Soulless detective film: Joi Baba Felunath (1979)
I rubbed my hands in anticipation as I sat down to watch Joi Baba Felunath (1979).
That reaction itself was unfair, in hindsight. Sonar Kella had set the bar high. The sense of adventure, the danger, the childlike wonder mixed with real menace - Ray had given us a Feluda film that felt alive. So when Joi Baba Felunath ended, my feeling wasn’t anger or dismissal. It was disappointment.
Don’t mistake me, this is a good detective film. Competently made. Clean. Watchable. But coming after Sonar Kella, it feels like a step down. And the reason, I think, is simple: the film has no soul. It works, but it doesn’t breathe. Everything feels a little too mechanical.
Ray takes us back to Benaras - an evocative choice. This is, after all, the city he had earlier etched so memorably in Pather Panchali. Benaras should have been a character in itself: layered, mysterious, sacred and corrupt all at once. But here, it remains mostly a backdrop. Beautiful to look at, yes, but dramatically underused.
The bigger problem, though, is stakes. A detective story usually works in one of two ways. Either:
- You don’t know who did it, and the thrill is in the chase.
- You know who did it, and the pleasure is in how they are caught.
Joi Baba Felunath sits awkwardly in between. We more or less know where things are headed, but the journey doesn’t generate enough tension. The danger never quite feels real. There’s no urgency pushing the story forward, no tightening of the screws.
This brings me to the trio: Feluda, Lal Mohan Ganguly (Jatayu), and Tapesh. They are still immensely likable. Soumitra Chatterjee is, as always, assured. Jatayu has his lines, his bluster, his humour. Tapesh is observant and eager. And yet… something is missing. The innocence.
In Sonar Kella, there was a sense that these three were genuinely stepping into the unknown. The world felt unpredictable. Here, everything feels convenient. They arrive in Benaras for a holiday, and—almost obligingly—a case materialises. Clues fall into place. Encounters happen just when they need to. It’s all a bit too neat.
Even Feluda’s brilliance feels pre-programmed rather than discovered. Instead of watching a mind at work, we’re watching a solution unfold exactly as planned. The joy of deduction—of being surprised—is muted.
Then there’s the theme of exposing godmen. Ray was deeply sceptical of blind faith, and rightly so. But by 1979, this idea had already been explored powerfully—and more disturbingly—in his own work. Devi remains a chilling examination of religious hysteria. Mahapurush skewers the same world with biting satire and comic precision.
Compared to those films, Joi Baba Felunath feels tame. The godman here is a plot device more than a moral problem. He exists to be unmasked, not interrogated. There’s no lingering discomfort, no aftertaste. Once the mask comes off, the film moves on.
Perhaps that’s the crux of my disappointment. Ray the filmmaker is present everywhere - his control, his intelligence, his craft. But Ray the human observer, the one who lets silences speak and contradictions fester, feels oddly distant. The film does what it sets out to do, but it doesn’t stay with you.
I didn’t walk away humming the mood of the film the way I did after Sonar Kella. I didn’t replay scenes in my head. I didn’t feel that ache of having left a world behind.
Joi Baba Felunath is efficient. Polished. Respectable. But Feluda, at his best, deserves more than efficiency. He deserves wonder. He deserves risk. He deserves a story that feels discovered rather than assembled. And perhaps that’s why, for all its merits, this film feels like a letdown—especially when you know what Ray was capable of, and had already shown us.
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