'Herbert', the eponymous film, trails in a slow, but minute, flight the life of the protagonist along with the city (Calcutta) he lives in touching down at several sensitively socio-cultural and socio-political spots on the body of both the city and autistic Herbert's mind. The city, too, along with the protagonist, becomes a character as its transformation from Calcutta to Kolkata, so to speak, is drawn with the eyelashes-brush of the savant-dimwit. Being orphaned at an early age, mistreated by his abusive cousin since then, being made to run errands for all and sundry, and consequently alienated, his chatter may be incoherent and chaotic, but, that too is the plight of the city of the 1970's when the Naxalite movement gathers momentum sucking many students into its fold. He, too, becomes an advocate, though passive, of Maoist Communism that he learns by rote from his nephew. In the mean time his chatter attains a reverential status with the impulsive support of his local boys and he starts a brisk business of communicating with the dead until a bureaucratic Rationalist Society intervenes with a threatening finger. Quite elusively, yet amazingly, as if in a daze, we feel the tone of the film change from the sepia of the past (60's) to the technicolour of the present (90's) and congruously morph the scenario of the city and the protagonist's restlessness – engendered by his misplaced intellect. Moving like a pendulum from past to present, the sequences from different time periods bring to the fore the eventful life of the city and its souls – both social and alienated.
The protagonist and his language cannot be understood with the aid of semiology. But his meaningless babble (for example 'Cat, bat, water, dog, fish') turns on the ignition of the lexicon-vehicle of meaninglessness that runs on every way of the city. In this mess the minuscule, but expanding, references to concrete defining meaningfulness that we find are 'Guerrilla Warfare', Carlos Marighella, Che Guevara, Karl Marx, Mao Zedong, Charu Mazundar, clips from 'Battleship Potemkin' and several other references. They tell upon the city and also give its accurate picture. The only thing that comes out as the pure essence of freedom and expression out of the debris of the decomposed city is the love interlude – Herbert's ephemeral relation with the next-door girl who casts a mesh of fascination on Herbert. After his death, the film gains a sudden velocity. The blast inside the incineration chamber is posthumously attributed to him for his supposed Maoist links. This changes all a priori held beliefs regarding Herbert Sarkar. He is no more a nincompoop; no more an alienated person; no more a neglected fellow growing up on the mercy of his relatives: but rather a man with hidden Maoist links; with innovative anti-establishment techniques; with wit extraordinaire who can blow up a crematorium even posthumously. Thus, the prediction of a disaster foretold, in Herbert's terms, follows from Chaplinesque idiosyncrasies to a dreaded and intelligent Naxalite doyen.
Quite magnificently, and staggeringly of course, the ghosts of the 1970's Naxalite Movement, quelled to extinction by the 'establishment', are resurrected with the aid of the man (Herbert) who communicates with the dead.
Directed by Suman Mukhopadhyay and adapted from Nabarun Bhattacharya's novella of the same name (winner of Sahitya Academy in 1997) the film 'Herbert' (too, winner of the Lankesh Debut Director Award) is a period piece of exquisite and classical proportions, in a nut-shell.
