film series visit http://tiff.net and follow TIFF on Twitter at @TIFF_NET.
The first of two films (the second being Joi Baba Felunath, reviewed here) directed by Satyajit Ray that follow his own Sherlock Holmes’esque literary creations, detective Feluda and his companions Topshe and Jatayu, Sonar Kella is filled with mystery and intrigue accessible to all ages as it travels through ancient cities and the ruins of bygone eras. Feluda is instantly likeable and skilled in the educated crapshoot of fancy adductive reasoning that only works in fictional detective stories. Soumitra Chatterjee plays the role of Feluda with his usual charm and easy smile that conceal the master detective as he travels across India on a quest to find the elusive golden fort of a boy’s enigmatic dreams.
Soumitra Chatterjee plays the role of Feluda with his usual charm and easy smile that conceal the master detective as he travels across India on a quest to find the elusive golden fort of a boy’s enigmatic dreams.
A young boy named Mukul has been having dreams, seemingly from a past life, and his drawings of exotic places and animals combined with recent personality changes have been cause for alarm for his parents. After an ill-advised newspaper article that gives potential criminals Mukul’s photograph and approximate whereabouts, Feluda is called in to exercise his parapsychology and super sleuthing abilities. Feluda and company board a train as a slow tracking shot reveals the happenings of each car as a pair of Hitchcock’ian antagonists unpack luggage in preparation for their evil schemes. The pair of criminals pass the time with a game of Snakes and Ladders, a timeless childhood game of easily digested morality lessons, as one drinks water and the other hard liquor that they would unsuccessfully attempt to convince Mukul to try.
In the fifth Satyajit Ray film to implement color photography, veteran Ray cinematographer Soumendu Roy is as outstanding as ever in this pulp detective novel turned film.
In the fifth Satyajit Ray film to implement color photography, veteran Ray cinematographer Soumendu Roy is as outstanding as ever in this pulp detective novel turned film. He tracks through the golden sands surrounding Rajasthan to create a sense of an isolated and ancient city wedged in the desert like a boomtown in a John Ford western. Roy catches subtle motion from inside a train car as it rumbles through the desert, watching the landscape fly by the windows like a bumpy stagecoach ride through Monument Valley. Sequences that take place from a child’s perspective cuts the heads off of adults, both showing us the world from the four feet off the ground and concealing the identities of criminals in subtle filmmaking touches that add dimension to this unassuming detective story.
Sonar Kella takes us through exotic locales as the affable detective Feluda and his companions attempt to unravel the mysteries of Mukul’s possible past life and secret riches. Despite the occasional bouts of narrative ambiguity, its easily accessible mysteries and casual whimsy make it a film for all ages, while its breathtaking visuals and cinematic astuteness ensure that it will forever hold a high place among the boundlessly diverse films of Satyajit Ray.
Despite the occasional bouts of narrative ambiguity, its easily accessible mysteries and casual whimsy make it a film for all ages, while its breathtaking visuals and cinematic astuteness ensure that it will forever hold a high place among the boundlessly diverse films of Satyajit Ray.
