Music is a universal language. It cuts across culture, geography, relationships and language. It can reach out to a mixed audience if it can use the language with imagination and originality. Birsa Dasgupta's maiden directorial film 033, throws up a classic example of this global appeal music has even when presented through cinema.
The ambience is contemporary, upbeat Kolkata with the Howrah Bridge, the Victoria Memorial, the New Market and crowded bylanes that rub shoulders with a shopping mall, a roadside café serving Chinese food, with an aristocratic college harking back to the British, and pubs and bars that pull their shutters down when a bandh is declared.
The language is Bengali, and the story revolves around five musical minded, somewhat eccentric friends who are desperately trying to establish their own Bangla music band they have christened after the pin code of the city they love – 033.
But success eludes them despite the presence of another eccentric mentor, Santiago, (Sabyasachi Chakraborty) whose crowded flat resembles a music museum. The walls are bright red with guitars hanging all over, big Black-and-White posters of the Beatles, a door with the words 'The Fab Four' splashed across, the name of Pink Floyd written on one wall and an aquarium that holds memorabilia instead of fish. He runs a once famous music shop named D-Minor.
Shome, Rudra, Arnab, Voodoo and Ria find a sounding board in Mrinalini, a lost young girl who arrives from Delhi to make her graduation video on the band which till then, banked only on one old hit Rhododendron. Its lyrics have been penned by Shome's father while the music was composed by Santiago. A love-hate relationship evolves between Mrinalini and the band.
But she unwittingly helps them find their identity through music created in the city they love and the city they belong to. Once Mrinalini's shoot is over, the band gets its act together to sing its first hit – thikana-heen badi – the home without an address, an ode to an old structure owned by Shome's grandmother that stands on the corner of two roads but has neither name, nor number.
Music, brilliantly scored by the famous Bangla band Chandrabindoo, is heart-stopping. Srijato's lyrics, from onno kothao cholo to neel alo to thikana-heen bari throb along with the fast-beating hearts of the five members.
The lighting, designed imaginatively, sets in relief the brilliant cinematography by Somak Mukherjee. The lighting and the colours differ in quality, degree and character as the film shifts from Santiago 's room to the streets of Kolkata on a bandh night, to the red-bricked home without the address to the Howrah Bridge and the strobe lights that throw the figures in silhouette.
Music in this film, is like the sun and the five youngsters are the five rays that emerge from this sun, colourful in their prismic light, and the characters – Rudra (Rudraneel) with his black-and-white striped umbrella and his confusion about Lenin and Lennon, Voodoo (Dhruv Mukherjee) with his cool, Shome (Parambrato) depressed about his father’s desertion of the family, Ria (Mumtaz Sorcar) coping with her aggressive identity and her love for Arnab, Arnab with his happy-go-lucky jalopy that matches his mood, are brilliant.
Mrinalini (Swastika Mukherjee) wrapped in a towel is a needless distraction. At times, the youngsters are too obsessed with the bottle to commit themselves to music. And the love between Shome and Mrinalini seem too contrived to ring true. Minor warts apart, 033 is as colourful, shocking and stunning as the city whose postal code it is named after – Kolkata.
Critic: Shoma A Chatterji
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