Your Daily Dracula – Anirban Bhattacharya as Raktim, Dracula Sir (2020)
This Bengali film is an odd mix of psycho-drama, politics and the possible occult – it also uses a lot of vampire imagery.
In a brief prologue set in 1971, Communist Amol Shom (Anirban Bhattacharya), who has been tortured by police (they’ve pulled out his canine teeth), is taken into a field and ‘set free’, told to run towards China then shot in the back … his coat flapping a bit like a cape as he falls. Then the story picks up c 2020 and substitute teacher Raktim (also Bhattacharya) has a hard time maintaining discipline in class while holding a hankie over his mouth. Some brat has chalked ‘Dracula Sir’ on the blackboard and others wear paper fangs. Raktim’s life has been blighted by being born with Hammer Films-style vampire fangs … and being forced by the headmaster into taking an acting gig in a film, where he is dressed and made up as Dracula, doesn’t do anything for his mental health. He bites the lead actress as if compelled to act out on everyone’s fantasies about him, which gets him beaten up and unemployed … but he also has flashes of Amol’s troubled life and is drawn to the murdered revolutionary’s girlfriend/comrade Manjari (Mimi Chakraborty – one of the most glamorous Maoists in the movies), who hopes he’ll use his fangs to avenge the death of her lover.
Is Raktim the reincarnation of Amol, given extra teeth by karma to make up for the ones pulled by the oppressors? The film leaves that unclear, just as it doesn’t settle on being a drama about a misfit trying to have a normal life or a politically-charged thriller about lingering resentments from an earlier generation’s strife. Bhattacharya is rather a glum protagonist – but his situation is unique, almost a transplantation of George Romero’s Martin to a culture where the traditional vampire image isn’t particularly well-known. It’s on the slow side and everyone spends a lot of time being prettily agonised, but it’s beautifully-made and has bursts of quite startling bloodiness. Warning: there’s some upsetting actuality footage of whale slaughter – which Raktim looks at on his phone while obsessing over blood in water. Directed by Debaloy Bhattacharya, who also co-wrote with Kallol Lahiri.
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