Satyajit Ray’s Classic Storytelling At Its Most Stunning
The Storyteller film is based on Satyajit Ray’s short story. It stars Paresh Rawal and Adil Hussain in crucial parts, but the stories portrayed in the film and the essence of storytelling enhance it.
The Storyteller Movie Review 2025: A Nostalgic Tribute to Satyajit Ray’s Legacy
In short
- The Storyteller is a rich and relaxing movie.
- Weaved with culture and knowledge, it allows you to breathe for a moment.
- The Storyteller is led by Paresh Rawal and Adil Hussain.
Two men, two starkly different worlds, linked by the dubiousness and beauty of the story. Anant Mahadevan’s The Storyteller appears to be a straightforward adaptation of a short story by maestro Satyajit Ray. Only with simmering highlights of many civilizations, ideas, and lifestyles.
In The Storyteller, Paresh Rawal plays a great Calcutta yarn spinner, while Adil Hussain is an entrepreneurial merchant. The film, with its unassuming simplicity, transports you to the by-lanes and most sacred nooks of Ray’s Calcutta – the yellow and red houses, the old balconies, the hand-pulled rickshaws, the busy fish market, and the city’s grandeur that comes alive during Durga Puja.
Tarini Bandhopadhyay resolves to leave the city and start a new life in Ahmedabad, unaware that his stories will not suffice. He misses the’maach’, Calcutta’s customs, and never agrees of the capitalist ways that Gujarat has adopted too quickly and far ahead of the rest of the country. In his first meeting with Garodia, he ignores his accomplishments, his lifestyle, and everything that defines him.
Garodia engages an elderly Tarini to treat his insomnia by telling him creative stories. In a really dramatic sequence, Rawal expresses a very constrained reaction of astonishment and pride when he learns that his stories are supposed to help this wealthy guy sleep. Surprise, because, really, who thinks like this? And pride, because his stories, which are too precious to be published, have already traveled a long way from Calcutta to Ahmedabad. His protagonists alternate between the huge tree in the lap of the Aravali hills and the pigeon deployed as a courier during World War II.
The Storyteller is like the first warm, sweet cup of tea on a winter morning, drank carefully as the sun breaks through the fog of dawn. Ray’s short stories are pleasant and rich, just like his other ones.
It is not their performances that keep you hooked. Rawal and Hussain are both experienced performers who never falter and are at ease with their performances. The montage of their chats and the gradual development of their reactions take the cake. The Storyteller may appear slow to a generation concerned with the clickity beat of life, yet immersing oneself in the film’s non-pacy vocabulary is a true leisure activity.
You are treated to an empty room before someone steps in, a full view of the tiny stairs before someone begins climbing them, and a wide vista of the verdant front yard before someone disturbs its tranquility. The Storyteller does not strive to break its silence, which makes it more captivating.
The Storyteller, currently streaming on Disney+Hotstar, exemplifies superb storytelling in all of its quaintness and simplicity. By the end, you feel rich and fulfilled. The Storyteller received 3.5 out of 5 stars.
