Reunion review: Story on hostel life not engaging at all, hardly invokes nostalgia

Murari M Rakshit’s debut film Reunion hardly engages the audience with its flat screenplay and superficial dialogues. The film, apparently on friendship and hostel life neither invoke nostalgia nor does it help the audience connect emotionally with the story. Apart from a few thoughtfully composed cinematic moments, Rakshit’s film mostly bores.

Joyeeta (Saayoni Ghosh), Abhik (Saurav Das), Subho (Samadarshi Dutta) and their friend, fondly called Tyala (Indrasish Roy), have a reunion in Kolkata, apparently after 20 years. While they make mirth and sing their hearts out, they recollect and narrate their first days in the hostel of their University life to Abhik’s wife (Anindita Bose). While enjoying the stories of those days, Subho suddenly proposes the plan to make a trip to Darjeeling to enjoy their reunion on a different level.

While touring in North Bengal, they are suddenly stopped by a group of villagers who seek their help to take a patient to the hospital. The patient is none other than their beloved and much respected Rudro Da (Parambrata Chatterjee), who disappeared on the dreaded night of election 20 years ago, from the hostel.

Soon they are informed that Rudro needs to get a proper treatment in Kolkata. As they discuss their agenda, Abhik’s wife enquires about Rudro da and hence, the account of an idealistic Rudro, who never cared for his own wellbeing, begins in a flashback.

The film turns out to be about an idealistic man, who is an upholder of humanity, rather than one dedicated to hostel life and its emotions. Apart from the chapter of ragging the freshers, the film merely depicts conflicts between party politics and Rudro’s true intentions for improving people’s conditions. Rakshit merely concentrates on narrating the events that take place in flashback but does not help Rudro’s ideology to inspire the viewers.

The director could have made the span of years between the past and the present events a little less as the characters physically do not appear to be 20 years apart - they more or less look the same. Even though we accept the incident of the meeting of Rudro and the group friends during the vacation to be purely accidental, neither the friends nor do the cinematic composition of the chapter express much surprise or shock.

The conflicts rise as MLA Manas Chakraborty (Sabyasachi Chakraborty), who also happens to be Monideepa’s (Raima Sen) father, intervenes in University politics. The problem is if Rudro is against the party’s involvement in University politics, then why does he discuss every issue of the University with Manas Chakraborty and invites him to University social?

The portrayal of the romance between Rudro and Monideepa lacks intensity. Also, the sequence in which Monideepa apparently tries to manipulate Rudro so that he leaves politics for the sake of his safety from her father comes across to be confusing. The romance between Joyeeta and Tyala too doesn’t help connect to the nostalgic idea of romance in hostel life either. The sequence of Tyala proposing Joyeeta is too lame.

There are also numerous other loopholes in the entire film. The reason behind Moni getting married to the notorious Ajay (Anindya Pulak Banerjee) is never stated. The first half of the film before the appearance of Rudro is extremely slow and also the climax seems rather exhausting.

Parambrata Chatterjee delivers his best as the idealistic benevolent soul and seems to be the only engaging factor in the entire experience. Raima Sen’s performance is too flat and she delivers all the dialogues without any modulation. The director is also responsible for this lack for not paying much attention to her characterization.

Saayoni Ghosh seems to be playing herself in all her films. Indrasish Roy, Anindita Bose and Saurav Das deliver their best in the limited scope of the script. Samadarshi Dutta’s act hardly catches attention. Anindya Pulak Banerjee shines in his usual stereotypical avatar and Sabysachi Chakraborty is quite dramatic in his brief appearance as the antagonist.

The songs by Joy Sengupta are the only aspect that invoke nostalgia as songs such as 'Ingelare' and 'Manush Manuser Jonyo' remind a lot of the Ganasangeet of the 1990s. Subhadeep Dey's cinematography and Anirban Maity’s editing could have contributed much more if there was enough opportunity in the content.