The woman closes the door of her house (or her mind) and the melancholy of darkness captures the screen. it's the last scene of a movie which portrays the loneliness of three characters and an imagined love story which stops suddenly in the midst of blooming. Shot in iPhone, “Ami O Manohar” is one of the best Indian movies I have watched in recent times.
“Ami O Manohar” is a movie that defines loneliness through conversations between the three protagonists – a working woman (Monalisa Chatterjee), her elder sister (Senjuti Roy Mukherji) and Manohar (Shyamal Chakraborty). The woman meets Manohar every day while traversing back to her home from work through the din and bustle of the city. Both are lonely souls and in search of a peace which lies in their childhood or in the corner of their imaginative mind. The woman is mostly a silent listener of Manohar's thoughts about life. Manohar pretends to be a married family man to the woman and in search of his childhood home in Giridih which never exists. The woman lives with her elder sister, who is also lonely and lives on her cherishing past. The movie creates an aura of an untold love story between Manohar and the woman.
Shyamal Chakraborty is brilliant as Manohar. He brings in the aura of loneliness convincingly in the narrative. The director uses the expression of Monalisa Chatterjee perfectly to portray her monotonous and placeless life. She has very few dialogues in the movie, but her character has gone through different shades in the narrative and she portrays it perfectly. Senjuti Roy Mukherji also lives up to the expectations and ends up giving a fine performance as the lonely sister.
“Ami O Manohar” is a director's movie. The entire movie is shot in black and white. Amitabha Chattopadhyay tries to portray the lonely side of the characters in black and white, defining the rays of hope in their life. All the characters are caged inside their lonesome world and try to break free from this solitariness by creating their own imaginative world, where Manohar is married to Aparna and the woman finds her love in Manohar. The movie is slowly paced, and it allows the director to portray the monotonous and lonesome life of all the three main characters.
The cinematography of Modhura Palit is aesthetically poised and uses long shots brilliantly for detailing and portraying the conversations between Manohar and the woman in the din and bustle of an indifferent city. Kudos to director Amitabha Chattopadhyay and the entire team of “Ami O Manohar” for crafting out such a brilliant movie which is undoubtedly one of the best Indian movies of recent times.
