A Handful of Stories

Reportage on health, science and politics. And some meditations on film

Tag: Utpal Dutt

Agantuk: What the Bhadralok Dislike for Ray’s Final Work Tells Us

If feel-good storytelling leaves us warm and happy at being alive, what can we call cinema that leaves us uncomfortable? How about be-better cinema? The film Bengali Bhadralok Ray-lovers dislike the most is his last work, Agantuk. I loved it when I saw it first, as an 8-year-old who watched a near-complete Ray retrospective late nights on Doordarshan the year…