After I got the hang of reading and writing, I thought it would be nice to watch a movie in order to work on my comprehension of Bangla because I have trouble understanding Bengali movies/dramas. From Sabrina's suggestion, we watched Monpura.
It was about a poor servant, Shunai, who took the blame for a woman's murder for the sake of his master's mentally ill son. The master isolates the man on an island and gives him resources to survive on. This was so that the police couldn't find him. Back in the village, the master told the police that Shunai murdered the woman and ran away, thus hiding the actual culprit, his son. The master often visited Shunai and take crops and cattle from him; from this we saw that not only did the master use Shunai as a scapegoat, but as free labor. The master-servant relationship was interesting and very common in Bangladesh- servants often have a familial tie to the family they serve to the point where they will do anything to protect them. This is because they usually don't have a family of their own and the family that they serve has taken care of them for a long time. There is a saying, "namak kaisee" literally meaning "I ate salt", which translates to having a loyalty for someone because they fed and took care of them for a long time. It was for this reason that Shunai obligingly went through everything, feeling only loneliness, but not anger towards his master for putting him in that situation. He later encountered a woman and her father fishing near his island. He was thrilled that he had people to talk to. They fished there every few days and Shunai and the woman, Pari, eventually fall in love. Trouble arose, however, one day when the master visited and saw Shunai with the beautiful woman. At this point, the master had been looking for a wife for his mental son because a mystic doctor had told him that marriage would be the only cure for his insanity.
When we started the movie we paused the starting credits to read them and for me to translate it or for Sabrina to tell me what they were saying if I didn't understand it. When we began the movie, there were a few things I did not understand and this had to do with the speech and why they said certain things. Sabrina told me that they were village speech habits and that I didn't have to worry about it as long I understand what they said. Throughout the movie I only had a few problems in understanding words, at which points I would pause and Sabrina would explain them to me. Other than that, I understood the language, and got to enjoy a wonderful, but sad movie.
Language aside, I loved the cinematography of the film, especially for a Bangladeshi movie. Bangladesh's film industry is usually not highly rated in terms of their techniques and filming strategies so this movie was quite refreshing and hopefully a good sign for the film industry's future!
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