The second of Satyajit Ray's detective Felunada films, Joi Baba Felunath (The Elephant God) shares a number of motifs in common with Sherlock Holmes—witty repartee with partner, an evil Moriarty type villain, plot twists and complications that eliminate obvious suspects, life endangerment, use of disguise to foil the criminal, and heavy reliance on deductive reasoning to resolve the mystery. It's also highly entertaining. Unfortunately the DVD copy currently available in the U.S. (Netflix rental) has a number of subtitle flaws—the most glaring being a number of out of sync dialog sequences.

Soumitra Chatterjee (lead character in The World of Apu) reprises his role as detective Felunada expertly. Ray reinforces his detective "artistry" throughout the film with parallel references to other artists—an elderly man painting a goddess Durga statue for a coming ceremony, a dedicated body builder preparing for a show, a circus knife thrower who demonstrates a sharp eye despite his shaky body, and Felunath's friend Lalmohan Ganguly (Santosh Dutta) who crafts top detective novels.

Felunada, his younger cousin Tapesh (Siddharta Chatterjee), and Ganguly have arrived in the holy city of Benares (Varanasi) to vacation. But almost immediately Felunada is commissioned to solve the theft of a precious gold statue of Ganesha (the traditional Hindu Elephant God), a family heirloom handed down from a former king of Nepal. Detective Felu incorporates both Holmesian logic and Indian mysticism to solve the crime; thus, he's very much like Tony Hillerman's Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee characters—policemen who incorporate both western procedures and traditional Navajo wisdom in their detectective work.

Always keenly observant, detective Felu early on senses that a popular mystic is a phony; he's just not sure what the point of his deception is. Upon learning about the theft, he cleverly befriends young Riku, a boy who is very absorbed in childhood fantasies like Captain Spark. He speaks the same coded language of the boy and then explains his own "super powers" of having X-ray vision by using his keen intellect and observation skills. In the process, Riku reveals vital clues that lead to the resolution.

One of the more intense scenes takes place inside the villain's residence. A gun is pointed at Felu and his two partners throughout, as the detective refuses Maganal's bribe to drop the case. With such an unscrupulous adversary, can they really trust that the served tea isn't poisoned. And especially dangerous is the sequence where the villain insists that Ganguly serve as target practice for his wobbly circus knife tosser. Our Dr. Watson stand-in, Gangly sees no way out other than buck up his courage and endure the experience. As such, he contrasts with their body building roommate at the hotel, who instantly wants to flee when he misinterprets a handwritten warning.

A few holes exist in the plot; most puzzling to me was trying to figure out who Felu tracks through the streets when pursuing the stolen statue, but that all fits together as the plot evolves. Overall, Joi Baba Felunath is very enjoyable and well constructed. For Satyajit Ray fans, its a welcome sight to see him return to the banks of the Ganges—the same location so prominent in Aparajito. Even more so with the final frame of the film: a burst of pigeons that visually pay homage to his earlier classic.