Movies like Dadar Adesh make you ponder over existential questions. Such as, why do people make such films?
The Bengali film starts with an woman on sickbed waiting for her husband (Ranjit Mallik). He has gone to fetch medicine, leaving her with their son and four daughters. He is late. When he finally returns, he is accompanied by men in uniform. Of course, he has not got the medicine that could have saved her life.
His escorts, the policemen, disclose that Mallik has been arrested by the police under charges of killing his employer's wife, with whom he was supposedly having an illicit relationship. Mallik's wife dies instantly upon hearing the news.
Mallik, denies the affair and tries to rush to his wife. His
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Cut to the present. The children have grown up. The boy is now a hot-headed Prosenjit, who works in a garage.
People nickname him 'Headmaster' for his hot temper, and he beats up people who have the stupidity or misplaced courage of calling him that on his face.
Prosenjit is fair, though. He refuses to accept the legal papers of the house that he lives in until he pays off the whole money. This, when the owner actually insits on giving the papers because he is going abroad.
Prosenjit is also the self-appointed protector of his sisters and all suitors are terrified of him.
The lover of one of the sisters gets a beating for sneaking into Prosenjit's house to meet his girlfriend when Prosenjit was not home. Prosenjit even beats up the boy's father when he tries to support his son.
The suitors are not always that innocent.
One of them is Shankar, the brother of the villain Kalubabu who had framed Prosenjit's father. And these people are not in good terms with Prosenjit either because Prosenjit had sent Kalubabu to jail after discovering that at his petrol pump, they mixed kerosene with petrol.
To complicate things, Ranjit Mallik comes back from jail.
The storyline is clumsy, and is a lame copy of the Hindi film, Krodh. The lyrics for the songs with bad music are abominable and the acting is generally bad.
And the question returns to haunt me, as existential ones always do. Why are such films made?