
After watching the movie “Kagbeni”(directed by Bhusan Dahal), that was released in the year 2007, I came to the conclusion that the movie was really slow paced movie. It starts with the beautiful scenery from the various places like Jomsom, Marpha, Kagbeni and Syang. Besides that the movie fails to grab the audiences’ attraction as the story revolves around a small story related to the thought like “be careful of what you wish for”. For that the director has taken help from one of the short story, “The Monkey’s Paw” by WW Jacob. The 90 minutes movie revolves around the difficulties and problems that the people of that area have to face in order to survive. The story begins with Krishna (Nima Rumba) coming to a village to meet his childhood friend Ramesh (Saugat Malla) and Bishnu (Hanif Mohammed)from Malaysia after a long time. The story is that there is an super powered monkey’s paw, which has some real power to fulfill somebody’s wish. And that can be anyone who gets the paw. And if any other person uses it something bad happens to him/her or his/her family members or closed ones. In order to show the negative as well as positive impact of that paw, one after the other, the paw is used by the characters to whom that paw is not given. So, they are helpless and compelled to loose their life unknowingly. So if that paw solves one problem from one side, on the other hand it creates problem as well.
The movie fails to answer many questions of the audience. As a general audience I wanted to know what is the real impact of that paw? It didn’t answer that mystery girl’s role in the movie. Why does she appear in the movie time and again? To answer that questions we have to watch that movie carefully at least three times, which people don’t do it. We don’t have that much time to watch a movie thrice in order to get its general idea. It should have been made in a easy way. According to what I noticed in the movie is that it could have been much short. It shouldn’t have been elongated so much.
With lots of good part there are many other things which might make one feel this movie a bit boring. It is due to the frequent coming of the scenes in the middle of the story. The variation in the music sometime makes one feel amusing while the same music is considered irritating by one mass of people. The story is a bit complicated. Most of the viewers did not even understand the context and the story as a whole.
But considering things like in which context it was made, we have to give credit to the production team which went to such place where it was really difficult to shoot. Still they could give a movie like Kagbeni, which was an introductory movie to the real high definition digital movie. This movie turned out to be the milestone in a Nepali Movie Industry in terms of high definition digital format movie.
With reference to the articles and news that were published in the newspaper at that time, and from the source like www.kagbenithefilm.com and www.wikipedia.com I came to the conclusion that it was an average movie which could not attract much audience from the rural areas of Nepal. It was completely made for the people of urban areas and that too Kathmandu valley. So it was not a very successful movie. Still it has many good things to be considered.
Some of the Nepali Critics commented about this movie as following.
1. The Himalayan Times called over it "a benchmark for Nepali films."
2. Kunda Dixit of Nepali Times called it "superbly crafted, seductively acted, meticulously directed,"
3. Bishnu Gautam of The Rising Nepal says “"No longer will we have to be embarrassed about Nepali movies. It is not easy to bring out an impressive film with new faces, but Bhusan did it brilliantly. All the three protagonists, Saugat Malla (Ramesh), Deeya Maskey (Tara) and Nima Rumba (Krishna) are new faces but nowhere in Kagbeni are they seen as beginner. It provides you with the taste of western films including the love scenes, which are free from vulgarities.”