I wanted to like The Last Thakur more than I did. I enjoyed the individual look of the piece, the ominous and oddly hued cinematography acting as an effective aesthetic for this threatening and tension filled piece to play out behind of; I enjoyed individual scenes and sequences in the film but none of it amounted to anything bar an out of the blue and conventional shootout. There was no meat on the bone; no consistent enough feed of threat nor terror running parallel to the intriguing premise of having a drifting, mysterious loner drop into the middle of a Bangladeshi turf war in a sleepy; lonely village. The film clocks in at under eighty odd minutes, it felt a lot longer; it was repetitive, all too often relying on imagery without engaging nor doing anything else. For a film all about the hostilities between two sides and the supposed hatred and tension that's born out of that, it was surprisingly plodding and sparse of dramatic punch, despite the enemies being in relatively close proximity to one another for most of the time and despite a relatively unhinged persona the film instills within its lead. I haven't seen any of writer/director Sadik Ahmed's other work, regardless, I get the feeling I might enjoy some of what else he's made.
The film is narrated to us by a young boy in said Bangladeshi village, it's post-election so I think there's meant to be some sort of substance there to do with a new post political order, but it isn't really touched upon for the rest of the film. In filtering this story through the perspective of a young boy, we're enabled a third person angle of the three parties of the piece: two leaders of rival factions and a lone man who waltzes into the midst of a territorial disagreement they're having caring a rifle and a photograph of a woman he's out to avenge the brutalisation of. Its routine set up and consequent labellings of it being a western places it within a respective field of genre, and its reliance on the age-old plot point towards the end of a character observing a photograph so as to further the narrative, twinned with the fact the lead is on a ready made arc of revenge, are not original items, nor are they made particulalry exciting here. Oddly twinned with this, Ahmed is interested in going against set type in creating mood and sequences that do not advance narrative or character progression (the fact he's essentially working with archetypes here is also prominent), in that sequences displaying the characters just existing where it is that they stand are lingered on so as to build a sense of threat.
The first time we see the lead, he is asleep on a bench later going on to arise and take to life in this village. The resting on a bench before awakening symbolic of the character's pre-film slumber prior to undertaking this goal; his awakening and entering into this world additionally captured as he enters the place he'll find his retribution. He carries with him a rifle and a number of individual bullets, sitting outside tea huts amidst the dusty Bangladeshi setting and fondling each bullet miraculously and thoroughly. Ahmed knows that one gun between several people but in the hands of a lone individual is much more exciting than hundreds of guns in the hands of dozens of people spraying hundreds of bullets around as seen in most popular American (or Americanised) films about revenge or similar hostilities. Here, the lead is fighting the reputations of those who might or might not get in his way and that particular sense of threat is relatively effective enough.
The two warring sides are fighting over territory. They are Ahmed Rubel's Chairman and Tariq Anam Khan's Thakur, with the Thakur wanting to build a temple on land he doesn't actually own, something not advised given this rooted hatred between the two is born out of the fact either party are Muslim and Hindu, respectively, as money is additionally used as a tool to ignite a power-play between a leader and those that live in close proximity. This power-play between construction and religion; Muslim and Hindu is somewhat glanced over by the arrival of the rifle wielding loner, a man looking for his own brand of justice amidst everything else playing out. The mood is there in The Last Thakur, that isolated and distanced sense that everything might just fly off the rails; unfortunately, we are too distanced from proceedings, never given much time to invest the lead's plight nor care for either of the feuding Muslim and Hindu sides - a feud running on tension born out of whatever knowledge of Hindu and Muslim rivalries the viewer carries. The menace that ought to be there more than it is seems to be comes and goes. Rival groups share a general area together for a while, and when we realise nothing will come of it, all sense of being immersed evaporates.
The film culminates in a bloody shootout which is rather jarring, although not in an entirely good sense, in that it completely flies against what we've been provided for the last hour in tone and mood. Additionally, the child narrator comes across as far more advanced and informed on proceedings than he really ought to be, suggesting at least to me that it was initially to be narrated by the lone adult lead we observe but was consequently changed to a child's voice at a later date so as to inject more of a sense of soul and heart. What consensus can I reach? I liked certain things: Ahmed directs rather competently while his cinematographer does a good job; and yet there's a detached sense about the film, as if alienation from hostilities and violence is on the film's agenda but within that, alienation from the audience is a result.
