Watching it after a month of its release gave me time to process the film better.

Before writing the review, I hesitated, thinking that there must already be many, so what newness would I bring? Roi Roi Binale has become the highest-grossing Assamese film in history.

It has made audiences cry and flock to the cinema halls in an unprecedented manner. What Zubeen Garg wanted to see in his lifetime has been made possible after his death. The French sociologist Émile Durkheim wrote about collective consciousness-a shared set of beliefs and its power in bringing people together.

Something similar is happening in Assam after the news of Zubeen Garg's death broke on 19 September 2025. People are still mourning his death, and many made it a point to watch his last cinematic journey out of respect and love.

But to my utter surprise, there are not many reviews or commentaries on the film. It made me think-what if critics and intellectuals are ignoring Zubeen Garg yet again, one last time? In the aftermath of his death, there have been a plethora of writings, podcasts, talk shows, etc., on Zubeen Garg. But, interestingly, there has been a lack of theorisation as well as a lack of intellectual curiosity about his contributions to popular culture and social life in Assam.

In contrast, there is very interesting academic research on similar figures like Shah Rukh Khan and Taylor Swift. In fact, we have to resort to YouTube videos and Instagram reels to verify what he may or may not have said.

This lack of theorisation and documented history is not limited to Zubeen Garg alone. It is, in fact, a marker of most social phenomena in the region. Thus, to write about the film itself is an attempt at recording a historical event.

Roi Roi Binale is, in many ways, Zubeen Garg's voice. The protagonist Raul's claim of being an artist who does not want to deal with money matters is a reflection of what we now know about the man. However, to survive in the competitive music industry, talent has to be managed, as Mou tells Raul.

To have the rights to your own songs too, money is needed-Neer tells Raul. Both Mou and Neer are part of the system-one as a manager and the other as a singer. People around him often deride Raul's idealistic, utopian views. The audience is told that being an artist is not enough to survive in the cutthroat, competitive music industry.

As a sociologist, I am thinking of Theodor Adorno and his theorisation of the culture industry-how industrial capitalism standardises art and reduces choice to an illusion. Raul and Neer's characters are reflections of what capitalism does to art and artists. Neer's insecurities, too, are rooted in this structure.

This resonates with what Zubeen Garg has said in many interviews about the corporatisation of music and his feelings about it. He had expressed disappointment and helplessness in the face of rising capitalist profit-orientedness. Art in such a context becomes a commodity.

The film is also beautifully able to bring out the tenderness of family and gender dynamics. Mou's family's portrayal illustrates what abusive marriages can do. Her mother's illness is reflective of her facing verbal and emotional abuse.

Her identity is erased in the marriage. At one point, she says, "I will become insane." Recent scientific research has highlighted how women are more prone to autoimmune diseases because of suppressed anger. Mou too says that "she has always lived in anxiety." Thus, these feelings and illnesses in the film are not coincidental. By choosing Raul as her partner, she breaks the generational cycle.

Personally, as a woman in her 30s, the film's commentary about women choosing an emotionally available man hit close to my heart. It was also refreshing to see the film break certain gendered stereotypes-Mou was encouraged to dream, believe in her dreams, and she embodied the role of a strong and independent woman.

Very interestingly, the film shows Raul losing his eyesight due to a bomb blast at his school at the age of seven.

A ghastly bomb blast by the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) in a school in Dhemaji had rocked Assam on Independence Day in 2004. It is yet again not a coincidence that Zubeen Garg was critical of the ULFA's actions at many points in his life. He had condemned "revolution at the cost of lives" during his lifetime.

In fact, insurgency and unrest are looming background themes in the film-shaping people's lives. Debo da, the person who shelters Raul in Guwahati-the city of dreams-had lost his wife and unborn child in the period when the Army had total impunity in the state. The flashback takes us back to Runumi, his pregnant wife raped by people in search of insurgents.

His debut directorial film, Tumi Mor Matho Mor, was centred on music. His last film as an actor, too, is centred around music. Roi Roi Binale is not just a film. It is a text bringing the two lives of Zubeen Garg together-the cinematic and the social. And for that reason alone, the film needs to be documented and remembered.

The author teaches at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati.

In his last conversation, Zubeen left Assam a portrait of his restless soul