Perhaps there are some well-intentioned civilians who entered politics and whose experience was socially beneficial and helped improve their personal character, but there are little or no such people in the film. This balance remains the same in “Master,” a story about the corruption of power over a weak Bangladeshi politician, with relatively few surprises in the story. But Rezwan Shahryar Sumit’s films remain interesting for both their regional specificity and universal similarities. The film is an eye-opening look at the country’s institutional structure with little international screen time, an outdated story designed to evoke anger against the machine in local and international audiences alike.
To that end, Masters’ victory over the more prestigious and prestigious competitions at Rotterdam’s Big Screen Competition (a section dedicated to more audience-oriented world films) bodes well for future distribution and streaming prospects, with even more festival bookings guaranteed. Less intimate and more expansive than Sumit’s gently promising 2020 debut, The Salt in Our Waters, this film proves the writer-director to be a filmmaker with solid formal guarantees and transnational ambitions.
Nasir Uddin Khan plays Jahil, a history teacher at a high school in the small rural town of Mohoganj who is popular with both students and the general public.While playing a strong and popular authority, he gradually falls into nervous self-doubt. He is assigned to give a passionate lesson on the corrupting effects of British colonial rule in a separate classroom for boys and girls, but is confused by the scuffle of reporters trying to catch his performance. That’s because he turns out to be running for his district’s chairmanship (a kind of mayoral position, as explained in the opening title card that describes Bangladesh’s political hierarchy), running an unusually liberal campaign emphasizing women’s rights and improving educational facilities.
Jahil’s socialist ideals have proven popular in disadvantaged parts of the country, where residents feel far removed both geographically and from the hearts of government officials in the capital, Dhaka. Buoyed by a relatable familial image and with the support of his patient wife Jana (Zakia Bari Mamo) and young son, he secures an easy victory and ends his career as a teacher, but hopes to bring the values he developed as an educator to the local government. It doesn’t take long for him to realize his naivety.
If Jahil is not prepared for the intensity of his new position, where his clean approach will be immediately threatened by local criminals and charlatans, there is little sense of what kind of sharks await him in the world of politics. The most important of the latter is an unknown UNO (Upazila Nirbahi official) from his region. He is a cunning mid-level bureaucrat who presents himself as a direct descendant of Jahir to the big shots, and with a disarming, megawatt smile, relentlessly pulls him into position.
Brilliantly played by Azmeri Haq Badon (the charming star of Bangladesh’s Cannes-bound film Rehana a few years ago), she is the film’s most fascinating and richly drawn character, not a full-fledged villain but a woman who has learned the moral compromises necessary to gain authority in a patriarchal society. Meanwhile, as Jahil’s marriage and family life disintegrate under the pressures of his new job, “The Master” stands out for its examination of a male politician primarily through his relationships with women, which nearly undermines the feminist promises of his early campaign.
These nuances give Master’s first half a sense of texture and tension, but the screenplay, co-directed by Sabibir Hossein Shovon, becomes less subtle as it progresses, accelerating Jahir’s disillusionment and depravity, while the bright pastels of Tuhin Tamijul’s lens betray little of his darkening soul. His cause finally hits a snag when UNO presses his allies with a proposal to build a luxury hotel on the forested outskirts of town, which would require the demolition of the current homeless enclave. “You’re a history teacher, but you’ve learned very little from the past,” Jharna scolds, an irony perhaps best left unspoken in the film.
