‘Bob Biswas’ works like a game that draws you in

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Ever played a free world game? GTA, Just Cause et al? Games that allow us to drive, roam, bully and crush those powerless passersby just for fun? Those character models are called Non Playable Characters. NPCs. Bob Biswas is an NPC in his own game. To make matters worse, his saved game data has been erased by accidents of the past.

We are in contemporary Calcutta (Kolkata for the moderns). A gloomier, colder and tighter outlay for the city of joy. Residing in are entitled music reality show winners, hustlers and cops of all breeds. The city is engulfed by a cognitive enhancement drug with students topping to the hitlist and popping the pills to get ahead in life.

In this Coldcutta, everyone is on a prowl for what’s lay ahead. Bob is stuck in a time warp, though. Lost rather. Wife and children he can’t familiarise with. Guns and bullets etched in his sense memory and semantic reflexes.

The film bides time to find form as it draws you into the facets soon to accentuate the narrative. Quite like running around the game’s town to figure out the controls and gameplay options.

Cutscene-like exclamation points arrive to take the story ahead with pulsating music and snappy visuals masking the glaring expositions placed at regular intervals. There’s a snivelling boss at Bob’s wife’s workspace, an old confidante of his running a twofold pharmacy and his loyal minion with secrets of his own. All these elements serve as checkpoints our NPC Bob must pass through to unlock his inventory and play the mission ahead.

All these free world games have amusing ways to score cash and ammo. You punch, the player HUD flashes a $ sign. You kill, beat, pummel and snatch whatever’s in sight. Either you get a car or a scar. That’s how the overlays of these games are designed.

Bob Babu’s free world is nothing dissimilar. One side game dominoes to the other. Over a several sunsets, Bob has a phone, gun, some cash and better idea of the route maps he lost in his data crash. He doesn’t have a last saved point in this game but he’s free run around enough again to get a hang of things.

What separates mediocre games from good games? A music library that fits the universe like a glove. Like GTA’s Radio, Coldcutta FMs play Bengali versions of Yeh Kya Hua-Kaise Hua and Deewangi Deewangi to equal spirit reflecting Bob’s fuzzy past and slanted present.

The digicams, second generation Samsung and Motorola smartphones are suggestive of an era somewhere between 2008-11. 2011 for the WhatsApp Messenger trucopy seems like the earliest version of the thing. The original score of the film isn’t phenomenal but well suited. Ballygunge visuals amped by Park Street sound. Sly gamble that pays off.

But what if an NPC started figuring out what the game is? To say, it learns controls and gameplay to unlock it’s own set of ammo, jazz and cash. Bob is our NPC, remember? All the while he’s been unlocking stuff. How and why you ask? Perhaps he’s a bot, playing possum as some unassuming NPC, dressed and combed like Mr. Goodytwoshoes whom no mortal would doubt. Or he has gained a conscience and is the first ever AI with a heart? Well, that’s too much like the plot of Ryan Reynolds’ Free Guy. Maybe, Bob just seemed like a pawn to his overlords. The titular character without saved data and arsenal, whom they undermined as the NPC.

That’s where Bob Biswas works as a film. It’s like a game that draws you in. It’s a gameplay at disposal that the viewer has to do through. His arcs and subplots are the mini-games our minds play to tick the mission and move to the next.

More than what meets the eye.

What’d seem like reading through too much and laughable is exactly what the makers intend the audiences to feel. You’re not supposed to take Abhishek Bachchan seriously. His reactions at the onset, appear unconvincing to the viewer but are rather ambiguous. By the point this film rolls into anti-climax, it’s the viewer mind-set trumping over our gamer/thinker mind-set.

Find anyone who can testify that Bob was receiving targets from Jishu. The conclusions we derive in this watch stem from our assumptions, not our observations. And, that’s where the film tricks everyone. The objective of noir cinema is to stash clues in plain sight. Sujoy Ghosh and Raj Vasant’s dialogues are exchanges but prompters.

Everything is shown, said, established for a reason. Gairik Sarkar’s gloomy Coldcutta is the final character film that bridges the past, present and eery future. What makes Bob so enticing as a contract killer you ask? He spares none of his targets. Past, present or the eery future.

Diya Annapurna Ghosh has made a solid directorial debut. Takes artistic gallantry to make a film that most would turn blinkers on terming disappointing and pale. But the comic incongruity of fate is its release on a streaming platform. Open to multiple viewings.

The triumph of Bob Biswas is that one could call it a sequel, prequel, reboot, spinoff or even the end. And, all answers would seem probable.

Which, anywise, is the recipe for a banger of a free world game. Release it. Let gamers use their might, cheat codes and trials to find hidden secrets, combinations, loot-boxes and post theories online.

The game gains attention, catches a frenzy and rolls out multiple editions. Ask Rockstar Games. That’s their Kahaani.

I’d love to discuss this further. Kintu,

Nomoshkar. Ek minute…