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No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough. Your intellect may be confused, but your emotions will never lie to you.
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Amaltash (1)
Sthal (1)
Page 97 of 97
Amaltash
Mihir Bhanage
The Times of India
A breeze of freshness that makes you pause and reflect
Rahul, a calm and composed musician, happens to meet the spunky and spontaneous Keerti by chance when the latter is visiting her grandmother in Pune. Their respective lives take a different path soon.
Often, it is the films made with passion that leave a lasting impression on the minds of the viewers. Nothing larger-than-life, no grand sets, nothing unbelievable – just a simple story told with sincerity and made relatable by its characters. If Amaltash was to be explained in brief, this would suffice. Amaltash is a simple, straightforward story of a gifted musician named Rahul (Rahul Deshpande) whose life has changed after an incident in his past. Rahul has learned the importance of soaking in the small pleasures of life and being composed in the most strenuous of situations. Enter Keerti (Pallavi Paranjape), the NRI from Canada who lands in Pune to meet her grandmother (Pratibha Padhye) and has a chance encounter with Rahul who is at her granny’s house to tune their piano. Taken by Rahul’s musical prowess, Keerti meets him again at Rahul’s friend’s music store. They talk and bond over music and soon strike a friendship. Love blossoms organically. But are they meant to spend their life together?
Sthal
(A Match)
Tatsam Mukherjee
The Wire
Underlines the Humiliating, Transactional Nature of Arranged Marriages in a Patriarchal System
Debutant director Jayant Somalkar emerges as one more voice in Marathi cinema, telling an old story in a new and engaging way.
Early on in Jayant Digambar Somalkar’s Sthal – four men can be seen discussing a woman’s complexion. “She seems fair, doesn’t she?” one of them asks, only to be shut down by the other: “It is all make-up. Didn’t you notice her elbows? They gave it away.” The woman, actually a young girl named Savita (Nandini Chikte), barely out of her teens, in her final year of college pursuing B.A (Sociology), is being looked at as a prospective bride. Those men could be talking about livestock. Such is the ‘marketplace’ for arranged marriages – especially in India, where such casual indignities are fair game.