Kalpurush: Do we have free will in a deterministic reality?

It's not very common in Bangladesh's visual media for issues concerning inner questions of life like free will, spirituality, and determinism to be jotted into a single story so that it succeeds in connecting to the popular audience. After watching Kalpurush, I feel that writer and director Salzar Rahman, in his very first web series, did a perfect job of building that rapport with the audience through a compelling story of a murder mystery.

Kalpurush is a story where time emerges as a character and makes us ask whether we have any human agency in a deterministic world or to what extent we have it.

The story starts with a murder happening at Dhanmondi Lake in December. The victim is a girl named Faria. The authority recruits Detective Miraj to solve the murder case. In his personal life, Miraj is suffering from marital issues, issues concerning his own identity, peer pressure from his competitor Jahangir in the office, and so many other issues.

Eventually, the subsequent events unfold, driving Miraj into the unseen world, where the case enters the realm of the supernatural, where he questions his presuppositions of reality and even questions his sanity at the end of the story.

Special credit must be given to Film Syndicate for choosing a location that captures the story's spirit. Kalpurush makes the viewers question reality as they observe it with the naked eye.

The story talks about consciousness not being bounded by time and space, which ultimately indicates a spiritual dimension beyond human comprehension. Also, it makes the audience ask how to perceive and cope with the irony that life is primarily deterministic. If anything happens for once in this universe, that can be observed but never be changed.

Apart from the philosophy of time, there has been an indication of the present situation of urban life in different story sequences. We live in a time when a person comes to know that her friend is dead and it was a murder and still replies to the police that she will meet the police after her office hours.

We live in a time when the completion of any case is more important than the case being solved. And, lastly, who could deny the bizarre situation created by mass media where questions are asked to provoke any person to get a controversial reply from him?

The scriptwriting was well established. However, the formal conversation in the police station could have been more spontaneous rather than too formal. There could be a brief background of Shehzad, brilliantly played by Chanchal Chowdhury, because all that was told about him in the story is that he is interested in Ayurveda and supernatural stuff.

However, the script should have addressed what he used to do before this profession or how he obtained that many books from the Dhaka University library. Conversations concerning time and determinism sometimes became almost academic, with so many English terms, which made the audience too conscious of the philosophy rather than emotionally connecting to the story.

The colour grading of Kalpurush created a perfect vibe of mystery on the screen. Adeep Singh Manki's sound design kept track of the audit and focused on the content. Avishek Banerjee, in his usual style, gripped the audience with the background score throughout the web series.

From the art direction perspective, the depiction of Shehzad's working place became over the top. Barkat Hossain Polash's cinematography aligned with each scene's tone. Lastly, Elita Karim's vocals in the song 'Mahakal' at the end of the series created a sense of relief in the audience after watching such a mysterious story.

In the case of acting, is there anyone in this series who misbehaved? There was none. FR Nayem's gaining weight for his role shows his commitment to his craft.

Whatever is said, praising Chanchal Chowdhury's acting would need more. Better not to try. Jayanta Chattopadhyay, Tanzika Amin, Rezwan Parvez, and Imtiaz Barshon all played respectable roles up to the mark. When I first saw the trailer for Kalpurush, I thought it would be a Bengali version of True Detective. I was proven wrong. I want to be proven wrong in the future, too, with the upcoming works of Film Syndicate!

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