Jagte Raho DVD

An ironic, socialist comedy-thriller, Jagte Raho is an episodic noir that exposes the behind-closed-doors perversions of Calcutta’s upper-middle class. Kapoor plays a tramp who wanders into an upscale apartment building, where he witnesses a veritable carnival of evildoing as he moves from flat to flat; he is ultimately forced to wear a barrel (Hollywood hobo-style) to evade the police. The film was directed (or co-directed with Kapoor, as most insist) by Sombhu Mitra and Amit Maitra, two key progressive figures in the Calcutta theatre scene, and its storytelling rhythms—a more stately pace, an emphasis on close-ups, a more “natural” soundtrack and an emulation of literary models in terms of its structure and narration— bear a distinct similarity to the Bengali art film tradition familiar to Western viewers from the films of Satyajit Ray. This may help explain the film’s success in the West, where its winning of the Grand Prix at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival made it the first Indian film to take the top award at a Competition festival.