Uttara (2000) User Reviews

Oil Painting or moving picture?

[Havan_IronOak · 7/10 · 20 April 2002]

I recently saw this film at the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival and enjoyed it but the casual viewer should be warned... Watching a film of this type is very different from watching a common film. Here the plot and the characters develop slowly. There is plenty of fodder for introspection. Like life, there are also parts that you may never fully understand.

Overall the film is fascinating and I was drawn into it as much out of a sense of wonder, as out of the hope that it would start making sense. By the end parts do make sense and some parts don't but I wouldn't cut any of it.

One of the best Indian films of the last 20 years

[PimpinAinttEasy · 7/10 · 20 December 2013]

This was a heartbreaking film in many ways. It does focus on too many things and this is a bit of an irritation. They should have focused mainly on the triangle between Balram, Nemai and Uttara. But this film gives us some insight into the psyche of the Indian male.

Two railroad employees who spend their spare time wrestling in an idyllic, sparsely populated and seemingly womanlesss Bengali village share an intense emotional and physical bond. Like Hemingway said men bond in nature without women (not his exact words!). The arrival of a woman when one of the men gets married shatters the bond between the two men.

There are other narratives in the film which entwine with the main narrative of the triangle towards the end. It is not handled very well but the final scenes when the two jealousy driven men are fighting to the death and the woman cries to them to stop is pretty heartbreaking.

The film comes across as authentic but the focus on too many narratives does take away a bit from what is otherwise a pretty fine film.

A beautifully filmed movie with only a few flaws

[meitschi · 5 August 2001]

I was very sad when I read the Dutch commenter's note on the film. I think, you should not have waited for a film that handles the story the same way as an American (or even a European) film would do. Here, you have to discover the situation and get involved before the story actually starts. I don't think at all that this film was amateurish in technical matters - in fact, it had the most beautiful cinematography I have seen in years! (Check out the scene with the burning church, for example.) I liked it and never got bored at all. I saw it on an afternoon in a movie theater in Paris. Of course, there were few people, but nobody left before the ending. Maybe this should not be watched by people who just watch "exotic" films out of snobism, but by those who want to discover something. The only point I didn't like about 'Uttara' was its didactic approach at the end, where the 'dwarf' explains to Uttara what the film is all about. But otherwise I found the film fascinating, beautifully filmed, and interesting. I absolutely recommend it to anyone interested in Asian cinema.

Poetic

[eldiez4ever · 10/10 · 22 June 2008]

I found this movie absolutely arresting and poetic. The shots were beautiful and the characters serene. The dialect was so well orated by the actors. Tapas Paul is such a good actor. And its brave of him to experiment with such artsy films despite his urban star status.

Being away from my own home, I can relate to the importance of letters which later became phone calls and now emails.

Dasgupta is a class act and I love the way he picturizes his films and tells his stories. Its so beautiful and there is so much depth into the stories.

I wish to see more such films from our contemporary Bengali filmmakers because we are not really only pop culture.

Granted it could be slow for people who are used to the commercial cinema and Bollywood but this is a must see for all art lovers.

Another great film from a not so popular Indian Director

[The_Murdoc · 10/10 · 15 March 2008]

Buddhadev Dasgupta is among the very few who don't love publicity at all..........But that is certainly a drawback for this wonderful talent from Bengal.

Most art film directors in Bengal have to work with instruments of prehistoric age due to insufficient fund age so that is reflected on the movie experience. BUT....look at the camera angles...look how each character is placed...moving..entering into the camera view.....especially the frequent insertion of many great Bengali folk songs...and the characters entering into the scene singing...

Wonderful acting....Wonderful folk songs....and an artistic building of story line...this movie is great if you love art film.

Indian filmmakers, it's time you grow up.

[ivomartijn · 2/10 · 26 January 2001]

Well, I guess they like it in India. If this is the elite standard of Indian cinema, it doesn't surprise me that Indian movies never really make it to western theaters. Evolutionary this is lightyears behind western films. Both technically and storywise. When this premiered at the International Filmfestival Rotterdam, the 750 seats theater was fully packed by an "intellectual" audience, who didn't know what they were about to watch. When the movie was finished, half the theater was empty, and not a single positive comment was heard among the 300-something die hards who'd struggled their way through the whole thing. This is no way of captivating an audience. If you can speak of a story here at all, it is told in the worst possible way, it's too slow, incoherent and random. The acting is terrible and technically the film is below a professional level. It's very, very amateurish. Just because something is captured on celluloid, put together and provided with some (dubbed only) sound doesn't make it a movie. It's no surprise that, this way, a country can produce more 'films' than the US. Indian filmmakers, it's time you grow up.