In his 2004 book In Praise of Slow, journalist Carl Honoré rued the global fetish for speed and advocated a “slow movement”. In the same year, a 19-year-old boy sat coding in his Harvard dorm room, creating a whole different “movement”. Two decades later, Honoré’s worst fears have come true, and Mark Zuckerberg’s little dorm room experiment has consumed our lives. We are racing against the clock, addicted to quick fixes and 15-second Instagram Reels.
Pradipta Bhattacharyya’s latest film, The Slow Man and His Raft or Nadharer Bhela, is a counterpoint to this affliction. Recently premiering at the prestigious International Film Festival Rotterdam, the film marks yet another milestone in Bhattacharyya’s unconventional cinematic journey. Known for his rooted storytelling and nuanced portrayal of rural Bengal, Bhattacharyya has quietly built a distinctive filmography that resists mainstream categorisation. With a film that is as metaphorical as it is visceral, he takes a bold leap into hitherto uncharted territory.
The film follows Nadhar, a man who experiences life at an unhurried, almost surreal pace. His every action – speaking, eating, moving – is significantly slower than the world around him. A struggling circus troupe discovers him and recruits him as an oddity, turning his unique condition into a spectacle. From here, the narrative unfolds, oscillating between dark humour, existential reflection, and an undercurrent of biting social critique.
The Slow Man and His Raft, or Nadharer Bhela.
Characters inhabiting the fringes of society have always fascinated Pradipta. His first feature Bakita Byaktigato (2013), a curious tale of two men in pursuit of a fabled village where love is inevitable, won him a national award and eventually developed a cult following of its own. If Bakita Byaktigato was a blend of surrealism and documentary realism, with Nadharer Bhela he tackles a whole other kind of myth – one that grapples with the contrast between velocity and inertia. “The world around us is obsessed with speed”, Pradipta explains, “we are all in pursuit of something or the other…but what if there’s someone like Nadhar, who refuses to conform to that?” Nadhar moves to his own rhythm, untouched by the mad rush around him. When the expanse of Bengali cinema is dominated by stereotypical imagery and storytelling, his work stands apart, blending folklore, contemporary struggles, and an unmistakably local aesthetic.
The film boasts a striking visual palette, which is intentional. The circus sequences burst with garish hues – deep reds, greens, and yellows – while Nadhar’s home is muted and earthy. “The contrast is deliberate,” says Bhattacharyya. “A circus is organically a world with vibrant colours, a manufactured spectacle. Nadhar, despite his slowness, is the most authentic thing in it.”
A still from Pradipta Bhattacharyya’s film, The Slow Man and His Raft, or Nadharer Bhela.
This authenticity extends to the film’s music, composed by Satyaki Banerjee. The score subtly underscores the film’s pacing, often mirroring Nadhar’s languid movements. The music also played a crucial role in shaping Amit Saha’s performance as Nadhar.. “Sometimes, music helps me find my characters. I can’t explain how, but it does,” Amit notes.
Ritwick Chakraborty, a star-actor in his own right, also one of the co-producers on the film, was drawn to the script’s raw energy, and the role of Haru, the circus boss. “Haru is unlike anything I have played before. When I read the script, I knew I had to do that role”, he says.
The three-hour-long film was shot over 13 consecutive days on the banks of Jalangi river at Tehatta, Nadia. The immersive set, featuring makeshift circus tents and communal living spaces, blurred the lines between performance and reality. “The village folk didn’t just look at us from a distance; they became part of the film,” Bhattacharyya recalls. The process was gruelling – shot in peak summer, with long single takes that demanded precision and stamina from the cast, which included a popular star like Priyanka Sarkar, who was working with Pradipta for the first time. Amit Saha’s performance as Nadhar is sure to earn rave reviews. Both Ritwick and Amit have been long term collaborators of Pradipta.
A still from Pradipta Bhattacharyya’s film, The Slow Man and His Raft, or Nadharer Bhela.
Bengali cinema is currently going through one of its worst crises in recent memory. Once the hotbed for auteurs and masters revered the world over, the industry is struggling to find an audience beyond a handful of multiplex offerings. The phrase “Bangla cinemar pashe daran (stand with Bengali cinema)” is routinely bandied about on social media. But even the leading streamers shy away from Bengali films.
Recently, while speaking to an interviewer in Kolkata, filmmaker Anurag Kashyap called Bengali cinema “ghatiya” (third-rate), which offended many in the industry. While he may have been justified referring to the steep fall in cinematic standards since its glory days, the comment perhaps reductive and simplistic. But the point is made.
As Bhattacharyya points out, “Good films still get made, but either they don’t reach the audiences or the audiences don’t reach out to them.” Distribution is a big problem for independent voices like Pradipta, Indranil Roychowdhury, Aditya Vikram Sengupta and their ilk. Besides Nadharer Bhela, two other films have made it to Rotterdam: Putulnacher Itikatha (The Puppet’s Tale) and Morichika (Mirage). There are other films that have been to Locarno and other festivals. How many of these films will be seen in the theatres is anybody’s guess. Streamers are also to share part of the blame – what they offer independent filmmakers often doesn’t even cover their production costs. Bengali mainstream media, for its part, has done precious little to support alternative cinema and its makers.
One of the other issues that plagues the industry is a certain kind of intellectual impoverishment. Bengalis as a people have been obsessing so much over the legacy of legends like Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen that they stopped believing that they could create anything new or equally compelling. Contemporary cinema is rife with references to the works of these people, without adding anything substantial.
A still from Satyajit Ray’s ‘Pather Panchali’.
The latest trend is of making mainstream biopics on these filmmakers. In a similar vein, Tagore is celebrated almost as a god, but this constant looking back has killed the musical ingenuity of many Bengalis. Every other film needs to have a Rabindrasangeet (songs composed by Tagore) or one of his poems.
There is no fictional detective in the pantheon of Bengali literature that hasn’t been adapted ad nauseam, turning it into a tired cliché. The primary target audience seems to be the multiplex-going bhadralok, resulting in an output that’s largely homogenous, alienating the lower middle-class, often unable to afford multiplex entertainment anyway. These stereotypical notions draw once-faithful Bengali audiences away from such films, into the waiting arms of digital and OTT platforms.
But in all the doom and gloom, Pradipta Bhattacharyya remains optimistic. “I am not looking for solutions. I make the kind of films I want to, with the people who believe in them. We will find a way to bring them to the audience.” In a landscape where filmmakers often bow to industry norms and market dynamics, Bhattacharyya’s commitment to his craft is refreshing. The Slow Man and His Raft is not just an experiment in form and storytelling – it is a declaration of intent. It signals that independent Bengali cinema, much like its sluggish protagonist, refuses to be rushed. And perhaps that’s where lies its greatest strength.
Amborish Roychoudhury is a national award-winning writer and film historian
Udayan Ghosh is a writer, poet and filmmaker who writes in Bengali under the nome de plume
Udayan Ghosh Chowdhury
