Movie 4 d week : Natarang (2010)

Language : Marathi

Director : Ravi Jadhav

Guna (Atul Kulkarni) is a poor farmer who has a passion for ‘Tamasha’, a theatre art-form of Maharashtra. He decides to start a troupe of his own. Those were the days when no respectable woman would act in plays. They however find, with the help of Pandya (brilliant Kishore Kadam) the troupe leader, a willing partner in Naina (Sonalee Kulkarni) who will also play the heroine. The only catch being that her mother will call the whole thing off if there is no ‘Nachya’ (male playing the role of a female, a homosexual for comic interludes which was a key character in the art-form, Tamasha). Now the macho Guna has no choice but to don this role as nobody else comes forward to take up this role. He gives up his physique (Atul Kulkarni is supposed to have put on 15 kgs for this role) and learns the art of dancing from Naina. Guna’s wife leaves him and the village denounces him as a eunuch and a gay. They do not understand the art-form and mistake what he is only enacting on stage to be his sexual orientation. Guna even gets raped by the local political bigwig. The society, his family, and even his mistress, reject him but nothing will deter him from his passion and his resolve. The Arjuna-Brihannala scene is well written in. It is overall a pretty good film with some very good performances by the entire cast. Atul Kulkarni seems to have worked very hard for the role and the macho Guna transforming into the effeminate ‘Nachya’ is indeed amazing. The film has some good music too. The original and background scores were composed by Ajay Atul, based on the song lyrics by Guru Thakur. Hats off to Ravi Jadhav, the Director, for a fantastic debut.

Ravi Jadhav (Natarang), Umesh Kulkarni (Valu, Vihir), Mangesh Hadawale (Tingya), Paresh Mokashi (Harishchandrachi Factory), Satish Manwar (Gabhricha Paus), Sachin Kundalkar (Gandha) and quite a few others are sure doing the film industry proud and really reviving the Marathi industry. Yet to watch the last two in this list.

Useless trivia : The film is an adaptation of the play ‘Natarang’ by Dr. Anand Yadav. ‘Natarang’ was nominated for this year’s National Awards for Best Film and Best Actor and won the Rajat Kamal for the Best Film. I would have chosen Atul Kulkarni, over Amitabh Bachan, any day among the films I have watched this year.

‘Tamasha’ I gather is of Persian origin and literally means ‘fun’ or ‘play’. (Courtesy : Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamasha)