Open Tee Bioscope Retrospective

Open Tee Bioscope

Retrospective



Open Tee Bioscope is a 2015 Bengali movie that has a powerful ending. The end-credits makes most of the audience emotional, just by a single song “Bondhu Chol”. The film was released on January 2015 and is directed by Anindya Chatterjee, who himself is a musician. Open Tee Bioscope uses music and fragments of comedy to take the viewers was back in time into a nostalgic ride of the 90s Kolkata. As all movies do, the first act introduces us to the characters and the setting. Fowara, an adolescent boy comes to a small para of North Kolkata when he is rusticated from school due to bad behaviour. Viewers emphasize with the boy who quickly finds a better life without school with his gang of four. Fowara has fun; falls in love with Titir; gets into funny and serious situations but also slowly get to know his past - truth about his father.
We never see school life, nor his father. We get a rebellious teenager in a para near the banks of Ganga where he feels like outsider at first but manages to make his funtime. But in the second act of ‘confrontation’ he learns that his mother might have relation with a man he disgust. Fowara feels betrayed by his honour-teaching mother He gets out with his trunk. This might have been a very struggling moment for him but the film just shows his anger. He breaks a window of the ugly man. After halftime, an adult Fowara comes back to a rusty section of the metropolitan city. But our young Fowara searches the only thing he most desired - his father. He tries to steal a picture of his father he saw earlier, but gets confronted by Gopeshwar Bhowmick. They fight but quickly bond over football. Fowara loves football, a game extreme popular in the city of Joy. He loves to play as centre forward. Gopeshwar Bhowmick had been a football player with Fowara’s father. Soon enough,  Gopeshwar becomes a father-figure for Fowara. He, however, dives into a love triangle.  The Sports day arrives, a favourite of our childhood memories. We  never look at the foreshadowings. The kids play and Fowara tries to talk his friend, Charan, out of the love triangle issue. Next, we see him playing a tug of war with Charan. He has made friends and now they are in a intense battle.
We have these wonderful moments in our childhood where we feel stick to the people we love but when we grow up / we lose them. We say our we lose our childhood friends when we grow up. That loss is figurative. Open Tee Bioscope makes it literal. Open Tee Bioscope is not just a nostalgic joyride. It tells the audience to remember the friends they lost not because they are dead, but because they’re past.
The tone of the movie changes significantly after this. The comedy has become a tragedy. There is absolute silent moments making the sudden death more painful. Fowara is broken. He blames himself for this. But life goes on. As the poster of the movie says “What goes on, will go on”, Charan’s death does not end everything, rather it is just the beginning. Gopeshwar and co decides to avenge Charan’s death in the bomb through a football match. But how is this justice?
Anyways, Fowara decides at last to play. In these trainings, Fowara and Gopeshwar-da grow as characters. They talk about Fowara’s father’s death and Gopeshwar’s own career loss in one scene. In the other, they sit under the night sky and talk about Fowara’s birth. This is the most praised and lovable scene in the entire movie. Fowara learns that his father died even before his birth and his parents were not even married then. The fact that his life depended upon the one decision his mother took to “keep him alive”, revolves the world around him. He is left speechless and wanted to escape. But Gopeshwar-da tells him to win, to leave with head held high and to live and try to touch the sky. This is the apparent climax of the film. Fowara learns that their parents were not bad people that he told himself, that everything that happend is not his fault, and that he must move on with his life. The big-battle showdown arrives and Fowara leads the team to victory - along with making everything good with his mother and Titir. Fowara choses to find his life somewhere else, to move on. The film wraps everything up with adult Fowara re-visiting the place, failing to take his mother with him, by seeing an adult Titir and remembering the good-old days.

Open Tee Bioscope is a gift to the people of 90s Kolkata and although I am not a 90s Kolkata kid, I can feel the emotion through my heart.

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