Karagar 2: Underwhelming execution of an overwhelming storyline

“What’s more powerful than a good story?” asks Chanchal Chowdhury’s character David in the initial stage of Karagar Part 2.

As much as it rings a bell, it also sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy of how the series is going to go about after an impressive first chapter.

As an audience, such lines make you sit back and hold tight, while skyrocketing your expectations to the moon and back.

But morning does not always show the day. If it did, Argentina would not go on to become the world champions even after being humbled by Saudi Arabia in their first match of the FIFA World Cup 2022, or Spain would not crash out of the competition at the beginning of the knockout stage albeit starting their journey with a 7-0 routing over Costa Rica.

Unfortunately, Karagar falls into the second category. It showed so much potential in the first part, but eventually failed miserably in the latest (and perhaps the last) instalment to shoulder the burden of expectation it had brought upon itself.

What exactly went wrong with the “highest rated Bengali series of the year” streaming on OTT platform Hoichoi? To begin with, it is the story.

Not that the story is bad. Rather it is exceptionally well, unlike the content of most other movies and series coming out of either Bengal.

But with great power (of a good story) comes great responsibility. The responsibility of proper execution. And in Karagar Part 2, the execution falls flat on its face.

In spite of having some extraordinary subject matter at hand, the director Syed Ahmed Shawki missed out on making the type of utilization it needed and deserved.

The biggest weak point in his making lies in the fact that he just can not evoke raw emotion in the audience’s mind. Otherwise, how on earth could someone have his hands full of highly sensitive issues like 1971, war babies, identity crisis etc. and still fall short of unsettling the viewers and keep them utterly indifferent all through the entirety of the series?

Underwhelming could be the perfect adjective to describe the whole process in this regard.

Another big minus for Karagar as a whole is its lack of proper closures when it comes to handling the sub-plots.

There were mentions of grand narrative and alternative narrative in the series. But let alone those, the screenwriting did not even possess the basic narrative style to bind everything together in perfect harmony.

This might remind someone of the phrase “plot holes”, but hang on, there was an honourable mention of this one as well!

So you see, the series has well-informed creative minds at the helm to back its creation, as established by the brilliant back-and-forth dialogues and one-liners. But they simply do not yet have enough experience to ingrain that knowledge into the narrative without falling into the trap of looking and sounding totally out of place at times.

However, it would be unfair to say Karagar Part 2 is devoid of any excellence at all. Acting, once again, is top-notch, courtesy of the leading man Chanchal Chowdhury’s genius.

In the previous part, he was portrayed as a mute person, and hence, he had to do the heavy lifting with body language, facial expressions, and of course, eyes. This time, he is blessed with the power to talk, and that only makes his craft even crispier.

With this series, he not only cements his legacy further but also provides us with a Lionel Messi-like pass to make an argument that he may be the best actor of undivided Bengal at the moment. And this I am saying without taking into consideration the fact that he has a selfie with Shah Rukh Khan.

There are some other noteworthy performances from Afzal Hossain and Shatabdi Wadud as well as the actors playing the younger versions of David and Alfred.

But the one breakout star of this series, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is Mir Naufel Ashrafi Jisan, playing the role of Raju. In Karagar, he is to Chanchal exactly what Shohel Mondol was to Chanchal in the Shawki-directed earlier web-series Taqdeer. Therefore, he will be much loved by the audiences for sure.

Tasnia Farin is a big disappointment in the second chapter of Karagar, while two bigger letdowns are Intekhab Dinar and F S Nayeem, who hardly got any opportunity to either showcase their talent or take their own storylines forward. It was also sweet to see Tanvin Sweety, but that’s about it.  

All things considered, Karagar bids adieu to the audiences without serving the most satisfactory meal on offer. Maybe some more “jail-er bhaat” in the future could make a compensation.