While Ray’s adaptation of his own mystery novel may feel protracted at times, its unhurried nature provides the simple pleasures of a laidback adventure as Feluda the detective must curtail the plans of two bumbling crooks exploiting a hallucinating kid.
Review #2,946
Dir. Satyajit Ray
1974 | India | Drama, Adventure | 136min | 1.66:1 | Bengali
PG (passed clean)
Cast: Soumitra Chatterjee, Santosh Dutta, Siddhartha Chatterjee, Kushal Chakraborty, Shailen Mukherjee
Plot: A young boy becomes a target for crooks, after he claims to remember his past life and mentions precious jewels in a golden fortress.
Awards: Won 3 National Film Awards – Best Feature Film in Bengali, Best Direction, & Best Screenplay
Source: National Film Archive of India
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Detective & Crooks; Road Trip; Solving a Mystery
Narrative Style: Straightforward
Pace: Slightly Slow
Audience Type: Slightly Mainstream
Viewed: Golden Village Suntec (as part of the Indian Film Festival)
Spoilers: No
Later-day Satyajit Ray is still a gap area for me, so I was delighted to be able to see The Golden Fortress in a new restoration, though the restoration wasn’t exactly top-notch.
There is still something to appreciate and enjoy in Ray’s detective film (an adaptation of his own mystery novel), even if it feels decidedly more commercial in its approach.
Eschewing his arthouse roots for a more fun-tastic adventure, this family-friendly film stars the great Soumitra Chatterjee as Feluda, who takes on the case of Mukul, a boy led away by two crooks hoping to exploit hallucinations of his previous life as the kid talks of a golden fortress somewhere in India.
Greed, impersonation and even attempted murder are on the cards for the bumbling duo as they try to locate that elusive fort promising a truckload of gems.
Feluda and his younger cousin-sidekick Topshe are in ‘a race against time’ (but really, such is the leisurely pace of the storytelling that no one seems to be in a hurry) to find out the truth and prevent harm from coming to Mukul.
“I’ve never met a real detective like you.”
Jatayu, a popular pulp crime-mystery novelist who’s socially awkward, tags along in what might be one of Ray’s most hilarious supporting characters.
In the screening I was in, kids in the audience consistently giggled whenever he appeared, a testament to Ray’s chameleon-like ability to make films that appeal to different audiences.
While I feel the unhurried nature of The Golden Fortress does make several segments of the film feel rather protracted (it’s after all still heavily plot-based which motivates characters’ actions), it is certainly not an unworthwhile watch, such are its simple pleasures of being in a laidback adventure that doesn’t distress but de-stress the viewer.
My favourite scene has got to be men on camels in a desert landscape trying to stop an approaching train—a homage to David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia (1962) perhaps?
Grade: B
Music:
Eternality Tan 