I've always felt apathetic whenever it comes to Bangladeshi cinema except Tareque Masud's The Clay Bird (Cannes 2002, FIPRESCI winner for script). After a long wait,I've got something to cheer about. That's Mostofa Sarwar Farooki's Third Person Singular Number. The first thing that I like about this film is the multidimensional approach perfectly applied by the director in creating sequences and building characters. All the character seemed so fresh, alive, and multi-dimensional. There was no black and white. The story has a number of layers. From one angle, the film looks 'okay that's what you wanted to say'. From another angle, it's just completely different. It handled a kind of feminist issue! That's why I was always scared if the film gets to stereotypical. But the director truthfully avoided the trap of being stereotypically feminist. In typical feminist works in Bangladesh, you rarely get to see any woman to be bad or wrong. Women are always right! Men are always wrong! But in this film, no one is bad or good forever. Everyone is a human with good and bad intentions. Sometimes Ruba is the victim. Sometimes she victimizes the others. Sometimes she is victimized by men, sometimes by women. I want to give a special thank to the director for creating such a wonderful character called Ruba. It reminded me of one of our old friend. Ruba resembles her so much! Like Ruba, she was wilful and emotionally fragile at the same time. Like Ruba, she had a wings to fly but a middle-class backbone didn't allow her to fly. Ruba perfectly portrays the contradictions and energy of a typical middle-class girl from a broken family.
Now let me talk about acting. It was just so natural as if I was watching something through a door-hole! Tisha, Mosharof Karim, and Topu played their characters so truthfully that it was hard to single out who did the best!
At the end, I want to talk about the ending. The whole film was done in such a fresh style that I was wondering where the director would end the film. In most of the Bangladeshi movies, no matter mainstream or art-house one, directors end a film with a conclusion. The audience leave the auditorium with an answer. But here Farooki leaves the audience without giving any conclusion. Instead of coming out of theaters with an answer, they come out with a question! Cheers!
