Sundarbaner Vidyasagar review: Riddhi Sen, Ushasi Ray deliver a quirky, loveable and ironic experience

3.5/5

Story

Kinkor, the bumbling protagonist played by Riddhi Sen, unexpectedly fails to secure good grades in his college final exam and is almost exiled into an eccentric village of widows. He’s anointed with the task to guide a team of widows who would help him conserve the mangroves of Sundarbans. He strikes a rather strange yet exciting friendship with one of the widows, Parboti and a powerplay unfolds gradually when they face a bunch of goons trying to convert the village into a tourist spot like Thailand.

Review

Riddhi Sen once again created a visual splendour while delivering a blinky, unconfident, bespectacled Kinkor who transforms into a saviour, yet he’s not dipped in hypermasculine toxicity. Apart from the lead, the ensemble cast includes actors like Sankar Debnath, Rupanjana Mitra, Pratik Dutta, Doyel Nandy, Kaushik Kar, Sajal Mondal, Sudeep Dhara who delivered powerpacked performances and brought the lands of Kumirkhali into life. Television starlet Usashi Ray performs Parboti with conviction and the music and background score by Gaurab Chatterjee (Gaboo) are compelling and it envelops the narrative at some points and gets indistinguishable. The credits of soothing visuals must go to the colourist Prosenjit Banerjee and cameraperson Ramyadip Saha.

A special mention goes out to writer Arkadeep Nath who sculpted out a unique world of characters with his pen singlehandedly and director Korok Murmu turned them into delicate illusions of sound and imagery.

Verdict

Sundarbaner Vidyasagar surely marks a vital milestone for Hoichoi and I congratulate them for keeping faith in a so-called different content that demonstrates such storytelling virtuosity and inspires other contemporary makers to approach different subjects. Sundarbaner Vidyasagar is definitely binge-worthy.