Review of The Scavenger Of Dreams: From Inanimate to Human Cast-Offs

The Scavenger of Dreams opened on Thursday at the 28th Busan International Film Festival

Suman Ghosh, filmmaker and professor of Economics at Florida Atlantic University, forays into the rarely-seen world of Kolkata’s garbage collectors, members of an unorganised labour sector who eke out a living on the outskirts of a sprawling city that only deigns to throw crumbs at them, in The Scavenger of Dreams, his ninth narrative feature.

The Hindi-language drama, which premiered on Thursday in the “Window on Asian Cinema” section of the 28th Busan International Film Festival (BIFF, October 4-13, 2023), is a harrowing portrait of a migrant couple who live in a slum alongside a pond that stands in stark contrast to the squalor around it.

Despite their despondent surroundings, the couple discovers founts of pure imaginations in discarded items of fantasy and want. However, Ghosh’s sombre screenplay does not shy away from acknowledging that actual life is harsh for individuals living on the outskirts of metropolitan sprawls, where growth patterns and the process of mechanisation only work to render them increasingly useless.

In the 2019 Busan programming, Ghosh has another Hindi film, Aadhaar, starring Vineet Kumar Singh as the first guy in his village to volunteer for an Aadhaar card. Because that title did not pass censorship, its publication is still on hold.

The Scavenger of Dreams, produced by the director’s Miami-based firm, Maya Leela Films, in cooperation with Kolkata’s CFP Films, began as a selection of BIFF’s Asian Project Market the same year Aadhaar premiered in Busan.

It empathetically and realistically conveys the struggles of a group of marginalised people, remaining faithful to the world it depicts throughout. The majority of the amateur cast members in The Scavenger of Dreams are real-life trash collectors, with a few professional actors filling out the rest.

The Scavenger of Dreams is the first Bengali film since Mrinal Sen’s Parashuram and Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s Neem Annapurna (both made in 1979) to depict the effects of displacement and deprivation with such raw power and uncompromising bluntness. It is a starkly realistic portrait of lives that hang by a thread that is forever on the verge of snapping.

The focus of the movie is a pair of hopelessly poor people named Shona (Sudipta Chakraborty) and Birju (Shardul Bhardwaj), who are barely able to get by on the low income of the latter. In upmarket neighbourhoods, Birju goes from house to home collecting the trash that the locals generate. The couple has a daughter named Munni (Munni Mallick), who attends school.

Birju, a contract municipal worker who rounds up the garbage the city produces every morning with a handcart, is sometimes referred to as a kachra aadmi and sometimes compared to a beggar. He is never let to forget that he is an outsider. He is accompanied by his wife.

The folks they help typically do not share the duo’s aspirations for a better life. While focusing on Shona and Birju’s hardscrabble existence, the script also highlights the insensitivity that Birju’s snide bosses and the wealthy homeowners whose homes they pick up domestic waste from on a regular basis force them to deal with.

At the beginning of the movie, the couple has just recovered from an epidemic that lasted for two years, draining their finances and forcing them to remove Munni from school because she couldn’t afford to take online classes.

The girl has only been back to school for a few days, and the mother is aware that she needs to make up for missed time. Shona tells Munni to concentrate on his or her schoolwork. Birju puts the girl’s ability to count to the test in an early scene. She completes a 20-count. She skips over 15 and goes from 14 to 16. Birju perseveres till she achieves success.

Munni struggles to memorise a nursery rhyme in another scenario. Her frightened mother phones a more experienced student and asks her to assist her daughter in learning the lines.

Although they may be in a rut and have been reduced to nothing by poverty, neither Birju nor Shona are prepared to give up on their desire to provide for their daughter’s education.

Unfortunately, individuals have little control over their destiny. When Birju’s employers decide to switch from handcarts to battery-powered geared vans, he is put in an awkward situation. He is not able to operate a motor vehicle. His situation is made significantly worse. Pauperization’s constant threat is staring him in the face.

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Not that their lives are entirely devoid of joy. Moments that are worth savouring happen by accident. Shona receives a piece of birthday cake from a woman. Munni enjoys digging into. One time, Birju discovers a lighter in a trash bag, which causes him considerable excitement.

Once more, he finds a used deodorant spray and brings it home. Shona can see that the container is empty, but Birju maintains that there is still something within. That can be seen as a metaphor for their situation. The best they can do is to never cease fostering the idea that there might be a way out.

As the pair gets ready for yet another day of their lives, The Scavenger of Dreams focuses on them. All they can claim as their own is their shanty and its foul surroundings. No false hope is shown in the movie. However, unless their hands are forced, Shona and Birju don’t display any signs of ever giving up on their search for happiness. 

The area around their home is filled with outdated items. They include a toy rocking chair, a cart, an exercise bike, and a bicycle.

Until the camera focuses on an elderly man (Nemai Ghosh) whose daughter Asha (Asha Kumari) has fled an abusive husband and harsh in-laws to start anew as a delivery woman, director of photography Ravi Kiran Ayyagari pans past these unnecessary items.

In the story The Scavenger of Dreams, leftovers include both inanimate objects and living creatures. Those that can breathe, like Shona and Birju, hold onto their goals in spite of how unreachable they may be. They carry broken, used items home, and Shona makes up stories for her kid based on those stories.

Although it is clear that the director wants things to go well for his protagonists, his extraordinary cinematic essay avoids selling pipe fantasies. The Scavenger of Dreams gains power and relevance from Sudipta Chakraborty and Shardul Bhardwaj’s beautifully believable pivotal performances and persistent rejection of the fantastical.

Cast:

Sudipta Chakraborty, Nemai Ghosh, and Shardul Bhardwaj

Director:

Ghosh, Suman