Khadaan: Dev’s come back to mass genre challenges the big sharks at Bengal’s box office but fails to challenge the existing structure of the genre.

The financial health of Bengali cinema has been in the ICU since post-Covid. There is a lot of chatter for Bengali mass films for the revival of single screens and pump oxygen in the ailing industry. Tollywood’s 2024 slate has seen many mainstream films: Pariah, Sentimental, and Mirza, etc. But none of the films managed to garner decent footfalls. In contrast, Bengal’s theatres experienced a huge number of footfalls for Bollywood and South Indian films. The commerce of the Bengali film industry finds itself engulfed by goons like in commercial films, and now it needs a messiah to save them.

Dev with Khadaan is that messiah who saves the drowning finance of the Bengali film industry, giving tough competition to the biggies like Pushpa: The Rule and Baby John. Before plunging deep into the movie, it is important to concede the courage of the team Khadaan for pulling off a mass-genre film at a time when the genre is lost. Also, the on-ground promotion that the entire team travelled from South Bengal to North Bengal surfing through many small cities and towns. An endeavour to bring back the lost audience to the theatres – this effort deserves applause and appreciation.

But Khadaan fails to challenge the existing structure of a South Indian mass film. Before the release of the film, social media critics started to compare the film with KGF and Pushpa from its visuals. There is no iota of doubt in saying Khadaan draws inspiration from South Indian mass films – but it is not in the visuals, it is in the screenplay. There is no breathing space for the characters in the film. Khadaan has a lot of characters in the film, and in a way all the characters are important, barring the female characters. The screenplay has a lot of jumps and doesn’t allow the characters to develop. In one scene, Shyam and Mohan go to meet the tribal leader – Mandi – to fix their argument regarding the ownership of the land. The right and ownership of tribal land is a real and political issue. And for tribals, it’s a long tussle to claim back their ownership. However, in Khadaan, the tribal leader Mandi depicts his resistance at the onset but agrees with Shyam and Mohan by the end of the scene. The depth and the political tussle of tribal land issues find a resolution within some minutes.

Bengali films largely have also failed to depict a Muslim character. I don’t understand if the Tolly Federation acknowledges the existence of Bengali Muslims in India. The character of Shehzad Siddique played by Sujan Neel Mukherjee is a Muslim local MLA who speaks in half-Bengali and half-Hindi. If Shehzad is an outsider to West Bengal and his ancestors migrated to West Bengal for a better life, it is obvious that he can speak decent Bengali.  Then why is he speaking in broken Bengali and broken Hindi? And especially why is Shehzad speaking in broken Hindi and Bengali with Shyam and Mohan? Shehzad can either speak in Hindi or in Bengali with the two Bengali characters: Shyam and Mohan. The persistent "Urdufication" of Muslim characters in Bengali films needs to be re-evaluated for more authentic and nuanced portrayals.

Khadaan also introduces a working class and lower caste protagonist in a Bengali film — something rarely seen in recent memory. It’s hard to recall the last time a protagonist emerged from the very bottom of society. One of the most fascinating aspects of Khadaan is the use of regional Bengali dialects in the characters’ dialogue. In the Puja blockbuster Bohurupi, the characters were also seen speaking in a distinct Bengali dialect. This is refreshing, as most Bengali films are Kolkata-centric, with characters often speaking in a uniform, city-based dialect. However, the female characters are written awfully. Crafting strong and multidimensional female characters is a challenging task for any commercial film writer, it is essential to avoid reducing women characters to mere showpieces. Unfortunately, all the female characters in Khadaan hardly had any worthy stake in the film, leaving their presence largely unimpactful.

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