5 Reasons to Watch ‘Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!’

Here’s why expectations from ‘Detective Byomkesh Bakshy’ are sky high

The anticipation levels for director Dibakar Banerjee’s Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! are through the roof. Banerjee has a distinct filmmaking style that separates itself from every single other filmmaker in the industry. What really stands out is that he jumps into new territory with every film, lending the finished product his own unique voice. Byomkesh, from the looks of it seems like an amalgamation of all of his previous work, so let’s take a look:

Khosla Ka Ghosla

At a time when the comedy genre in India had descended to the likes of Anees Bazmee, Khosla turned out to be a breath of fresh air. It sort of subverted the comedic tropes of Bollywood and rendered not a loud, but an ‘evolving black comedy’ nature of gags, coupled with themes of irony, and a gentle reminder of how bad the ‘system’ is.

Oye Lucky Lucky Oye

Banerjee’s sophomore effort was an escapist commercial film with something that is still sorely lacking in the genre - a gigantic heart. Whether it was the lovely flashback of the thieving protagonist or the triple role of Paresh Rawal, Oye Lucky remained grounded when it so easily could have gone over the top. Not to mention the bravely muted finale when you most expect a huge climax. It once again established the fact that Banerjee would hold on to the arthouse style and deign tell a story using the usual Bollywood formula.

Love Sex Aur Dhokha

An out of the box experience in terms for both filmmaking and viewing, LSD challenged the whole market of the industry. Banerjee combined Anthology and Found Footage genres when both had seldom been done in India before. He also shot the film digitally, and the resulting product was a laboratory experiment to see how much you can push the limits of a desi filmmaking. What actually made it special was that the new technology and filmmaking style was bookended with biting social commentary and the disquieting ambience of something sinister about to happen.

Shanghai

A thriller with a political backbone, Shanghai felt like one of the films within the LSD canon. It was a tense and uncommonly adventurous thriller with strong performances and direction. It’s Banerjee’s most polarizing film because on one hand it didn’t make any new political statement but on the other it made a fairly simple story look more complex than it actually is. The latter was achieved with some serious detailing and atmosphere so strong you could smell the milieu. It felt like Banerjee somehow injected a carefully calibrated sense of discomfort for a sustained viewing experience.

Star (Bombay Talkies)

Star delivered the overdone struggler story with tremendous effect thanks to its abstract style, richness in theme and the balls to examine the identity of a human being. Casting Nawaz as the out of work actor was as meta as one could go, and the lingering existentialist vibe anchored by a ghostly Sadashiv Amrapurkar cameo made the other segments in Bombay Talkies look pretty mediocre. The stench of alienation has seldom been captured so well in Indian cinema.