Aynabaji (2016)
Over the years, the Bangladeshi cinema has been mostly criticized for its very weak infrastructure & having terrible influence of Bollywood movies. Experimental or making a film other than drama, comedy or romance genre was almost like 'unthinkable' & nobody ever even tried before as far I can recall. But after all the years, Amitabh Reza Chowdhuty (formerly known as a popular TVC maker) stepped forward & gave his great effort to make AYNABAZI, a neat & gripping character driven thriller!!
AYNABAZI tells the story of Sharafat Karim Ayna...seemingly a very ordinary, down to earth guy who loves to spend time with the children as their drama teacher, sometime goes away for weeks or months when his "duty calls as a seasonal chef for a ship traveling around the Indian ocean". But under this carefully plotted fabric of impressions, Mr Ayna a.k.a.Ayna Vai is actually a master class real-life character actor who works as a short-term Proxy Prisoner for the spoiled, rich & ruthless people that failed to get a bail in court for their hideous crime. Ayna always takes his job very seriously as he remarkably slips into the characters of his convicted clients to avoid any sort of suspicions from his surroundings. But just when he is planning to quit from this strange profession, one last job knocks on his door - given no chance to refuse, eventually demands too much from him...
Kudos to the director & his entire team for assembling a great cast who were stellar in almost every frame, particularly Chanchal Chowdhury on the lead did a phenomenal job; when every time ‘Ayna’ tries to impersonate the character of his new client (with a chilling score on the background) were the best moments of this movie, IMO. Partho Barua as an investigative crime reporter and the young new actress Nabila as the love interest of Ayna also nicely shines on their respective roles.
The striking cinematography comes as another winner of the show. I think we have never seen our city through such amazing wide angle, bird eye view shots in any BD movie before. The dark & gloomy takes on a cloudy Dhaka somewhat represents this city as another character in the movie.
It wasn't a world-class thriller may be but still Amitabh Reza's AYNABAZI is like a breath of fresh air for BD cinema (that has been in a kind of a limbo for an awful lot of long time due to lack of originality, creativity as well as decency!) and now this gives us hope for an exciting & better future as we all wait for more genre-based films like this through a possible, rising line of young & talented film makers in coming days.
>>: B+