There is a scene in this film where Mrinal Sen gets a call from the Cannes jury, requesting him to shift his film Kandahar (The Ruins) from the Competition Section since Satyajit Ray’s Ghare Baire (The Home and The World) might be his last film, so they wanted to give him a fitting farewell.

This sequence is enough to encapsulate Sen's legacy, how he was always regarded as the boy with the silver medal in the history of Bengali Cinema, and how he always remained the Buzz Aldrin to Neil Armstrong. Often, we tend to forget the impact of the films of Mrinal Sen, and the brute political nature his filmography possessed always. His voice never ceased to the lines of mediocrity and popularity, an image of his stubbornness, which created a personification of how art surpasses the limits of creativity and shapes your personal life, bringing meaning to turmoil and conflicts in reel and real life.

Srijit Mukherji’s Padatik, the biopic-ification of Sen’s life, molded from his works only, goes on an all-over-the-radar treatment right from the beginning, gets jarred here and there a bit due to the juxtaposition of his early days designed in the cast of his political works like Chorus and Calcutta 71, and interviewing the actors playing Sen’s character, done effortlessly by Korak Samanta for the younger version, and Chanchal Chowdhury for the later days, a la Interview (1971).

The socio-political commentary of this biopic, dwelling along the lines of Ritwik Ghatak’s biopic, Meghe Dhaka Tara (2013), stirs a strong concoction of reality and fiction. The film has blossomed into a full-fledged love letter to his legacy, simultaneously becoming a deep dive into his psychology, much unlike another tribute to Sen released earlier this year, Chaalchitra Ekhon, directed by Anjan Dutt, reciting his debut experience as an actorand his relationship with Sen, in a much melancholic manner. Although the anecdotes remain intact, the soul in the narration has taken a different shape this time, more of an embodiment of his commentary.

The only thing that holds the film from being another feather in the cap of fame is the overindulgence of facts and information. Creating a story that appeals to a universal stratum with emotions as a base and painting reality in disguise is one thing, making a docu-drama feature with a niche appeal to audiences who have admired Sen’s work, or have little to no knowledge of it, yet are eager to know is another thing. Srijit Mukherji chose the latter option, reminiscing a similar iteration of what he made from Netaji’s disappearance in Gumnaami (2018), with constant jumps between a court case and the events leading to the infamous plane crash.

Not to mention, bringing back Jeetu Kamal as Satyajit Ray from Anik Dutta’s Aparajito (2022), making a cinematic universe gimmick in real life events as well was a sheer crowd-pulling attempt that will please cinephiles only to an extent. Nurturing that crossover was all show and no go in the end after all.