Roi Roi Binale and the Cathartic Outpouring: Why Audiences Are Not Holding Back Their Tears

For any admirer of Zubeen Garg, watching Roi Roi Binale has become an experience that transcends cinema. The film’s fictional narrative is now tragically, inextricably intertwined with the haunting memory of the legendary singer and actor’s own life and his untimely death in Singapore on 19th September. No one could have imagined that this long-cherished dream project of Zubeen Garg would become his final offering to the public — a posthumous release that has ignited not just record-breaking box office numbers, but a profound, collective catharsis.

The commercial figures are staggering. This Rajesh Bhuyan-directed musical has achieved the biggest opening ever for an Assamese film, with theatre occupancy in major cities like Guwahati consistently hitting 96–99 percent. Released on a record number of screens across India, including in cities where Assamese films are rarely screened, it is well on its course to become the highest-grossing Assamese film of all time. Yet, this was no ordinary blockbuster success. For fans, it was a simple, powerful impulse: to be there on the first day, to be part of Zubeen’s cinematic swansong, and to show their love and respect to their dear departed icon.

My wife and I entered the cinema theatre first day, first show on 31st October, hoping to derive solace and comfort by watching Zubeen on the big screen for the last time. Instead, the film only reignited the emotions we have desperately tried to control for the last 40 days. This sentiment is echoed in a poignant line from the film itself, which now carries unbearable weight: “When you cannot control your emotion on time, you become obstinate.” For many, this is the space they now inhabit — a state of obstinate, manifest grief, where Zubeen’s last film has not healed but has instead reopened a raw wound.

So, what explains the teary-eyed reactions that have become a universal sight outside theatres? Zubeen delivers one of his career-best performances as Raul, a visually-impaired singer, assaying the challenging role with extreme maturity. Yet, something far deeper and more curious was unfolding in the darkness of the cinema hall. The audience was grappling not just with the text of the film, but with the overwhelming meta-text of its protagonist. When the end credits roll, accompanied by behind-the-scenes shots of Zubeen in various moods during production, the dam breaks. The weeping that follows is not merely for the emotional quotient of the film’s story — it is, in all probability, for the devastating realization that this is the final curtain call, the end of an era in their own cultural lives, an era that Zubeen Garg singularly embodied.

In film theory, this phenomenon can be understood as an inversion of the fictive stance. This stance is the unspoken psychological contract where an audience willingly suspends disbelief to engage with a story as if it were real. In Roi Roi Binale, this contract is upended. The audience's primary focus shifts from the fictional narrative to the crushing real-world context of its creation — that this is Zubeen Garg’s last film, and that he is no longer with us. The knowledge that this is his final performance subliminally infuses every scene, every dialogue, every note of music with a layer of meta-meaning that overwhelms the plot.

This collective behaviour finds a powerful explanation in the work of media scholar Henry Jenkins, who revolutionized our understanding of audiences by shifting the focus from what media does to people to what people do with media. In this case, the audience — an active, interpretive community that has participated in shaping Zubeen’s meaning for decades — has collectively decided that Roi Roi Binale is not just a film. It is an event. A final, communal ritual. The tears are a form of participatory performance in that ritual that affirms shared values and a collective sense of loss. They are performing their grief and, in doing so, validating it together.

In Jenkins’ terms, Zubeen Garg himself was a complex, multi-layered text: the avant-garde rebel, the political iconoclast, the philanthropist, the voice of a people. Roi Roi Binale offered the last opportunity for fans to collectively read and interpret this text. They thronged the theatres to engage in a participatory, communitarian exercise, using the film’s fictional story as a vessel to locate and unravel the essence of the man who was, indubitably, the soft power of Assam and the Northeast. His massive body of work is the region's priceless cultural capital — and this was its final, heartbreaking accrual.

Jenkins also theorized that fans are active creators of meaning, often poaching from original texts to build their own cultures. Roi Roi Binale presents a tragic, involuntary form of this textual poaching. The fans have poached the film's narrative and re-contextualized it entirely through the framework of Zubeen's death, creating two powerful, simultaneous layers of meaning. In this poignant act of re-creation, the second layer — the meta-narrative of farewell — has ultimately become more powerful than the first.

In conclusion, Roi Roi Binale has revealed a community in unresolved grief — a group of admirers transforming into an emotional and interpretive community bound by collective pain at the loss of their icon. They are actively re-negotiating the meaning of Zubeen Garg’s final film, seeking a path to closure. Yet, as the credits end and the lights come up, the manifest grief suggests that for this community, the cinematic ritual may not be enough. The path to peace, as many now feel, lies beyond the theatre walls — in the unvarnished truth, in justice and transparency, and in the urgent, collective need to finally understand how they lost their praanor xilpi (artiste of their soul), their hiyar amothu (heartthrob), in the sea on that fateful day in Singapore.

The film is over — but the quest for closure has only just begun.