Bokeh movie underrated8/9/2023 ![]() ![]() The editing in the movie was near impeccable: cutting a shot into the next one according to (Walter Murch’s rule of six in editing) emotion, story, rhythm and eye-trace were almost as good as it gets. Throwing the background frequently out of focus does half the work for a thriller filmmaker. The soundtrack and the editing do not have a lulling effect though it is a gem of a stock arthouse film. The soundtrack is not overwhelmingly good but it does what it is meant to-to communicate the rising complication of what the character of Shataf Figar is allegedly hiding. ![]() Plethora of characters would have ruined the first half of the thriller, and the filmmaker is well-aware of the workings of human brain. Arka Ganguly has maintained the hallowed tradition of a whodunit arthouse film in this respect. ![]() The characters and the linked, underlying characters only unfold one by one. Pre-interval plotline makes no mistake in drawing you into the cinema, into the heart of the darkness that is to unfold gradually, slowly, as if stalkingly. Not to give away the movie plotline (and spoil it for the myriads of Bengali audiences who are requested to consume the thriller to the lees), one cannot but mention the editing and the soundtrack of the movie. It does not slip one’s careful notice in the first twenty minutes into the cinema that Ripon Chaudhury, in a few cases of mounting suspense, uses a manual focus and a pre-focused plane in his framing. It goes without saying, too, frequent background bokeh is used in this film with a pretty adept outlook. But the photography in the film does its part religiously in threading the needle of the thriller. Moreover, the aerial shots, dreamy and moody as they should have been, have a little bit of jarring in their frame rate either. The cinematographer barely uses ultra-wide angle lens in his aerial shots, and at times the aerial shots do not serve the grammar of a telling “Bird’s Eye View”. Photography, the smoky backdrop of the lush hills, the intermittent rain and muted colours only contribute to the calculative building up of the suspense in the first half of the cinema. To speak of “montage effect”, one can recognize a hyperlapse or two too towards the ending of the film. The aerial shots of the hilltop towns pose as montages referring to the passage of time, and therefore it may be safely concluded that Puppet-cinematographer Ripon Chaudhury knows what he is fiddling with. The movie opens with rows and columns of certificates of proficiency from a number of film festivals, and it does elevate one’s expectations of what Arka Ganguly’s script has to offer. The trailer does what it is supposed to-it teases you, just like a suspense thriller is supposed to. One could say, it is a fair promo in the right sense of the term. There is a mounting suspicion, there is a throbbing uphill suspense one minute into the promotional trailer and yet you have no idea who/what Sayan Bose is looking for. ![]() But, and it is one interesting fact to underline, the trailer did not make a clean breast of who/what Sayan Bose is after. The Khoj trailer grows on you and pretty soon it turns out to be a riveting thriller not without all the nuances of a whodunit, howdunit. Rimtik police station.” It is one of those trailers that catches your attention right away-not with a bang but with a slow, engaging buzz. ![]()
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