Taut Tales:
Made in 1922, and after doing the film festival rounds, Anant Narayan Mahadevan’s The Storyteller finally makes it to a streaming platform (Disney+Hotstar), and would appeal to viewers who are looking for something different to watch—not the usual crime, comedy and YA content.
Based on Satyajit Ray’s short story, Golpo Boliye Tarini Khuro (Tarini Uncle Tells a Story), the film is a leisurely-paced look at differences of cultures, tastes and attitudes—even if there is some mild stereotyping, it can be overlooked to savour the delights the story offers.
Tarini Bandopadhyay (Paresh Rawal) lives in a large Kolkata mansion, and is the restless sort who is unable to hold a job for too long. His son lives in the US, and in the pre-cellphone days, communicates via faceless calls. Tarini is intrigued by an ad in the newspaper for an Ahmedabad-based person, looking for a storyteller. Tarini is a raconteur much in demand among his friends for his original stories, but for some reason, he is unable to write.
So, Tarini lands up at the palatial Ahmedabad home of cotton magnate Ratan Garodia (Adil Hussain), who, like, Shaharyar of The Thousand and One Nights, needs his own Scheherazade to tell him stories that will help cure his chronic “insomania” (insomnia). Tarini is ensconced in a comfortable room by the sullen household help Manikchand (Jayesh More), and though the stories do not put Garodia to sleep, a friendship blooms between the two men, despite Tarini’s disapproval of Gujarati capitalism.
There is a comic track about Tarini’s distaste for vegetarian Gujarati food, and his attempt to get Manikchand to cook fish for him.
Garodia has a reason for hiring a storyteller, and it is not just insomnia, and when Tarini accidentally discovers the deception, he is hurt, angry and also a bit amused. He gets his revenge in his own way.
The short story seems stretched in a film that is almost two hours long, but the gentle wit, and a spoilt domestic kitten keep up interest in the story that is about characters who are all genteel on the surface, but are capable of wickedness. But they are also surprisingly capable of romance, so the two known actresses in the cast– Tannishtha Chatterjee as a librarian and Revathi as Garodia’s lost love—are not merely decorative.
Paresh Rawal does not sound Bengali, and Adil Hussain does not sound Gujarati, but they are both skilled actors and are still able to bring out each other’s strengths. The locations are beautiful and bring the two cities vividly to life. The Storyteller is charmingly old-fashioned, and quite watchable.
(This piece first appeared in seniorstoday.in)
