Review: ‘Padatik’ is a half-done portrait of the iconic director Mrinal Sen

Bengali director Srijit Mukherji’s Padatik is named after one of the most well-regarded movies by his subject, the director Mrinal Sen. Mukherji’s Padatik (The Foot Soldier) suggests that the acclaimed filmmaker and his films were inseparable. Like the fictional character played by Dhritman Chatterjee in Sen’s 1973 classic, the Mrinal Sen conjured up by Mukherji is curious, combative, ideologically motivated and a fighter all the way through.

Mukherji’s Padatik was released in cinemas in 2024. Padatik is now being streamed on Zee5.

Filmed mostly in black and white by cinematographer Indranath Marick, Padatik is less of a biopic and more of a personal take on Sen’s lengthy life and career. Sen died in 2018 at the age of 95. His final film was Amar Bhuvan in 2002.

Mukherji’s Padatik reconstructs Sen’s life and career through key incidents. These include his early struggles to become a director, the near-destitution faced by him and his wife Geeta (Aishani Dey and Monami Ghosh), the intellectual ferment that produced Sen and to which he contributed equally.

Padatik opens on a lively note. Korak Samantha, who plays Sen as a young man, directly addresses the camera, musing about how Mukherji (who makes a cameo) is going to tackle Sen’s disinterest in nostalgia. Later in the narrative, Bangladeshi actor Chanchal Chowdhury, who plays the older Sen, wonders whether...

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