via darjelling review

Banner: Moxie Entertainments P Ltd
Producer: Joy Ganguly
Director: Arindam Nandy
Star Cast :Kay Kay Menon, Parvin Dabbas, Prashant Narayanan, Rajat Kapoor, Simone Singh, Sandhya Mridul, Sonali Kulkarni, Vinay Pathak
Singers: Sunidhi Chauhan
Music Director: Prabuddha Banerjee
Background Music: Prabuddha Banerjee
Cinematography: Abhik Mukherjee
Art: Indranil Ghosh
Editor: Arghyakamal Mitra
Screenplay: Arindam Nandy
Sound: Bishwadeep Chatterjee
Dialogue: Atul Sabharwal




The film “Via Darjeeling” says that the people who gossip about a situation and make stories related to any suspicious event, are biased by their own life experiences in making assumptions about a incidents. The film also tries to depict the so called “Addas” culture that was mostly the coffee shops of Kolkatta where friends gathered and gossiped about an incident for hours. Performance of the actors in the film is fine but the audience feels that the end lacked a final note that makes the whole three hour drama fake.

In the famous Bengali “addas” culture the people groups made assumptions for every incident in the city and many times they discussed in a way to distort reality behind an incident. Music of the film is situational and entertaining. The story is similar to Japanese tale Rashomon in which a murder mystery is perceived in four different ways by four individuals.

The story of the film is about Ankur and Rimli, who are honeymooning in Darjeeling. When the couple plans to return back from the place, the husband goes missing and the police man Robin Bose is enquiring about the situation. He is informed by the wife that her husband fought with a taxi driver and a mysterious man was following the couple.

Two years after the incident, the police man talks about the case in front of his group of friends and his friends try to give an outcome to the story.

Rono is a journalist and he says that the mysterious man must be Rimli’s old lover called Bonny and Ankur must have been kidnapped by the taxi driver.

Priti, Rono’s wife speaks in favor of the girl and she says that Rimli must have been pregnant with Bonny’s child and when Ankur comes to knows, he leaves her.

Kaushik , an aspiring filmmaker who’s recently came back from NY , has a filmy kind of story ,he says Bonny (the unidentified man following the couple) must be a contract killer hired by the husband to kill Rimli because Rimli was lone heir to the ancestral property.

Mallika a successful television actress has her own version to the story.

The director doesn’t comes up with a story that ends the suspense and he makes the audience to keep assuming stories .The story starts with a lots of expectation but ends nowhere and that makes the film weak .The cinematography of he film is average. Music matches the script.

Sonial Kulkarni, Kay Kay Menon and Parvin Dabbas perform as per the presumptions in the four stories. Vinay Pathak is brilliant in flashback and current stories. Sandhya Mridul impresses and Rajat Kapoor, Simone Singh and Prashant Narayanan are brilliant in their roles.

The film may be confusing for its concluding part but the performance of actors and the suspense script magnetizes audience. The film will not be a grosser at box –office but will get average collections.

Rating: 5/10