The craziness of fans for their idols is a well-known reality. But making films focussed on crazy fans is not. Sudeshna Roy and Abhijit Guha have made a film based on a crazy fan of singer Manna Dey. Pagol Tomar Jonne Je is a strikingly original way of putting cinematic ingenuity to work.
Pagol Tomaar Jonne Je follows the antics of man whose whole life revolves around the famous singer Manna Dey. It combines the tragedy of a wife whose husband is fonder of his idol than of his family. Two of his office colleagues boost him up while the third tries to poke fun at him in different ways. The film traces the man’s journey towards his only goal, to meet his hero. He is a bumbling clerk who makes no secret of his adoration for the great singer. His wife does not like it but tries to adjust by holding the family together. He chose her over more prospective young girls because her name is Lolita, a name that occurs in one of the biggest hits of Manna Dey. His daughter’s name is Chameli, another name from a very popular duet with Manna Dey as the male voice. His living room is choc-a-bloc with Manna Dey paraphernalia such as photographs, gramophone records, audiocassettes, albums, CDs - the works. There is a chair that is sacrosanct and no one is allowed to sit on it. Why? The flashback tells it all.

Technical Expertise
Bishu Chakrabarty, one of the two producers of the film (the other being Indra Kumar Ghosh) is very close to singer Manna Dey in real life. Chakraborty’s close association with the singer is incorporated into the film and is repeated ad infinitum. The directors seem to have hit on a brainwave to make this film based on Chakraborty’s association with the great singer. The story and script have been built around the fan, true. But it has also capitalised on the singer’s frequent visits to the city to capture him on camera. This is the film’s chief drawback. Firstly, because Manna Dey’s brief appearances in the film carve him out as a larger-than-life figure, not only as a singer par excellence but also as a sensitive and caring human being, the latter having nothing to do with a fan being crazy about his idol. One scene shows Dey cooking for children suffering from cerebral palsy. Another scene shows him chatting up youngsters at Kolkata’s famous Coffee House. Neither of these scenes rings true. But his presiding over an audio-release of S.D. Burman’s old hits is convincing. Secondly, Manna Dey’s omnipresence in the film through the growth, evolution, life, lifestyle and family of the protagonist is so strong and all-pervasive that his physical presence dilutes the spirit of hero-worship. Thirdly, Manna Dey as himself does little justice to the film. If Roy and Guha had greater imagination coupled with a better command over cinema, they could have achieved excellent results by keeping the real Manna Dey totally out of the film’s cinematographic frame.
What holds the film together is Kharaj Bandopadhyay’s brilliant performance as the star-crazy hero of the film. His under-exploited talent as an actor and singer are brought into full play in this film. The directors have tried to handle the story with a light touch but somehow seem to lose control towards the end. Paran Bandopadhyay, Shantilal Mukherjee and Moumita Chakrabarty have done well. The Bangla Telefilm Club, the only one of its kind in the country, held a screening the film at Sujata Sadan to a packed theatre recently.
Verdict
One star for Kharaj’s performance and one for the comic element.