Manikbabur Megh: The Cloud & the Man

It is difficult to put Manikbabur Megh: The Cloud & the Man into a cinematic typecast, perhaps because the film keeps on expanding its premise as it progresses. The film begins as a black and white montage of the life of a man, Manik (Chandan Sen), who takes care of his father and his plants, goes to work, takes tuitions, and eats and sleeps with unwavering regularity. But his mundane life is suddenly disrupted when his dementia-ridden father (Nimai Ghosh) passes away. His friend Kali (Debesh Raychowdhury) helps him cope, but the intensely private Manik’s grief is palpable. In the meantime, he starts to imagine a cloud giving him shade and following him around, and while there’s nothing physically wrong with him, his psyche slowly starts to care for the cloud.
Director Abhinandan Banerjee sets a leisurely pace to the film that slowly paints the cityscape and its various barriers and patterns – from train tracks to shut windows. The film is shot in black and white to increase the stoic numbness that engulfs Manik slowly, over the years, forcing him to resign to a life of poverty-stricken sameness. The city is omnipresent in the story – even through the excellent background noise when he’s in his room. The narrow lanes and patterned windows that he walks by continually reminds the audience of his regulated life that makes him comfortably numb, until the cloud chases him out of his stupor and forces him to feel something, anything, and feel alive again.
Chandan Sen’s portrayal of Manik is almost too perfect – right from his unkempt hair and beard to his prolonged silence that speaks volumes. The film slowly draws a character sketch of a sensitive soul buried deep under the rubble of exhaustion and futility. Nimai Ghosh and Debesh Raychowdhury deliver excellent performances, while Bratya Basu as the doctor is a fine touch.
The sound and the cinematography are utilised with a great deal of thought to create a beautiful montage of the filth and waste the City of Joy has to offer. The director perhaps makes a compassionate comparison between that and the protagonist, holding on to fading memories till it’s time to let go. In that way, perhaps, Manikbabur Megh is an homage to the glorious mess of the city itself, where magic exists if one believes in it, even amidst seclusion and squalor.