Feluda rahasya: Conundrum of the frequent casting changes

This is one rahasya case Feluda himself would hate to take up. How and why did we end up with half a dozen actors as Feluda in a span of just eight years? With Indraneil Sengupta taking a bow as the affable Bengali sleuth in Sandip Ray’s new Feluda adventure Hatyapuri, he has added to the conundrum of multiple directors casting multiple actors in the role. Sengupta follows Sabyasachi Chakraborty, Abir Chatterjee, Parambrata Chattopadhyay and Tota Roy Chowdhury, besides a foray by Bangladeshi star Ahmed Rubel as the popular character, which was first popularised by the late thespian Soumita Chattopadhyay in the Satyajit Ray-directed Sonar Kella and Joy Baba Felunath. The plot also thickens because there is no guarantee that the next Feluda film or series won’t toss up yet another fresh face.

A quick recap first, of the current casting conundrum around Bangla fiction’s beloved detective. The Sengupta-starrer Hatyapuri, titled The House Of Death in English, opened in the Christmas weekend of 2022, which means the film has released within a few months of Srijit Mukherji’s series Feludar Goyendagiri that premiered on OTT in June, casting Tota Roy Chowdhury as the titular sleuth. This was the second Feluda collaboration between Mukherji and Roy Chowdhury, after their 2020 series Feluda Pherot.

Although movies and web series are different media, two different actors as Feluda — or private detective Pradosh Chandra Mitter — within the span of six months in different productions has left the fans bemused. After all, Feluda as interpreted on screen, irrespective of the format and who makes them, have creatively come to comprise a common sub-genre that faithfully sticks to the template set by late legend Satyajit Ray in his written works.

For Sengupta in Hatyapuri, the fallout of the latest casting makeover has not surprisingly been comparison with earlier Feluda actors, particularly Roy Chowdhury who, many fans feel, is more by-the-book in appearance and screen persona. Sengupta’s Feluda on the other hand looks unlike what Satyajit Ray sketched in his books. His languid mannerism and style of interpreting the character have also been noted to be different. While puritans feel this is an unnecessary move away from the vintage Feluda, many others don’t mind. They point at Daniel Craig’s James Bond, radically different than what novelist Ian Fleming imagined in his espionage novels, and yet no less in impact. Besides, in an era when Feluda uses a cellphone and his buddy Lalmohan Ganguly trades his green Ambassador for a Santro, tweaks in the Feluda prototype are perhaps acceptable.

The problem is not with Sengupta or the comparisons he draws with Roy Chowdhury, it lies elsewhere. For Feluda fans, frequent changes in screen personality that naturally comes with each new actor have started affecting the sense of continuity. Although he did just two films as Feluda, the late Soumitra Chattopadhyay set the bar high for subsequent actors playing out the role. Sabyasachi Chakraborty was next in line, and the longest-serving Feluda — for two decades. He lent characteristic gravitas to Feluda. While the character hasn’t changed drastically over the years, every new actor has tried adding a new detail to Feluda.

The casting of Sengupta has happened at a time when the audience was still coming to terms with the frequent casting changes of the past. In 2014, Abir Chatterjee stepped into Feluda’s boots for Badshahi Angti, after Sabyasachi Chakraborty had essayed the role in over a dozen films on screens big and small from the nineties to the 2010s. Chakraborty’s run ended with Royal Bengal Rahashya in 2011 and just when the audience thought they had found their new Feluda in Abir Chatterjee, it was time for a new twist in the tale. The actor’s Feluda sojourn ended after one film despite the success of Badshahi Angti, reportedly because he had also committed to playing Byomkesh Bakshi on screen. Chatterjee’s Feluda film has since then been marketed as a “standalone reboot” although the fancy jargon seems to have little relevance because Badshahi Angti, just as Royal Bengal Rahashya, was directed by Sandip Ray and for the same producers. The confusion over the actor playing Feluda would only double after this, with Chakraborty returning to play the role one last time in Ray’s 2016 production, Double Feluda. Over the past six years since then, we have also seen Parambrata Chattopadhyay essay the role in a self-directed streaming series titled Feluda, over three seasons beginning 2017. The veteran Bangladeshi actor Ahmed Rubel had a go at the character, too, in Tauquir Ahmed’s 2019 TV and web series Noyon Rahasya, also available to viewers here.

It isn’t just about Feluda. With each casting of Feluda, his sidekicks are overhauled, too. Feluda’s cousin Topshe and their companion of various capers Lalmohan Ganguly, or the bestseller writer Jatayu, also see a change of face on screen. Indraneil Sengupta as Feluda in Hatyapuri gets the company of Ayush Das as Topshe while actor-filmmaker Abhijit Guha plays Lalmohan Ganguly. An important aspect for Feluda to click on screen is the buddy bonding he shares with Topshe and Lalmohan babu. While Feluda fanatics would doubtless root for Santosh Dutta’s Lalmohan babu and Siddartha Chatterjee as Topshe in the Satyajit Ray directorials, most other actors comprising the trio for various Feludas on screen have done a great job. In Hatyapuri, as Topshe for the first time, Das visibly struggles to get into the skin of his role while Guha as Lalmohan babu is likeable. The chemistry that the trio shares could have been better.

Perhaps the Ray household needs to maintain tighter grip on filmmaking rights of Feluda stories, and make it imperative to preserve uniformity across film and series of the franchise. Consider the James Bond films — the original parent company Eon Productions still wields control over every production being launched. Eon was primarily launched by Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman to produce Bond thrillers, which the company has been doing since the first release Dr No in 1962. Since then, Saltzman sold his share to United Artists, but Broccoli continued being the ‘man behind Bond’ and subsequently passed all rights to his daughter Barbara Broccoli and stepson Michael G. Wilson. Today, Eon continues as makers of Bond flicks, as an affiliate of Danjaq, a holding company owned by the Broccoli family.

Distinguished as a director that he is, Sandip Ray is perhaps not so keen as a businessman. He continues to dole out Feluda copyright. About six years ago, news did the rounds that Ray had sold rights of Sonar Kella to Parineeta director Pradeep Sarkar, to make a thriller based on the Satyajit Ray pop classic. There has been no further update on the project.

Vinayak Chakravorty is a critic, columnist and film journalist based in Delhi-NCR.

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