An interview with Pawan Kumar

        Pawan Kumar arrived at the scene of Kannada industry with roles in movies like Mr.Garagasa , Inthi Ninna Preethiya,Circus, Manasaare and Pancharangi. He also worked on the story and screenplay of Manasaare and Pancharangi.

He then made his foray into direction with Lifeu Ishtene in 2011 and won accolades with his fresh approach to movie making and a smart script.

We were lucky to catch him for a quick interview and it was nice of him to oblige.

Note : This interview is in Kan-glish!

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!!

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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.

Kempegowda - Remade and well made!

     Sudeep takes up another remake project to don both actor’s and director’s hats and with it the cynicism of people who are against remakes.

It’s a totally different point of discussion about how correct it is to make more and more remakes and not give chances to local writing talent. I won’t dwell much into that although I’ve equally balanced opinion about this matter and happy to appreciate good movies irrespective of what their origin is.



Coming back to Kempegowda, it’s a remake of a popular tamil movie Singam that had super actor Surya playing the lead role and created a character that was loved by the masses.
So, Sudeep had a daunting task of recreating the same level of intensity and I must say that he succeeds with great style. He had a very good story to build upon and he makes minute changes to screenplay and retains almost 95% of the original. He has chopped off a few extended comedy scenes and that has definitely given tighter narration.

The dialogues are the main highlight of the movie and make the audience ask for more and more as the story unfolds. Comedy by Sharan is top notch and gives plenty of laughs but goes off track in few scenes seeming unnecessary.
  
Best part of this movie is the casting of Ravishankar. He was so far known to industry insiders as Saikumar’s brother and a popular dubbing artist having lent his voice to more than 3000 movies. But now, he will be firmly known as Ravishankar , the brilliant actor who has matched Sudeep in every scene that they face each other. Its funny and sad at the same time that there have been many uninspiring and hollow actors to have got ample opportunities so far and someone like Ravishankar had to wait this long. Hopefully, he’ll be well noted for this role and will be given many more challenging roles suiting his immense talent.

If there is one aspect in which this movie scores well over its tamil original then it has to the technical department. The camera work by S.Krishna is brilliant and stresses on the fact that there are beautiful locations in India that are to be shot well instead of making frequent trips to phoren locations. The editing is slick and the background score is not overtly loud or unnecessarily subtle. The fights are directed well and there are ample opportunities for front seaters to deafen others in theatres with their whistles.

I’ve to make a special mention about the music by Arjun that sounds fresh and suitable. The title song is thankfully used in the background and adds great effect to the scenes.  Elementary street fest song ‘Hungama’ is average even with around 400 extras used to give the festive effect. Both the romantic songs are well written, sung and composed. I still feel odd in the way romantic songs are placed at totally strange points of the narration. Anyways, one song that grabs your attention is the ‘Hale Radio’ which has catchy sets by Arun Sagar and lyrics by Yograj Bhat with vocals by Sudeep and Shamita Malnad.

The lead actress’s role is played by Ragini Dwivedi who is sweet and cute but needs to take few more acting classes if she wants to be more than a glamour doll and an eye candy in her movies. I wish her luck as she can build on this performance and expect bigger and better roles.

The supporting cast consisting of Girish Karnad, Ashok, Chitra Shenoy , Tara and others is above average and do not really disappoint in limited scenes that they have.

So, does this movie boast of no shortcomings at all? Not really, screenplay could have been tighter and more meat could have been added to Ravishankar’s character to make him look like a bigger evil than what is shown. The movie takes a while to reach the point of altercations between Sudeep and Ravishankar which at times seems like too much of a build-up. It could have been more engaging with more screen time after the altercations start. Also, It would have been interesting to see the things unfold if Sudeep had added more stuff that wasn’t present in the original.

On the whole, this movie has a good repeat value and does total justice to the expectations people had out of this.

For me, more than this movie alone, what makes me happier is the new wave in Kannada cinema where in all aspects of film making are being given equal respect. In last year or so, we have witnessed few technically better movies like Aptha Rakshaka, Manasaare, Pancharangi, Jackie and Super (I haven’t watched Mylaari yet but have heard good words about it). All this new wavy feeling started with Mungaaru Male few years ago but had died down in between. Its heartening to see the movie makers stressing more on these mighty factors that can actually make the movie more appealing to all the sections of the audience rather than just trying to impress B and C centres. I agree that those are major collection centres but then movies have to evolve and progress to avoid monotony and stagnancy so that every moviegoer has something to look forward to.