The default description of Basu Chatterjee's work is middle-of-the-road cinema implying there are two definitive sides, and while it has qualities of the two, it represents no defined qualities of its own. For the sake of cinema and politics, let's retire these reductive terminologies.

Basu Chatterjee's films reveal a distinct sensibility I would call casual cosmopolitanism. Whether set in Bombay, Delhi or a small town, characters are individuals, and the films contain numerous worlds—literature, European art-house films, Hollywood. He drew from Hindi and Bengali literature (Rajendra Yadav, Manu Bhandari, Sarathchandra, Shartindu Bandhopadhyaya) European neo-realism and Hollywood. The many communities that make Bombay —Parsis, Christians, Gujaratis, North Indians, among others, are present with enjoyment of their distinctive accents and ways. Families, neighbourhoods, small towns are settings, and do not symbolise any pan-Indian values or identities.