Cinebits_Natsamrat the Movie

Need to keep this short being just Cinebits form of my reviews. 

·         And the Oscar for Best Actor - Male goes to Nana Patekar

·         If Shakespeare was alive today, he would have definitely cried after watching the adoption of King Lear on the Marathi silver screen

·         A royal salute to the imminent literally work by Vi Va Shirwadkar and thanks to Mahesh Manjrekar and Nana Patekar to do so on a global platform

·         A movie to be honored by including it in the syllabus of all the leading theater, drama and movie institutes around the world

·         The movie will go on to make a record for it being a tragedy but having most of the repeat audience

·         All the theater companies have decided to offer a free pack of facial tissues along with every ticket

I'll take a pause here.....:( (Being loyal to Shakespere and Vi Va :-))

Well above can be the review by someone in the teens or the Gen-xs, Or can be by loads of people (read movie critics and journalists) who have got 'affiliated' to the 'Fincraft media' and 'The Great Maratha Entertainment company' over last few weeks.

Here’s is my personal take on the movie and I don’t mind if none agrees to this!! 

And hello I respect, co-relate, accept Omkara and Maqbool (Vishal Bhardwaj) for one of the great adoptions of Othello and Macbeth respectively, even though the story-line, language and the references are completely different from the original (No I wont include Haider for the obvious reasons :(). I like those two because they were adoptions of the classics and then were completely loyal to their own plots. And IMHO this Natsamrat (the movie) fails in most of the aspects while being confused, a) if it is to be just based on the origianl, b) is to be an adoption of the original, c) or is an entirely different movie where only the theme is similar to legendary play 'Natsamrat'

·         There is not just ONE Natsamrat in the movie - I'd consider it to be a tragic version of Shakesperes comedy 'A Midnight Summers Dream' which is full of multiple vibrant characters. Natsamrat the play is all about Ganapatrao Belwalkar the theater actor - the grandeur of the rich characters he had played in life, the rich and ornamental language and the grand rhetorical monologues. Did I get to see that in the movie? Probably not.

·         When you see the play - You came out only thinking about one character / name - Ganpatrao Belwalkar and then his monologues. Here apart from 'Koni ghar deta ka ghar'  - you probably wont recall any. You don’t even experience intense Nana as you must have already experienced from 'Ankush to Parinda to Ab Tak Chappan to even performing in subtle biopic like 'Dr. Prakash Baba Amte'.  I mean the intensity and texture of Ganapatrao's character is 100 times more than all these, but couldn’t be felt in the movie

·         I guess the reason lies in the reference I mentioned above 'Midnight Summers dream' - There are multiple characters and in fact there are a few 'Natsamrats' - Vikram Gokhale, Sunil Barve, and Mrinmayee Deshpande. In fact the most touching situation and scene in the movie (at least for me) is owing to an awesome performance by Mrinmayee Deshpande when she realizes the money is not stolen by her father (Nana paterkar). I was expecting I would get lot of similar highs by Nana's performance - his eyes, facial expressions, body language and most importantly toofani monologues. Not much happens (Again in comparison to the play!!) for example - The high-point of 'Koni Ghar deta ka', he was accompanied in the scene by a dog , which dilutes the scene and also his face is covered by his hands… Not a great sense of direction!

·         There are too many abuses, too much liquor, too many change in the script from original, Vikram Gokhales character is welcome but it dilutes Ganapatrao's character, a few unwarranted scenes (police etc.), some characters like Siddhartha which unnecessarily lengthens the movie and too much of cinematic liberty like Nana teaching his 8-9 year old grand daughter and she performing a 'baithakichi lavni' at a school gathering, time / period references are wrong, misleading. etc.

All and all it’s a great movie on its own, but becomes another Bajirao Mastani (Sanjay Leela Bhansalis) which is distant from the original / reality and gives a bit (lot in case Bajirao Mastani) of erratic feeling than giving a pleasure of getting lost in the nostalgia or reliving the moments performed by the stalwarts (Likes of Datta Bhat / Dr. Shriram Lagu) and giving tributes to the heroic / legendary and almost divine personalities in the history.