Just finished watching the movie. And I have only one question, 'What is wrong with the movie?' I liked it!
The plot is quite simple. Shreyas Talpade, plays the part of Mahadev who aspires to be a novelist. But lack of good plots and avenues force him to take up the job of a letter writer in his village, Sajjanpur. It is a 'hot' job in Sajjanpur where the majority is illiterate.
From here, Shyam Benegal weaves a river like story that along its course takes digs at almost every aspect of Indian life. I cannot call it a satire because it is not scathing. But humour has been used to temper the disappointment|despair caused by the state of affairs. Be it the surge in the number of religious gurus in TV, or the as yet unstemmed organ trade, or the adption of mobile phones, or widow marriage, or the candidature of eunuchs, or the capitalisation|criminalisation|regularisation of elections, or the prevelance of superstitions|customs, the tiff between two generations, the SEZ policy and the not-so-convincing resettlement|rehabilitation|compensation policy, migration to urban areas - Shyam Benegal has covered it all.
He has ensured that he does not make it too filmy by making the ending of every sub-plot happy. He also shows us what is happening around us through the eyes of his protagonist but never goes to the extent of making a hero out of him. Reminded me of Laxman's Common Man. On the one hand he shows how marriage of a widow leads to honour killing, on the other he shows a eunuch being a successful politician. The balance in his story and the detail in his direction is impeccable. The one point that could have stopped it from endearing itself with the audience was the north india based story setting and language dialect. People who are not even remotely familiar with the colloqiual usage of the language may find it hard to appreciate the humour based on language and local customs.
Sans this aspect, I do not see anything lacking in the movie. All the actors perform well. Shreyas and Amrita do not disappoint. A good movie!
Certainly an eye-candy for all those who have a taste for movies which are, if not critiques, are good eye-openers.
ReplyDeleteAll that Shyam Benegal has shown through his reel is not something that has come as news to us, but probably the purpose of the movie and all such movies still remains defeated, which is to wake up the system in slumber.