Professor Shonku O El Dorado trailer: Underwhelming adaption of Satyajit Ray's creation

The trailer of Sandip Ray’s upcoming film Professor Shonku O El Dorado (2019) presents the glimpse of a rather underwhelming adaptation of the literary creation, originally conceived by Satyajit Ray. Not only the look has failed to capture the charm of an out of the world ambience presented in the stories of Shonku, but Dhritiman Chatterjee as a rather ‘suave’ Trilokeswar Shanku fails to make an impression as well.

Professor Shonku remains to be one of most iconic creations by Ray because of his vision of a world, which is far beyond the normal humane perception. Not only Shonku’s inventions are unique and funny but his laboratory in Giridih, the places he travels to and the encounters he experiences, were written with the objective of leaving the readers awestruck with its innovative approach.

Sadly, the trailer of Sandip’s film offers none. The anticipation for the film perhaps begins to lower with Chatterjee’s introductory narration itself. The cinematography seems to be one of the big budget mainstream Bengali films and the special effects are too amateurish.

Inspired from the story Nokur Babu O El Dorado, the film features Subhasish Mukherjee as Nokur Babu, a clairvoyant, who arrives at Shonku’s laboratory and informs him about some impending dangers in Sau Paulo, Brazil.

The film has been shot in various locations of the Amazon forest, yet it fails to recreate the bone-chilling atmosphere of the story. Evidently, the director as well as the technicians rather chose the safest routes to approach the story, which is perhaps going to ruin the imagination of numerous Professor Shonku lovers.

Professor Shonku O El Dorado is slated for release on this Christmas.