Hirak Rajar Deshe (1980): When a Film Tries Too Hard
I recently watched Hirak Rajar Deshe (1980).
I admired it. I respected it.
But I wasn’t blown away.
And that bothered me—because Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne still enchants me every single time.
So I kept asking myself: Why?
Not in an academic way. Just as a viewer who knows when a film holds him gently, and when it grips a little too tightly.
One lands. The other tries.
Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne floats through its story. It never seems in a hurry to arrive anywhere. Magic appears, songs erupt, kingdoms change hands—and yet nothing feels forced. The film doesn’t lean into meaning. It trusts that meaning will emerge.
Hirak Rajar Deshe tries hard. It leans into satire, into warning, into urgency. You can feel the forward motion of intention. The film wants you to see what it is saying. It wants to be understood.
And that leaning, however justified, creates weight.
Enchantment needs lightness. This film carries purpose like a visible load.
Innocence has been spent
In Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne, Goopy and Bagha are innocent in the purest sense. They don’t understand power, cruelty, or manipulation. They stumble into goodness. Their ignorance is not a flaw, it’s the engine of the film’s joy.
In Hirak Rajar Deshe, innocence is already gone. The world is hostile. Power is grotesque. Resistance is necessary. Goopy and Bagha are no longer drifting through a fairy tale, they are participating in a struggle.
Nothing wrong with that. But something is lost in the process.
Once characters know too much, the film knows too much. Once the film knows too much, it stops surprising you.
Satire keeps tapping you on the shoulder
The satire in Hirak Rajar Deshe is not novel.
The slogans repeat. The brainwashing machine explains itself. The villain announces his villainy loudly, almost proudly.
You laugh, but you’re also alert.
Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne never keeps you alert. It invites surrender.
Fantasy works best when it doesn’t ask you to stay awake. When it lets you drift. Satire, by its nature, doesn’t drift. It pokes. It nudges. It reminds you why it exists.
That reminder breaks the spell.
Characters feel lived-in vs assigned
In Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne, characters feel like people who existed before the film began and will exist after it ends. They are foolish, gentle, ridiculous, human.
In Hirak Rajar Deshe, many characters feel more like functions: the tyrant, the brainwashed subject, the enlightened dissenter.
They work. They do their job. But they don’t linger.
When characters are carrying ideas, they stop surprising us. And surprise is essential to enchantment.
The film wants something from you
Hirak Rajar Deshe wants something from you. Recognition. Understanding. Agreement. Perhaps even urgency.
That want comes from a deeply moral place. The film had reason to exist. It had something important to say. Ray wasn’t being clever, he was being responsible.
But cinema is unforgiving.
The moment a film needs to say something, it risks losing the ease that allows viewers to fall in love with it.
Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne doesn’t need you. It welcomes you.
Hirak Rajar Deshe needs you to listen.
What I think
I don’t think Hirak Rajar Deshe is a lesser film. I think it chooses responsibility over rapture.
Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne enchants because it trusts magic.
Hirak Rajar Deshe unsettles because it trusts warning.
Both are Ray. But only one lets me forget the world for a while.
Comments