Search This Blog

Friday, February 3, 2012

Lifeu Ishtene - Not a review


     


        For me, Yograj Bhat’s movies have changed the industry. Not just by dishing out quality and ‘different’ taste of cinema but also creating a platform for other moviemakers to think, to act and to make movies differently.  Though there are still 100s of shit-old formulaic film makers around, it is heartening to see a bunch of directors and writers attempting something new and different, consciously.

As part of the same renaissance , a young director who dropped out of his engineering course midway to pursue his movie dreams, made a movie named ’Lifeu Ishtene’ as his directorial debut and released it in 2011. Thanks to my absence from kannada-naadu, I wasn’t able to catch the movie at a theatre and was eagerly waiting to see it pop-up online. But, I was pleasantly surprised to see it being made available online legally and in pretty decent time after its theatrical release. So, I went ahead and rented it. What follows next is my opinion about it.

This movie is a story about Vishal(DIGANTH) who hopelessly falls in love with every other girl that he comes across. The movie starts with him being in a state of dejection after coming out from a failed relationship and gives us a glimpse of his unfortunate past. He then tries to steer himself away from another relationship only to realize that he can forget his past by only getting into another liaison. The story then talks about how the events give him a déjà-vu and how he deals with all that.

Is the story new? Maybe not. Is the treatment fresh? Definitely yes. Any story that is told in an unconventional way and/or with a heart deserves attention. This movie scores at both the points. It’s a very good script that the director Pawan Kumar works with and does total justice to it. He uses simple but at the same time pretty clever lines throughout the movie. Pawan works with a great team and ensures every department adds a touch of quality to the final product. Manomurthy, Jayant Kaikini and Yograj Bhat are at their usual best and I loved the songs contrary to many people’s voice these days that they are getting repetitive. Good things and classy stuff, my friends, can never get repetitive. The camera work by Sugnana is impressive and the good work is pretty hard to miss. Smart editing and very good use of background score make the narration interesting.

Digant is brilliant in his role as the gloomy and disappointed character hoping to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Veena Sundar and Achyut Kumar playing the roles of his parents are very good and are amazingly spontaneous in their performances. The actresses, Samyuktha Horanadu and Sindhu Lokanath are impressive in their first outings and give good performaces but get overshadowed by Digant’s show. Ninsasam Satish is a treat in his role as Digant’s friend constantly showing him a mirror to make him understand what he does. The best thing about this movie is that there are no ‘why wasn’t this scene chopped at editing table’ scenes! This makes for a pretty tight story-telling but still doesn’t leave any gaping holes in the plot.

This movie is no candy-floss entertainment! It is realistic and sincere in its depiction of characters and relationships. The director succeeds to convey the message of learning from the past and letting things go. May what you do, the end can never be planned. Do everything with a heart and believe in good things that happen to you.

It’s good that this movie was made. It’s even better that it was liked. We need more and more movies like this one. We need a lot more young filmmakers to get inspired by the new wave.  The age old divide between the so-called commercial cinema and art cinema should get bridged. All good movies should get attention and must be praised instead of being classified as mainstream and art.

Watch this movie and embrace the good and honest side of kannada cinema!!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PS : This movie is not in theatres anymore. But, for people who want to watch it again or the ones like me who couldn’t watch it in a theatre, can watch it right here on this page [Pawan Kumar was glad to let me put this up here :-)]

PPS : Feel free to embed the below video on your blogs/websites too! Spread the good word about this movie and the efforts that the team is putting in to make it reach as many people as it can.




No comments:

Post a Comment