AMAR BOSS – BASED ON AN UNREAL PREMISE

Why must a filmmaker always, but always have a social agenda in his/her film? It is okay if it blends into the narrative seamlessly. But it is not okay when it appears to have been thrust in the climax somewhat forcefully and one begins to feel that it does not quite belong. Sometimes, the agenda itself is the film like Laapata Ladies but there too, we find heavy doses of entertainment. But, for any Shobiprosad-Nandita film, the houseful audience does not stop cheering so it is just the right box office magic for the urban Bengali middle-class. And the dosage of ‘medicine’ is just right for the box office takings. Amar Boss is no exception, but….

Shiboprosad Mukherjee and Nandita Roy, partners as directors and co-writers bringing out mainstream hits one after the other, are among the foremost and most successful filmmakers in contemporary Bengali cinema. Through the two films Raktabeej and Bohurupee, they also went on to prove that they can bring out wonderful celluloid productions minus a social agenda. Perhaps this is traced back to the fact that these two films were inspired by real life stories. Added to this is that these two films did not have a loud and exaggerated climax often tending to melodrama which happens to be their trade mark.

In some films such as Haami, the social agenda worked quite well barring the child abuse accusation on a fourth grade employee (picked from a newspaper report) which turned out to be false. But the rest of the film exploring ‘adult’ questions raised by very young kids brought across hilarious results that were also a lesson for the parents in the audience.

The very idea behind making Amar Boss, that throws up a new perspective on the mother-son relationship, seems to have been triggered with the sole aim of bringing back the yesteryear lead actress Rakhi in a role befitting her mellow age and also, to bring to the audience a flavor of Bollywood in an indirect way in a Bengali film. So far, so good. But is the story strong enough to hold a mother-son script together for more than two hours of screening time? Let us go a little deeper into Amar Boss.

Shubhra Goswami (Rakhi Gulzar) lives in a spacious apartment in Kolkata with her son Animesh Goswami (Shiboprosad Mukherjee). Animesh is having serious problems with his highly ambitious wife Moushumi (Srabanti Chatterjee) who has flown off to Mumbai as head of a satellite channel. She has filed for divorce but Animesh is not ready, yet. The mother-son camaraderie goes on with the usual hiccups till Shubhra suggests she join her son’s flourishing publishing firm as an intern! For a book publishing concern with ever-expanding territories, Goswami runs the office with a rather skeletal staff comprised mainly of pretty young damsels and very few men with problems of their own. He is more surprised than angry at his mother joining the firm as an ‘intern.’ But he is too good a son to question her. She has been a trained nurse in her heyday so what kind of ‘intern’ will she be in a big publishing concern? No one explains.

With her talent for making friends easily, the elderly Mrs. Goswami soon becomes very friendly with the entire staff including the canteen personnel on the terrace of the office building where the staff repairs for lunch. Her friendliness with the staff enlightens her about some of the personal problems they face on the home-front mainly to do with the elderly in the family. Lo and Behold! Mrs. Goswami takes charge of the ground floor when the son is on tour and without his permission, transforms it into a day-care centre for the elderly parents and in-laws of the staff.

Animesh returns and is shocked at the sudden change in plans he had already finalized with an international partner/client for use of the ground floor. But Mrs. Goswami with the help of the staff who address her as “maa” goes about trying to raise loans to be able to continue with her entrepreneurship and fails miserably to raise bank loans, to get financiers or sponsors for her ambitious project which is more a social commitment than a profit-promising business enterprise.

Then, abracadabra! Like most of the Mukherjee-Roy partnership films, magic happens when the day care centre makes it to the finals of a big-time contest for start-ups where the day-care centre runs away with a special prize. Even the ambitious Moushumi chucks up her channel job and comes back to her husband. And they all live happily ever after.

Rakhi Gulzar, in fact, is wonderful as the mellow, dignified yet confident Mrs. Goswami. This is quite a surprise because I never considered her a great actress in her heyday though she managed to cover her lack of talent with her beauty and her screen presence. She graduated to mother roles all too soon in Karan-Arjun and then disappeared into nowhere after her career-best performance in Ramesh Sippy’s Shakti where she portrayed Bachchan’s mother and Dilip Kumar’s wife, torn between her love for her son and her loyalty towards her husband.

In Amar Boss however, she runs away with the cake, the frosting and the cherry on top. Without an inch of make-up, she carries herself with the dignity the character demands and is good to the career-minded daughter-in-law as well. Shiboprosad as the son looks a bit too young, raw and immature for the huge industry he runs with an iron hand and chucks off a staffer without warning. At least a few ageing lines on his face and some grey in his hair would have suited him fine. But he is a wonderful actor as this film underscores.

The female employees have their own home problems they share with their favourite “Maa”. It is all too sweet and sugar syrupy. One beauty played by Souraseni Mitra is very good and natural. She has the sweet eye for Barin Bagchi (Gourav Chatterjee), a colleague, while the other pregnant lady is good too though she remains pregnant for the entire duration of the film. The cameo characters, both men and women, enrich the film with their natural performances. Once the day-care centre is in full sway, we discover the brilliant Sabitri Chatterjee step in to regale the audience with her antics and her run-ins with another senior citizen played by Rajat Ganguly who happens to be Barin’s father. This part has some hilarious scenes that tend to take away the syrupy sweetness from the rest of the film. But these are too brief to bring about any diabolic change in this ‘too-happy-to-be-true’ drama.

Prabuddha Banerjee has given us much better compositions in the past than he has done for Amar Boss. But Anupam Roy’s numbers are both melodious and meaningful. Since a major slice of the film has been shot indoors without much location shooting, the production designer hardly faced any challenges to his creativity. Likewise for the cinematographer.

For those who are quite familiar with the cinema of Shiboprosad and Nandita, Amar Boss, apart from the surprise package of Rakhi, is a bit on the mediocre side. But for the mass audience, the counters at the box office will continue to jingle, happily ever after.

*****