‘Amazon Obhijaan’ Review: Dev and David James in the Swachh Woods

‘Amazon Obhijaan’ is insipid, boring, lethargic and absolutely avoidable just like linking your Aadhar card.

In what is one of the most poignant scenes in Amazon Obhijaan, protagonist Shankar (Dev) tells Marco Florian (David James) that everyone has to die and there is no escaping death (making Shankar more of an insurance agent and less of an explorer as if he is trying to sell an insurance policy) as they look for the lost city of Gold (El Dorado).

This is what forms the story of the biggest Bengali movie ever, Amazon Obhijaan - where the lost fabled city of El Dorado serves as the catalyst. The film features a Bengali explorer in the eye of the storm – probably the first truly globalised Bengali citizen, maybe only after Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Rabindranath Tagore and next only to Suresh Biswas as well as Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.

After the insurance selling tactic, Shankar becomes a sort of conscience keeper to Marco, chiding him if he drinks because of his failed expedition to El Dorado. This is why his daughter, Anna (Svetlana Gulakova), sought the help of Shankar to help her father realise his dreams. Hearing her tale of woe, Shankar decides to help these hapless explorers find this fabled city of Gold because that's what a Bangali babu did, help people, as the world slowly slid into the First World War.

Based on the immortal character created by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, director Kamaleshwar Mukherjee now takes Shankar to South America, after some razzmatazz in Africa, that is not only a sort of homage to the original novel but making Amazon Obhijaan the 100th film of production powerhouse house Shree Venkatesh Films.

Unfortunately, this sequel to Chander Pahar is an incoherent mess and fails to become the messiah of Bengali films that it projected itself to be. From graphic novels to a blitzkrieg promotional event and creating the largest poster for a Bengali film, the makers did it all. But nothing can salvage the wreck as it plays out like a travelogue to the Amazon with a drab narration that probably comes from the director itself.

Helping the alcoholic Marco is not easy and Shankar has to depend on his 'babumoshaigiri' to save the day and finally win Marco's heart. And no, there is no romance between Shankar and Anna, though it is suggested that Anna might have had a developed a soft spot for him. Opinions will be divided here.

Here's a bit of a trivia, David James (who plays Marco) was part of the Oscar-nominated movie District 9 that had taken the world by storm some years ago. You feel it is Bob Christo's ghost who has possessed him while he hams it up. But he can't be blamed because everyone in the movie hams up so much that for a while you can't help but think that it might have been better if it was called Ham Aapke Hain Kaun or Ham Hein Rahi Pyar Ke.

As Shankar and his team start their journey to the mythic land, here are the list of antagonists that they face – vampire bats, jaguars, panthers, colonialism, exploitation of the natives, anacondas, a broken rundown bridge, tarantulas, eels, piranhas, random Spanish gold hunters whose threats sound oddly ominous like the Mandir Wohi Banayenge crowd, and of course, deadly tribes wearing different coloured costumes as if it is the annual sports day in the Amazon basin.

The CGI department is another area where the movie falters just like a mistimed Rohit Sharma shot. The animals might look brilliant in an operating system run by Windows 98, but the abysmal special effects bogs down the narrative as if it promised Acche Din, but delivered demonetisation to your senses.

A lot is expected from the world-building. Director/Writer Kamaleshwar Mukherjee had a plethora of material at his disposal, yet what we get is an insipid and uninspired myth surrounding El Dorado, that one might feel has been copied from the legendary guidebooks published by Chaya Prakashani for the Madhyamik students of West Bengal.

In this holiday season, Amazon Obhijaan should be seen as a 'How to Survive in Amazon' guide to make things better. Even then, Amazon Obhijaan is a huge disappointment as it is a gigantic misstep for the Bengali movie industry that has been suffering creative bankruptcy for a while now and this shows no way out apart from some random muscle-flexing with a meek 'Yes we can!' bonanza.

Yes, the attempt is indeed noble and probably that's the only good thing about the movie, but after you see it, you just might think that North Korea has more chances of successfully conducting a nuclear weapon test again without worrying about the world than Tollywood coming up with a good movie.

The lush, verdant, sensuous Amazon is treated like the location of an item song that things become so generic after a while, you kind of stop worrying about how this movie is going to end. The emotional connect is definitely missing and while the first part had Shankar fighting the Bunyip, this offers a tutorial on how to take revenge on an Anaconda.

The question remains, if there will be a third part and if a third part happens, where will Shanker go. We can make this easy for him. Maybe he can follow the travel itinerary of our globe-trotting Prime Minister and solve this mystery for once and all.

Maybe somewhere down the line, there was a movie hidden in this piece of utterly senseless travesty, and maybe someday someone brave enough will try and find out the secret of it and become true inheritor of the legacy of Shankar.

Watch the Hindi Trailer here:

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