Screenplay & direction by Azizur Rahman
Year of release: 1980
Lead roles: Abdur Razzak, Shabana, Sujata, Shumon, Shawkat Akbar and ATM Shamsuzzaman
Duration: 2 hours 30 minutes
Personal rating: 8.5/10
Plot: During several days’ vacation of the Eid ul-Adha festival, a 12-year-old schoolboy mistakenly gets locked in the washroom of a school by its unmindful caretaker. The hapless boy dies of starvation having been locked up inside for so long. The widowed mother experiences the harsh reality of her son’s tragic death. And as a result of his guilt, the caretaker becomes a lunatic in the end and still regrets the death of Khokon, the victim.
Review: The directorial cliché ‘light, camera, action’ starts the ultimate magic adventure of a movie. In this day and age of new realism, cinema is one of the most significant and modern forms of art which is indeed very close to our everyday life. The fascinating combination of moving images, music, dialogues, lighting, sounds and sundry other special effects (FX) and visual tricks strongly helps us extract the deepest feelings from the core of our hearts and also gives us an opportunity to reflect and connect our very own lives through the fictional lives of the celluloid screens.
This write-up is about a classic film that took the Bangladeshi cinema industry by storm and opened new ways to change the cine infrastructure as well as landscape. “Chhutir Ghanta”, also known as “The Last Bell” is among those movies which are bigger than just being cult-like motion pictures or masterpieces having larger and longer-lasting impacts on the masses, society and culture. Directed by Azizur Rahman, this timeless masterpiece was released back in 1980. Based on a tragic true story of an incident that happened to a 12-year-old schoolboy from Bangladesh who was starved to death when he was mistakenly locked inside a washroom by the caretaker. Veteran Bangladeshi actors like Abdur Razzak, Sujata, Sumon Saha, Shabana and ATM Shamsuzzaman were among the leads where Sumon Saha played the role of the schoolboy (Khokhon), Sujata as Khokhon’s mother, ATM Shamsuzzaman as a schoolteacher, and Razzak and Shabana were starred as the school caretaker and the maid respectively.
“Chhutir Ghanta” is an epoch-making movie, which has the perfect combination of every stuff to be one of the greatest movies ever made in the living memory of the Bangladeshi cinema. From screenplay to direction, from acting and cinematography to the background music, everything has been top-notch and exquisitely flawless. In the very beginning of the film, an old but mentally ill man is seen creating chaos in the asylum and the plotline takes the pace indicating how that happened. Just like other conventional Bangladeshi films at that time, the storyline has followed that dramatic pace till the end. But the director has done an astonishing job in the making of the film. Khokon’s character along with his widowed mother, the caretaker (Abbas Mia) and the maid is simply and plainly well-knit and striking. The brilliant performance of ace actress Shabana who plays the role of the maid captivated the audience with laughter. Her comic timing in every scene and sequence has made the scenes even more lively and interesting.
As the story of the movie moves forward, the director starts to predict the Eid ul-Adha vacation, which eventually carries the plotline to its climax. Eventually, the film’s denouement starts with U-turns of a concatenation of events. From Kokhon’s jolly life to his tragic destiny, it looks like the film follows a pattern and the director tries to harp on the harsh reality of life rather than making it only for entertainment purposes.
Children’s films like Chhutir Ghanta help us understand children, their mind, thinking and understanding. Even though it is four decades older, this black-and-white wonder is still considered as one of the finest movies ever made in the Bangladeshi film history and it is still relevant in today’s context. This ageless oeuvre is a must-watch for every film lover.
