The Bong Connection: Bong As A Four Letter Word %$#@ review

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An authentic bong review of The Bong Connection from Aniruddha Basu.

The Bong Connection is a fine example of a flawed movie which has something interesting to say. Its premise and some of the characterization and certainly the climax are very interesting. But the rest of the film is a rambling, repetitive and predictable essay focusing on the now familiar themes of alienation and confused identity that have become typical of any movie portraying the Indian diaspora.Only this time the novelty lies in the fact that its not the Indian diaspora but the Bengali or “Bong” diaspora. Now as a Bengali I must admit that any movie theorizing on the plight of young and idealistic Bengalees coping with the insensitive modern society has to have a certain charm. And yet the film manages to make the charm itself the defect.The story focuses on two Bengali youths, one is Andy, a New Yorker coming to Kolkata for the first time to pursue his passion of fusion music, certain that Kolkata is the only city that can give his creativity the scope to bloom. The other is Apu a Kolkata-based software engineer, chasing the American dream by traveling to the states for a high pressure white collar job.

Shyam Munshi plays the first character as a hip but alienated youth who gets a rude shock when he realizes that the city of joy may not hold all the promises he dreamt of. Apu is played by a relatively unknown actor as a fumbling young Bhadralok who gets an equally tough time in Texas, trying to cope with his gay roommate, a rich but confused young girl and his racist, and his racist, homophobic Indian boss Gary (Victor Bannerjee).

It is both a strength as well as the weakness of the film that the peripheral characters are more interesting than the two protagonists, who are pretty one dimensional. Andy puts up in his ancestral bungalow in Kolkata, run by his uncle and his wayward unemployed buffoon of a son, who also happens to be an alcoholic and an abusive husband. While certainly not a charming character, elder cousin is indeed a very amusing one. In one scene when Andy asks him, Dada how do you spend the whole day doing nothing? Don’t you get bored?, he replies “Initially it was a bit boring, but soon you get used to it!”.

Equally interesting is the uncle whom his son refers to as a “glorified clerk” who works as a sales manager in a British Firm taken over by the Marwaris; a community that the uncle habitually looked down upon, but whom he must now defer to and even suffer the occasional humiliation just to feed his family.

Apu for his part has an equally interesting boss in Gary, who clearly likes Apu and advises him to stay away from “blacks and homosexuals, they mean trouble”! The rich girl he falls in love with in Texas is also a complicated one, hiding a bruised and sensitive soul beneath her frivolous exterior.

There is however lots that is wrong with the movie. A subplot involving a Bangladeshi taxidriver leads absolutely nowhere and manages to end on a very melodramatic and artificial note. All the bongs in the west are portrayed as lost spirits longing for Kolkata , drowning their sorrows in alcohol, fish and Rabindra Sangeet. And even more unfairly depicted as a community who have done nothing for either their native land or their new home except get drunk and whine. The term Bong is hurled around like a four letter word in the movie, initially amusingly, but gradually irritatingly, signifying mainly apathy, sloppiness and an unwillingness to change with the times.

Its not just US which is the Paradise lost. Kolkata too despite being gorgeously photographed is mainly portrayed as a land of lost opportunities typified by a number of middle-aged and elderly folk who do no work but drink and smoke and dine and sleep!

If that is the director’s opinion then fine, so be it..but the problems with the Bong Connection don’t end there. As I mentioned earlier both the protagonists are very one note. Apu ends up being an exaggerated version of the Bhadralok stereotype, without any distinguishing aspects to his character. Munshi’s Andy has a sulken and bewildered look on his face most of the movie and his budding relationship with Apu’s girlfriend (played by Raima Sen) also seems contrived and a little boring. There is a pathetic song and dance sequence right in the middle of the film that seems more like an insult than a tribute to Rabindranath Tagore. And Apu’s exploits in the West are mildly amusing at best, but mostly boring and predictable. We all know for example how the subplot with the Bangladeshi driver would end, even as it barely begun!

Most unfortunately, the filmmakers for some incomprehensible reason, decide to completely waste one of Bengal’s greatest actors Soumitra Chatterji, by keeping him bedridden and giving him no dialogue. Soumitra plays Munshi’s grandfather as more a symbol of all that was right with erstwhile Bengal than an actual character and that in my opinion is a fundamental weakness of the movie that we learn nothing about his character at all!

But the biggest problem with the Bong Connection is that it gets too ambitious. It tries to be a critique of Bangladeshi diaspora, a musical, a satire, a social commentary on modern Kolkata and a tribute to Satyajit Ray and Tagore, all at once! Yes the film has all this and more and a few of the isolated scenes even work, but together they seem disjointed and illogical. As we know too many cooks spoil the broth..

Having said that the dual climax of the film is pretty strong and certainly the best part of the film. Without giving away too much lets just say that both Apu and Munshi come of age in scenes of confrontation with their respective father figures (Gary for Apu, his uncle for Andy). The scene between Andy and his uncle is especially effective and almost worth the price of a ticket!