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Aakrosh, if for nothing else will be remembered as the debut movie of one of india's finest directors, govind nihlani. But this debut movie is not a one to be easily forgotten. This is a movie that after seeing will haunt you for your life. A trend setter movie that hits out at the indian judicial system and mocks at us for not doing anything to change it.



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Lahanya Bhiku(Om Puri) a tribal is arrested for killing his wife Nagi(smita patil)and he is tried in the court for it.Bhaskar Kulkarni(Naseeruddin Shah) takes this first case as the govt appointed lawyer.bhaskar kulkarni with all dreams and aspirations to take his first case finds to his frustration that Lahanya does not want to co operate with him. Slowly bhaskar investigates the case which leads to stark ling revelations and the movies comes to a shattering climax.
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It's unbelievable that this movie which was made 25 yrs before still has that intensity intact, it still hits you hard, it still forces you to think. It still leaves you in a state of total helplessness. I can't imagine what would have been the impact of this movie on those who saw it 25 yrs ago.



Iam not sure whether anybody took a movie on tribals till that time. The single frame of lakhu tied and waiting before the court room, everybody passing by without caring, his father and sister standing with a baby is enough to show the helpless state of the tribals. That shot brings the message to the audience that Law and justice are something distant to those peoples. The movie further increases our anger with the indifference shown by the judicial system towards the victim with its requirements
for evidence.

The movie apart from telling the powerful story successfully, it also captures the inner self of the major characters brilliantly. Like many of nihalani's characters, the characters in aakrosh(Baskhar, Dosane and bikhu) fight with both the outside and inside world. Nihalani plays out the fight of bikhu visually in a long scene of him suffocating in the jail.It is also used to let the audience know how tormented he is by his wife's murder.



Once the movie ends you are tormented by the images of bikhu, his poor father, the wretched tribals.The images just rips your heart, this movies owes much of its success to govind nihalani, the cinematographer. He sets a style of playing with lights and close-ups, which creates a deep impact in you. He followed this style in many of his later movies, but this one is the best.

Mahesh Elkunchwar

Again this is the first of his many movies which had references to armed struggle, naxalism etc. A marxist played by Mahesh Elkunchwar comes as an person who is trying to organize the tribals for a struggle.

Nihalani takes an interesting dig in the movie.One evening bhaskhar is listening to the radio, and reading a newspaper. The news on the newspaper is that of a murdered adivasi women.At the same time radio news says "vinobhave's has decided to protest against the cow slaughter..".

This movie belongs to my list of must see movies of indian cinema.Nihalani who always fights for a social cause in his movie, has done a awesome job in this movie.A classic, this movie inspired many movies in many indian languages, most of them usual commercial movies, which were all forgotten before this masterpiece.

Cast and credits:

Amrish Puri, Achyut Potdar, Arvind Deshpande,Mohan Agashe

Om Puri .... Lahanya Bhiku
Naseeruddin Shah .... Bhaskar Kulkarni
Mohan Agashe .... President of the City Council
Arvind Deshpande .... Dr. Patil
Mahesh Elkunchwar .... Social worker
Reema Lagoo .... Nautaki Dancer
Nana Palsikar .... Lahanya's father
Smita Patil .... Nagi
Amrish Puri .. Dosane

Mahesh Elkunchwar, the play writer who wrote nihalani's later movie Party, comes as a social worker. The movie has many faces that govind nihalani used repeatedly in his later movies.Om puri, Nasrudeen shah, smita patil, Amrish Puri and Achyut Potdar.The movie also has Remma Lagoo, who comes for a lavani 'tu kaise hai mard'.

Reema Lagoo

Govind nihalani's camera work has to be mentioned. His style of using a light source to play on the images of the characters, creating shock effects etc where cleverly used in the movie.The half lit faces adds so much to the movie, whether its the angry bikhu or the beautiful smita.





The movie is written by vijay tendulkar the famous playwrite with whom nihalani again joined hands to do his other masterpiece ardh sathya.

Vijay Tendulkar

Music:
Music is by ajit verman.I dont know why the title song is pictured on an old man who wasn't playing any big role in this movie. This old man comes for the tile song and a scene later. Not sure what was the purpose of this character in the movie.

The movie has 3 songs..
1)Kanha re
2)Hum ne koi kisi
3)Tu kaise hai mard

Awards:
Golden Peacock for Best Film, International Film Festival of India;
National Award for Best Hindi Film

Links:
vijay Tendulkar


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There are lots of interesting scenes, its night and the world has gone to sleep, bhaskhar is getting ready to sleep, he does the normal bedtime routines, a melodious song is played in the radio.A perfect setting for the bed time, the audience are calmed down.But what you dont know is that govind has been setting you up for the shocker, a bottle crashing into the windows, shakes you up completely and switches you form that lazy bedtime setting to that of fear and shock. The effect is dramatic.

In this movie if Ompuri would have talked even 2 statements the whole movie would have lost that intensity. By not making that character speak, govind denied us the opportunity to hear his emotions and frustrations and pity him. That intensity, frustration is kept intact all through out the movie and it is transferred to us in the end. The audience might have lost the intensity even if the flashback was played out linearly in one go, starting with a happy family, the problems they face and the eventual crime. But the screenplay is crafted brilliantly such that the intensity is not lost. There are only 2 flashback scenes one lahanya warning nagi against the manager and the second one his witness of the rape scene. Some of the blanks are filled by dialogues and the rest is left to the audience imagination.

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Govind Nihalani is one of the important names in the indian art film circuit. If satyajit ray is one extreme of the meaningful indian cinema with his simple, sensitive and beautiful movies then govind nihalani is the other end with his powerful, intelligent, brutal and hard hitting movies.

This pakistan born sindhi director who moved to india after partition, took up photography as a profession and worked with some great directors including shyam benegal and girish karnad.After a few films with shyam he started making his own movies in early 80's and caught every one by surprise with his intense and thought provoking movies. since then he has given a serious of intelligent and hard hitting movies.

But it is Sad that he has been branded as an art movie director, when his movies are more intense more meaning full and more pacy than the main stream movies.It is maybe due to the fact that hero, heroines running around the tree, funny and smiling characters were never present in his movies (at least till he switched to the commercial movie style).But this also made him stand apart as a movie maker, who made serious movies.



His characters are usually intelligent, serious, and confident and do things with a conviction. Important thing about the above statement is that it holds good for the female characters also.None of his heroines are the babes who's only purpose is to dance and make his man happy. Many a times they are part of a broken relationship but the female characters are also equally strong and intelligent as the male characters. Even villain’s are strong characters (Aashish/sadashiv),if at all if there is any as most of the time the villian is the system itself.

All his characters fall into a certain pattern. They are all morally correct in their own small world and have their own personal problems. As the movie progresses they are exposed to a bigger world which they cannot control and there starts a fight with the outside world and the inside world. And the movie becomes an account of how they cope with that new change/problem. Most of the time the characters come out stronger than what they were before, armed and fully convinced to take on the outer world..

Similarly many of his characters have a fire within themselves, an anger against society or smoother thing.Nihlani takes you on a trip of the characters mind and makes us understand the character better.The characters fights with him/herself and their efforts to better themselves are some of the fascinating aspects of his characterization. His characters asks the same questions that arises in your mind regarding the conditions in the society and becomes inspirational one and makes you stronger.

Nihlani's movies don’t belong to the category of movies that you see and forget at the end of the movie.The movie hits you hard at the end and leaves you shocked. A govind nihlani movie's effect starts only after the movie ends. Sometimes the movie disturbs you and leaves you gaping for answers. And many more questions are thrown at you through intellectual arguments of the characters. Questions that probe your moral stance and forces you to make a stance and action.

Govind nihalani in an interview:To find an answer to the issue is relevant to us. My films may not give you all the answers. But the fact is my films take a stand. They say this is the problem and as far as I think as a director this is the way out, a possible way out. Now you can agree with me, you can disagree with me. A debate can start and that is the positive outcome of any film.

His movies are intense and violent, but you dont see any gory dead bodies or violent act with of blood bath in the movie. With some brilliant use of camera, screenplay and direction, he creates this bloodless violence.Lamps and various light sources are used on the characters to enhance the emotions.Also his screenplay focuses on the mental violence than the physical violence that happens to his characters and he uses the most dangerous weapon of all, fear, against his main characters.

Many of his works are adaptation of literary works.He has worked with peoples like vijay tendulkar(aakrosh/ardh satya), Mahesh Elkunchwar(party),manjula padmanabhan(deham),Federico García Lorca(rukmavathi ki haveli),Bhisham Sahni(Tamas), Henrik Ibsen(Jazeere) , August Strindberg(pita) and the jnanpith winner maheshwata devi(haazar chaurasi ki maa).And also his intellectual characters discuss about various writers like Federico García Lorca, Rushdie, naipaul, mayakovski etc.

In the later part of his career he started to make main stream movies like dev and thakshak. It is a shame that he had to go the mainstream way to get the attention that he deserved. These two movies are far away from his earlier master pieces, they didn't have the fire that his earlier movies exhibited. Main stream actor/actress with their mediocre performance and nihalani's intention of showing things beautifully rather than his usual powerful character portrayal made them one among the rest of the main stream movies. But Nihalani's lack of experiences with the masala elements like songs showed itself, when the sleepy ajay devagan turned the song 'kamosh raat', a soulful & enjoyable melody of loneliness into a song of someone enduring acute pain with his expressions.


Reviews here at alternate movie
Aakrosh
Ardh sathya
Vijeta
Party
Drishti
Drooh Kaal
Hazar chaurasi Ki Maa

Also check out shades of govind nihalani


Other Links
Govind Nihalani personal website

Utsab( not to be confused with girish karnad's utsav) is a bengali movie by rituparno ghosh. This is a nice movie that is set in the background of Bhagabati's(Madhabi Mukherjee) family celebrating the durga pooja.This is a realistic and intellectual 'hum apke hai kaun'.Ok hold on don't start thinking about a bunch of happy peoples singing and dancing, it has got nothing of that sort, it is totally bland in those aspects. This is a movie that celebrates life and the complexities of relations using various metaphors.

Rituparno sen gupta

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Bhagbati has 4 children’s two sons Asit(Pradip Mukherjee),Nishit(Bodhisattva Mazumdar) and two daughters Parul(Mamata Shankar), keya(Rituparna Sengupta).And it is durga pooja time and all the children’s are at their parents house to celebrate the festival. The movie starts with Parul's son Joy(Ratul Shankar Ghosh) recording the festival with his video cam. The movie slowly develops to show the problems faced by all the siblings of bhagbati like keya on the verge of divorce with her husband Arun(Prasenjit Chatterjee).

Shishir(Dipankar Dey) a relative who is also a big real estate agent is interested in buying the house. Most of the family members want to sell the house. With all there personal problems and the idea of selling the house, we get a feeling that this might be the last durga festival that is going to happen in that house. What happens to the house and everyones problems is the rest of the movies.
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Arpita Pal

The movie is visually very dull(except for images like the above).But even though at start you feel it is kind of slow and depicts mundane things, the movie is beautifully constructed to convey its theme.At the end you will think back all those small incidents in the movie and enjoy it.A totally positive movie.Bhagabati for example is very positive about arun the son in law, who is depicted as a hopeless character. she feels and convinces her daughter that he will change himself one day. Similarly arun talking to keya tells her what he saw when the durga idols Being immersed in the river.The boys jumped with the idol to take them out for recycling. Idol loses all the plaster over it, but still the frame remains which will be used to construct a new idol. Construction and deconstruction will keep happening but the structure will remain the same .The idol is the metaphor used for a person/relationship.

The movie slowly unfolds and you first come to know about the various characters, then there fears, there dreams, there past there future and what is there position in the current scenario. Like real life we misjudge certain characters at start and understand them better later.



The movie aptly points out the importance of communication within the family members, which is the main reason for problem in many cases. The characters first try to hide there problems, but later they open up and confide things to there siblings/son. The telephone was used as a metaphor for communication.



A beautiful moment in the movie is when shishir meets parul(ex lovers).There feelings for each other is expressed in those silent nods and glances that last for a few seconds. The relationship between joy and shompa is also expressed beautifully.

The construction deconstruction process is further conveyed in the cyclic nature of things that happen in the family. Joy's uncle asit wanted to study literature but his grand ma didn't want him to do it and asit ended up studying economics. He wants to get into film institute but his dad wants to do MBA and he is going to USA to do MBA.
The movie avoids all the emotional drama and ends with a beautiful climax. All there problems becomes beautiful memories.

Cast and credit:
The movie has a very good cast. Good acting by Rituparno sen gupta ,Mamata Shankar and prasenjeet.

I wish i didn't see the movie after watching madhabi.I always associated her with the poetic images of sathyajit ray in charulatha. From now on this image will also come into my thoughts when i think about her.

Madhabhi mukerjee

Alaknanda Roy .... Bonani, Nishit's wife
Anuradha Roy .... Monika, Asit's wife
Prasenjit Chatterjee .... Arun, Keya's husband
Ratul Shankar Ghosh .... Joy, Parul's son
Arpita Pal ....
Vinit Ranjan Maitra .... Bumba, Asit's son
Dipankar Dey .... Shishir (Special Appearance)
Madhabi Mukherjee .... Bhagabati
Pradip Mukherjee .... Asit
Bodhisattva Mazumdar .... Nishit
Alaknanda Roy .... Bonani, Nishit's wife
Anuradha Roy .... Monika, Asit's wife
Mamata Shankar .... Parul
Rituparna Sengupta .... Keya
Prasenjit Chatterjee .... Arun, Keya's husband
Ratul Shankar Ghosh .... Joy, Parul's son
Arpita Pal .... Shompa, Nishit's daughter
Vinit Ranjan Maitra .... Bumba, Asit's son
Dipankar Dey .... Shishir (Special Appearance)

Rituparno ghosh

Handling so many characters, showing there individuality and at the same time narrating the story in an interesting way is not an easy task to do.Rituparno ghosh has done it beautifully. He has scripted the movie brilliantly. The entire movie is shot in a house during the festival period. So the story progresses mostly on words rather than on any visual action. Even the past incidents are narrated in terms dialouges and not as flashbacks. But he does not waste any of the dialouges. Every single dialouge in the movie adds to the overall structure and is an essential piece of the story.

Music:
Music is by Debajyoti Mishra(Haazar chaurasi ki Maa).There is a beautiful rabindranath poem "Amalo dhabholo" which comes at various places in the movie. The song is sung my Sraboni Sen.

Awards:
Rituparno gosh got the national award for best direction in 2000.

Prasenjit Chatterjee & sengupta

Again another awesome malayalam movie. Only in kerala will they make a movie like this and release as a main stream commercial movie.This surrealistic movie is one of a kind movie which takes u on a fantasy trip and uses metaphors to convey a message.

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The movie is the story of Reghuraman, son of a hindu priest living in a village. This peaceful village changes after a communal violence started by politicians.Reghuraman joins the hindu gangs and takes part in the violence. A hindu guru in that area, gives shelter to all the muslim people affect by the violence.Reghuraman who goes there to kill them goes though a great experience. He gets transported to a land where every child is born blind. Among the blind people he sees another story unfolding an age old story of a poor singer being loved by the princess .Reghuraman does his part to solve the problem. His experience at that place totally changes him .what happens to him and the peoples of the fantasy land is the rest of the movies.
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This movie does a story inside a story technique with reghuraman getting involved in a different story happening at the fantasy land. The Fantasy land story as such is interesting. But that story is not just for entertainment, metaphors are used in the story for the audience to see the relation between that story and the main one.

The usage of fantasy world and metaphors to make people understand a contemporary problem is something that i have never come across in any other mainstream indian movie. The movie is not a perfect one, it has its mistakes, but they are minor blemishes on the bigger canvas in which rajiv anchal has painted a beautiful movie.

Rajiv anchal the director has done a wonderful movie.At the end of the movie he finishes the story of the fantasy land and beautifully ties it to the original story leading to a perfect ending.So At the end, the message is crystal clear.You don't need pages and pages of dialoges to get across the point.You will just understand it.



Credits:
A decent performance by mohanlal.The guys responsible for making the fantasy world happen should be mentioned here.

Art Director:Muthuraj

Make-up: Pattama, Rasjeed



Costume:Satheesan,the costumes are supposedly resembling the Sumer and Egyptian costumes, exported from Gujarat centuries ago.All the 3 got the kerala state award for 1997.Kunnukuzhi Antony the guy who provided props for this movie says that guru was the most challanging movie of all that he has done.



The director of this movie Rajiv anchal has moved to US and is making english movies now.


Music:

illayaraja

If you are into Western classical music, you are in for a treat in this movie.This is one of the very best of illayaraja's work. Recorded mainly in hungary, the music of this movie is outstanding. This is a favorite of lot of people who are interested in orchestration, compositions and BGM's of the maestro.

The fantasy world where mohanlal gets transported is a completely imaginary one and the people there use weird musical instruments.This gave lot of scope for the music director to do some creative work and Illayaraja who loves challenges has done exactly that.Listen to the music, the sound are kind of unheard or rarely used in indian film music.

Illayaraja is again another colossal talent who got struck within the boundaries of regional cinema. This veteran Music director who has scored around 1000 movies, is peerless in indian film music when it comes to western classical style compositions and orchestration. Raja who loves to do western classical composition with indian touch has taken the music of this movie to a different level.

Raaja with richard king

If you want to know more about how to understand his compositions and how to appreciate his music, check out the article given below. This is written for an old illayra raja song called 'etho mogam', there is a link to the song above the article. Follow the song with the explanation to understand that composition.

Etho mogam article here

Coming back to guru.All the songs in this movie are awesome, I love the Aruna Kirana Deebam for its exotic music, the way he decorates the whole song with vocal interludes, the way he slowly sets you up for that grand opening taking you higher by creating tension in the vocals/music and bringing you down by resolving the tension with softer music and keeps doing it all over again through out the song, taking you on a fantasy ride.

Listen to the all the songs here here.The quality of songs in musicindia is not that good.This is just half the experience, Listen to it on the original CD and the experience will be very different.For the time being listen to it in earphones with high volume so that u can pick the various instruments playing in the background.

Awards & Recognitions:
1997 was the year of lohithida's boothakanadi and Jayaraaj's Kaliyattam.The former winning the best film at the state and the later winning the nationals.The only recognition that came to guru was the fact that it was the official indian nomination for the oscar in 1997.Supposedly the only malayalam movie to get selected for oscar.

Mohanlal and rajiv anchal might not have deserved any awards but i feel illayaraja deserved it for this movie , but he was pathetically denied the Best music director award at the nationals and as well as at the state.

Links:
Rajiv anchal's interview on guru
Rajiv anchal moves ot US
illayaraaja official website
Illayaraja

This is yet another beautiful malayalam movie. Like i said in gehrayee.Many of the indian movies that dealt with paranormal topics in india were pretty much horror movies.Gehrayee was one movie that was very different and another movie that comes to our mind is Lekin,a movie that came 2 years before manichithra thazhu. Both Lekin and gehrayee dealt the story in a non scientific way, by making the supernatural things as part of the story rather then looking at them from a scientific view. Manichithra thazhu is one unique movie that weaved a story with the rural beliefs, fears and tries to explain the story from a scientific point of view.




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Nakul(suresh gopi) and ganga(shobana) are a couple who come to spend some time in their home town in kerala. Nakul decides to live in his old house which is supposed to be haunted by a devil. He does not head to his uncle's(Nedumudi venu) advice of not residing in an haunted house. His uncle advices them not to open the door, that is locked and sealed with sacred threads. But the curious ganga opens the door and strange things start happening in the house. Everybody suspect sridevi(Vinaya Prasad) his uncles' daughter.Sunny joseph(Mohanlal) a psychologists and friend of nakul is asked to solve the problem.how he solves them is the rest of the movie.
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This is a movie which encompasses some of the best features of a malayalam film industry. They make some of the interesting movies that get lost within the regional limits. The superstar of the kerala film industry mohanlal, comes only in the middle of the movie. Almost at the interval, this is just unimaginable in any other south indian or for that matter in indian movie. Adding to that fact, the movie has more acting scope for the female character than the male character, which any big star would think twice to accept. But mohanlal did all that.The movie is clean with no unnecessary masala addition and the film sticks to the story. Realistic performances and interesting screenplay, another aspect of the malaylam film industry is also in display in this movie.

This is a strong story based movie, with lot of characters. The movie starts slowly in a typical malayalam movie fashion, after introducing the various characters and hooks us with the strange incidents at the house and comes to a nice climax.



Credits:

Mohanlal .... Dr. Sunny Joseph
Suresh Gopi .... Nakulan
Sobhana .... Ganga
Vinaya Prasad .... Sridevi
Nedumudi Venu .... Thampi



The movie has sterling performance by shobana. This beautiful bharathanatiyum dancer, niece of the famous padmini, ragini,lalitha pair was at her best in this movie.As i said before the acting scope for the hero is less in the movie and mohanlal has given a nice performance as needed by the character.

Mohanlal and suresh gopi

Another person to mention is Fazil.He is a director who has given many hits in both malaylam and tamil. His strength is his brilliant screenplay and manichithra thazhu is a beautiful example for that.

Music:
Music is by MG Radha Krishnan, who has done a wonderful job with the BGM'S.Apart from the regular malayalam songs.There is one whole tamil song in the movie.Another aspect of malayalam cinema, its openness towards other languages.Listen
to the songs here.

watch the "oru Murai" song here.

Awards:
shobana

Shobana was awarded the first of her two National award for best actress in 1993 for her performance in this movie.

Trivia:
The movie was remade into hits films in all the south indian languages.All the versions except the malaylam one was totally messed with lot of masala elements.None of the other versions bettered the original.

Links:
shobana profile
shobana interview

*The Manichithra thazhu DVD might not have subtitles. check it out before you buy/rent it.

Vanaprastham produced by mohanlal's pranavam arts is an exceptional movie.Movies of this kind are rarely made in india. This is a movie that is a beautiful mix of great acting, technical excellence combined with good/realistic story that shows the indian society in its complexity, beauty and ugliness.

----story----
This is a complex and interesting story told in a beautiful way.Iam not giving out anything in the story, here is a skeletal story line. The movie is the story of kunnikuttan(Mohanlal), a poor kathakali dancer's search for identity and recognition. He comes across subadhra(suhasini maniratnam), the daughter in law of the travancore diwan. The line between reality and dream blurs for subadhra.Like "Subadhra" of the mahabharath character who falls in love with the mythological character arjun,this subadra falls in love with the arjun of the kathakali play, kunnikuttan.This leads to various complexities and with kunnikuttan's drastic moves the movie come to a crashing climax.
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The movie is an ode to kathakali.The story is beautifully woven around dreams and reality. kathakali enables the story to cross the reality line and move into a fantasy world. Mahabharatha's character's Arjun, subadhra, abhimanyu all become part of the story.The story is an extension of those characters from mahabharatha.

shaji's view on the mahabharatha characters.Arjuna for me is someone who isn't aware of his abilities, but is used by others for those very abilities. For example, Krishna. But the battle of Mahabharata was won because of him. So there is an identity crisis there. Vaanaprastham

And though Arjuna was married to Panchali, his relationship with Subhadra was different. It had a deeper, philosophical element to it. Though Subhadra and Arjun had never met each other, they knew each other through letters, through people. Both were exceptionally intelligent. Subhadra, for her part, was a woman with a strong concept of right and wrong. The two deeply respected each other. Their son, Abhimanyu, was immensely intelligent, too, having heard the story of the Chakravyuh while still in the womb. Intelligence, here, had a philosophical connotation which appealed to me. more

A little bit of awareness of kathakali would also make you enjoy the story more. Kathakali the traditional dance of kerala, it is mainly staged on various episodes of mahabharatha and the important characters are identified with their costumes. The famous green face is the arjun, other characters like duryodhana, dushasana all come up with different set of costumes with weapons and strange sounds, hanuman with a white cap etc.

Credits:


You cannot find fault with mohanlal's action in the movie, not even in a single frame. He does his part to perfection. He portraits kunnikuttan a deeply wounded, alcoholic artist, who is unrecognized both as a son and as a father. This depressingly sad character who carries a world of sadness, comes alive when he puts on the kathakali costumes.From a man who cannot control anything in his life he becomes the all powerful arjun who can stand against an army all alone. Mohanlal does not do much of an emotional outburst but the sadness of the character seeps out in every frame. You are left to wonder how did he make himself into kunnikuttan in every frame. How much trouble he must have undergone to bring the pain of that character through out the movie.

He was well supported by suhasini maniratnam as subhadra.

suhasini

The photography in this movie is of high quality. The cinematographers for this movie are santhosh sivan and Renato Berta.The photography is pleasing, kathakali the most colorful of all indian traditional dances is enhanced many folds by the photography of this pair.



And off course the much of the credit goes to the director shaji karun. Shaji who shot to fame with his movie piravi, which swept all the major awards at the 1988 national awards. He came back to assert his position in indian cinema with this movie.

The Cannes Film Festival committee declared '500 names that made Cannes' so far and Shaji shares the honor of being one among the names along with three other Indians - Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and Sashi Kapoor. He was once listed in a Cannes cataloged as one who provided the late Indian director Aravindan with unforgettable images in the latter's cycle of mythological stories set in the State of Kerala.

In recognition to his contributions to the world of Cinema, the French Government has conferred on him the Chevalier dans ordre des arts et lettres (knight of arts and letters). Shaji is only the third in Indian filmdom, after Satyajit Ray and Sivaji Ganesan, to get the award.

Music:


Music was by the table maestro Zakir hussain.Apart from the traditional kathakali music the maestro has used a melancholic theme music and has enhanced various scenes as needed.

Awards & Recognitions:
It is pathetic that the committee responsible for sending indian movies to the oscars always falters.They send 'Jeans' instead of "Bandit Queen" and "Earth" instead of "Vanaprastham".This movie deserved it, but was pathetically brushed aside for the oscar nomination because some moron thought otherwise.



Vanaprastham might not have made it to the oscars, but it did make it to the cannes and it made it in style.Shaji karun whose all 3 movies including vanaprastham were screened in cannes, got the honor of making it to the 500 directors who made cannes and was awarded the 'Chevalier dans ordre des arts et lettres'.The movie did well in the art film circuit.

Shaji's words.It was screened in over a hundred theatres. You know, a Frenchman I met in Austria told me that he had seen the film in an Austrian village. Can you believe an Indian film running for 10 days in a European village? People are passionate about all art forms in Europe.

Actually, Vaanaprastham has been to more festivals than Piravi. It has gone all over Europe, Brazil and Mexico. It is going to the 65th film festival next month. Visually, too, it is different from other Indian films, as we had more finance at our disposal. So we had an opportunity to show the world that we are not lagging behind in technology.more

shaji N Karun

Mohanlal who plays the character that never gets recognized, got his recognization at the national level.The movie bagged Mohanlal the Best actor National award in 1999, He also received the award of Best picture for producing the movie.But the award wasn't an easy one.It was actually one of the well fought awards.

1999 was a great year, some excellent movies came out including vaanaprastham. Mohanlal and vaanaprastham had to compete with so many worthy contenders both at the nationals and the state level. It was the year of Kamal hassan's "Hey ram", Buddhadeb Dasgupta "Uttara", Rituparno Ghosh's "Bariwali", Aparna sen's "Paromitar Ek Din". Apart from the national level, mohanlal had to fight with another great performance in his home state itself. He had to compete with kalabhavan mani, who gave a stunning performance as a blind man in "Vasanthiyum Lakshmiyum Pinne Njaanum".In Tamil it was again, another stunning performance by vikram in Bala's "Sethu".

Vikram in sethu

Kalabhavan mani a former auto rickshaw driver turned actor. Did small roles in movies and sang folk songs. Things totally changed for him after his stunning performance as a blind man in the movie "Vasanthiyum Lekshmiyun Pinne Njanum".But the finest hour of this unrecognized actor was stolen by the well established super star of malayalam cine industry, bharath mohanlal. As fate put him against one of the best performance of mohanlal, He had to bow out. But Kalabhavan mani's performance did get the notice of the jury though.He was given the Special Jury Award for his performance in "Vasanthiyum Lekshmiyun Pinne Njanum".

Kalabhavan mani in Lakshmiyum...

With vikram it was a different story.His life story itself is a cinematic one.Vikram debut movie in 1989 was a flop.With that movie his fate was almost sealed.He didn't get any chance, he survived by giving dubbing voices. He went through an accident and was not able to walk for 3 years, with that and other personal crisis he had to wait for 10 years for a break.His sheer determination won at last and he got to star in director Bala's sethu.Vikram gave his soul and body for the movie.Every day he walked for miles, survived on meager food and went down half of his body weight to fit into the role. The change in his body was staggering in the movie.This and his acting combined with a strong story line made the movie a hit.Since then he has grown to become a commercially successful actor only second to rajinikanth, the superstar of tamil cine industry. Vikram fought all the way to the nationals, again unfortunate for him, his finest hour was stolen by mohanlal. Supposedly he lost the best actor award by one vote. But he didn't had to wait for long.He bagged the national award for best actor in 2003 for his role as a grave digger in another Bala's movie "pithamagan".



What would have been 3 best actor awards if they would have been released on different years, were all made to compete on the same year.Vikram and kalabhavan mani lost to a worthy winner.Mohanlal was simply superb in this movie.Whether it is dancing as a kathakali artist(his eyes, eye brows and the body movements match any good kathakali player) or carrying the burned of his birth in every scene that he appears, or the way his face lights up when he sees suhasini or his daughter he was just awesome in the movie.If i have to pick one scene i would say the scene where he talks with his father.There is hardly any movement or facial expression, the way the eyes are slightly lowered, voice modulation in uttering his words all indicating his bottled up sadness, anger and respect.How could such a feeling be emoted without much emotional outpour?.You have to feel the character completely and that is what exactly mohanlal has done in the movie.

Trivia:
The english translation of Last dance has nothing to do with the title vanaprastham.In Indian Philosophy, 'Vanaprastham' is the third of the four ashramas or stages in a man's life - Brahmacharya or bachelorhood, Grihastha or married life, Vanaprastha or retirement to the forest and Sanyasa or renunciation of all wordly interests.

Links:
The problems of the vanaprastham
shaji karun official website
vikram interview
vikram in week
Kalabhavan mani
know more about kathakali