If you are a proper cinephile and you are in love with Indian cinema as a whole, you must have seen some of the works by Rituparno Ghosh. He is the most influential filmmaker of Bengali Cinema after Ray, Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen. His movies have been loved around the globe and brought many awards from international film festivals. Rituparno Ghosh is the filmmaker who turned the intellectual minds of Bengal towards the theaters once again with his thoughtful and insightful films after a long vacant period of useless commercial masala films.
‘Chokher Bali’ is a film that gained Ghosh international acclaim. It came out in 2003 and starred actors like Aishwarya Rai, Prasenjit Chatterjee, Tota Rai Chowdhury, Raima Sen and Swastika Mukherjee. It is adapted from the novel of the same name by the Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. It was dubbed into Hindi and the dubbed version went on to win some international awards.
Chokher Bali translates as ‘Sand In The Eye’ or ‘The Constant Irritant’. It tells the story of Binodini, a woman who is widowed at an early age and starts living with an acquaintance and her elderly son. That son, Mahendra had once rejected to marry him. Mahendra gets attracted to Binodini very soon and a vicious cycle of adultery starts between Mahendra, his wife, his friend and Binodini.
The cinematography of the film is handled by Avik Mukhopadhyay and the music is composed by Debojyoti Mishra. The performances are top-notch and you will never get bored for a moment. You will naturally get engaged in the storyline and enjoy it. The movie is available to watch on Hoichoi.