‘Hawa’ is blowing

“How far will this Hawa drift me along?” Asked the band ‘Meghdol’ in their promotional song for the just-released movie ‘Hawa’, directed by Mejbaur Rahman Sumon.

In line with the same curiosity and anxiety, we too can put forth a question how far will this ‘Hawa’ drift the Bangladeshi film industry along?

And when I say ‘Hawa’, just like the movie title refers to, I also don’t only indicate its literal meaning as in the wind, but overall the wind of change ‘Hawa’ promises to bring forth, as per all the hypes surrounding the movie suggest.

It seems like whenever an already-established TV or TVC director decides to make their entry into the big screen, Chanchal Chowdhury is their automatic first choice.

We have seen the recurrence of this pattern in ‘Monpura’ (Gias Uddin Selim), ‘Aynabaji’ (Amitabh Reza Chowdhury), and ‘Debi’ (Anam Biswas). Here in ‘Hawa’, Sumon also makes no exception. And that is the best thing he has done in this film, as far as the casting is concerned.

Even for a film that boasts of an ensemble cast, Chanchal’s presence makes it a different game altogether. He is someone who is more than capable of making an ill-written character seem way more important than it is.

It is only because of the brilliant acting prowess of the heavyweight craftsman that Chanchal is that the character Chan Majhi is saved from drowning in the high sea.

Still, his work has room for improvement. Especially the inconsistency in delivering dialogues written in the local accent of Bagerhat made the characterization somewhat less authentic, less believable.

However, this criticism applies to almost all the actors in the movie. It should be noted that the web film ‘Sahosh’ released on Chorki last month (June) dealt better with the Bagerhat dialect. Maybe the director (who is also the dialogue writer), more than anyone else, should be held accountable in this regard.

Meanwhile, Nazifa Tushi is gradually becoming the ultimate ‘mysterious woman’ of the Bangladeshi media sphere. She has a glamorous appearance combined with unusual, unreadable character traits, which the directors are digging deeper into with every new flick. Sumon also did a great job giving the role of Gulti to Tushi here, as well as bringing the best out of her.

Shariful Razz did justice to whatever little he got to do in this movie. His filmography is not very long as of now, but already he has some remarkable performances to his credit, including that Poran’s. What he did in ‘Hawa’ may not be a reflection of the best version of his actor entity, but that does not mean he disappointed the audience. It is just that he did not have much space to breathe in properly in this particular film, spending most of his screen-time in the suffocating engine room or the darkness of midnight seawater.

Among the other important characters, Shohel Mondol, Nasir Uddin Khan, Rizvi Rizu, and Sumon Anowar were good enough for their respective roles. They all had their moments to shine. But I must make a reminder for the directors that please don’t let these super talented actors go wasted by being typecast again and again. It is high time our filmmakers started writing more diversified characters for them, instead of just wanting to cash in on what the audiences are already fond of their volume of work.

Music is the biggest plus point of this movie. The song ‘Shada Shada Kala Kala’, no matter how racist and politically incorrect it may sound, has all the ingredients in it to go down as one of the most celebrated Bangladeshi movie songs of recent memory, if not all-time.

And I believe that is enough saying for the outstanding song written and composed by Hashim Mahmud, though sung by Erfan Mredha Shiblu for the movie version. Music director Emon Choudhury also deserves a lot of praise for using the sounds of the boat’s wood, bamboo, pots, and pans to perfection in a bid to produce this particular version.

It is a song that touches all the right cords with the pure ‘desi’ audience it is catered to. People are loving to sing this song together in the theaters. And no matter whether they like the film proper or not, just this one song can give them the ‘poysha-ushul’ feeling they desperately need in these trying times of economic crisis.

The background score of ‘Hawa’ by Rashed Sharif Shoaib is equally good. To be more precise, such is the score that it on occasions carried the dull screenplay (by Jaheen Faruque Ameen, Sukorno Shahed Dhiman and director Sumon) on its shoulder as well.

Kaman Hasan Khosru is splendid as the cinematographer of ‘Hawa’. Wrapping almost the entirety of the film’s shoot in a very limited location space was quite challenging. Yet he delivered a performance of a lifetime to provide the audience with a great cinematic experience. The visual treatment of ‘Hawa’, in short, is as good as it gets. Had he been guided better, he could have produced some more unconventional yet meaningful shots to enrich the cinematic language of the film.

Editing by Sazal Alok is not as sharp as it should have been. The run-time of the movie is longer than the story deserved, and editing is partly to blame for that.

The Dialogue, by the director himself, is also not very crisp. They lacked depth big time and failed to complement the subject matter at hand. It was nice to see the dialogue writer trying to give a nod to pop-culture references, and also attempting to be funny at times. But those turned out to be quite unproductive, giving the audience nothing but a momentary pleasure.

The story, too, had such a great premise, gained momentum midway through the film, kept the audience hooked, but eventually lost track miserably. As mentioned before, the faulty screenplay played a spoilsport here.

Now time to address the elephant in the room. How good has Sumon fared in his very first venture for the big screen?

His work is mostly decent for sure. But most, unfortunately, it is not worth the hype. He had so many probable directions (pun intended) to take the story along. But he chose a path where ‘And Then There Were (indeed) None’.

Or were there? Maybe yes. It is just that they disappeared into thin air, so we could not quite see them.

To know exactly what happened, you have to book your ticket and pay a visit to a movie theater for yourself!

In conclusion, we can only say that ‘Hawa’ has started blowing, it is now the audience’s job to sail through and determine (by either rejecting or accepting the movie) which new territory the Bangladeshi film industry ends up getting to.