Byomkesh Bakshi is the best known detective hero from Bengali literature, and Satyajit Ray is a legendary director, considered by some to be one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. So Chiriyakhana (1967), featuring Bakshi and directed by Ray, has to be good, right?
It starts with a song. Wealthy businessman and retired judge Nishanath Sen (Sushil Majumber) overhears a melody that he remembers form a movie that he watched years ago. He wants to know the name of the song, the movie it came from, and the actress and singer, and since Google hasn't been invented yet he turns to the famous detective Byomkesh Bakshi (Uttam Kumar). Because the detective business has been slow, Bakshi and Ajit (Shailen Mukherjee) happily accept the job, and also accept Sen's invitation to visit his estate and meet the eccentrics and reformed criminals living there.
Bakshi visits a film expert and learns the details that Sen wanted. Most importantly, he learns that the song was sung by the actress, Sunaina, who was accused of murdering the producer's son and vanished soon afterwards. He visits Sen's estate disguised as a Japanese horticulturalist (for reasons) to report his findings, and learns Sen's true motive for contacting him: Sen suspects that Sunaina is living on his estate in disguise. Byomkesh agrees to help.
That night, Sen calls Byomkesh to tell him that he;'s discovered something very important that he can't reveal over the phone, and Byomkesh should return to the estate as himself so he can tell him. However, Sen is murdered by an unknown assailant before the end of the phone call.
The next day, the police call upon the famous detective Byomkesh Bakshi to help solve the murder of retired judge Nishanath Sen. They don't know that Byomkesh knew Sen, let alone that he'd been to the estate before, so he has a little fun showing off his deductive skills by dramatically revealing things that he already knows, but soon he's hard at work trying to figure out which of the estate's residents is a killer, just in time for the second murder.
Some of the more recent Byomkesh Bakshi movies have embraced a mix of pulp and noir tropes, with Byomkesh engaging in daring chases and meeting sultry femmes fatale. Not this time. Byomkesh and Ajit drink coffee and discuss love and literature while sifting through clues. It's as much Agatha Christie as it is Arthur Conan Doyle, though the movie does have some fun with the Holmes influences, as multiple characters point out that Byomkesh and his faithful biographer bear more than a passing resemblance to a certain famous detective duo.
The movie is smart, but maybe too slow and stylish; the opening scene, in which Byomkesh answers a wrong number while the camera pans around the room to showcase the objects he's picked up on his many adventures sets the pace, and it's not a terribly quick pace. And I'm not sure the reveal of the killer's motives quite holds together. While the movie might meander, though, it looks fantastic, and Uttam Kumar's performance was good enough to earn the first ever National Film Award for Best Actor.
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