The Last Thakur

This is an awesome movie. All of the nonsense and kitschness of Indian cinema is absent in this Bangladeshi masterpiece: no songs, no OTT costumes and no ridiculous love themes. It owes a lot to the old Kurosawa movies Sanjuro and Yojimbo, from which it draws considerable inspiration. The use of the tea house as a plot device holding the narrative together is just short of genius, and very tasteful, reminding one of the old-time classics of Indian cinema and bringing a sense of the culture of the place.

Unfortunately certain things, probably best left to the imagination, are left unclear by the end of the movie. However, the Tao is clearly a central theme: one of the main protagonists asks a tea boy whether he is a truly evil man, and clearly the viewer is meant to consider this difficult question. It also deals with the difficult matter of the modernisation of south Asia, and handles the conflict between traditionalism and modernisation quite skilfully. Tradition and modernity blend together, and by the end one has the impression that the old ways to a considerable extent underpin the forces behind what appears to be new, unwelcome and alien.

This movie will stand the test of time much better than the expensive and overly self-conscious pseudo-epics such as Jodhaa Akbar, Asoka and Kshatriya. My one criticism is that it does seem to be rather clumsy when dealing with Hindu-Muslim tension, and turns out being rather one-sided, exalting one side rather unrealistically. Or perhaps this is better seen as a class war than a religious tension: the Thakur lord versus the Muslim man of the people. The director leaves this distinction up to the viewer to a limited extent.