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Mitr-My
friend and classic shobana
by
Srilakshmi Katragadda
(Mitr-My
friend directed by Revathy bagged three prestigious awards including
best English film and shobana-best actress, and beena paul-best
editor in the 49th National film awards)
After
seeing this award-winning-amazing-movie "mitr-my
friend", I surely want to share my feelings from the other
side of the world with Idlebrain visitors. I am a telugu girl staying
in Toronto, Canada and I picked up the dvd seeing shobana's picture
on the cover as it's a familiar face to telugu-cine-goers. I inserted
the dvd just before going to the bed on an usual working day thinking
I could finish the movie in bits within the span of two to three
days. Guess what?? I even forgot to go to the washroom in between.
(mind you, Canada is a cold country!!) and I stuck to my seat as
if I am glued…for 1hr45mts..then fearing I could not catch
up with work the next day, I resisted to scan it for the second
time.
Here
are the emotions & feelings I went through… shobana is
just awesome in this movie. She is familiar to us as "abhinandana
girl" and the last movie I watched her was "rakshana".
First the arch-feet of shobana caught my attention. Is she a classical
danseuse I thought…for a second. Then I thought come on…she
has established herself very well in the movie industry for the
last 15+ years…why should she be still continuing with classical
dance as sticking to fine arts needs lot of guts, dedication, stamina,
love-towards-arts, patience, practice, so an and so forth. Moreover
it is not money fetching for sure. My guess was after getting all
the awards&rewards in the movies, classical dance was something
which is very very tough to get on with…
Then
I put a "search" on mitr-my friend movie to know more
about the movie. It took me to the http://www.mitr-myfriend.com
official website. I read how they thought about making this movie
and why all-women-crew first for Indian cinema, their experiences
during the making of the movie in California, US and the problems
they faced like- their stuff reaching late, loosing expensive camera
lenses in the peak time, how rain caused the delay as California
weather is unpredictable etc…(it's tough obviously in a foreign
land if you have unforeseen problems and I guess it affects more
for movie shootings as it proves costly in form of money as well
as trauma) Yes…it's an amazing movie with perfect in most of
the things like dialogues, screenplay, editing, story, action which
most of us look for. Revathy's first directorial venture was really
commendable. Everybody looked to give their best and that mood is
seen throughout the movie.
Again,
coming back to classic shobana, I never watched her on bharatanatyam
stage before (but I will now…and I am thinking of catching
a flight to chennai instead of hyderabad to have a glimpse of her
and her performances..) but in "mitr-my
friend" she enacted the role of a mother and a wife so
well. In one frame, I could see three to four different gamut of
emotions flat like a combo deal which I am not familiar with seeing
in any movie. Each and every frame where she enacted was real, natural,
soothing sometimes…and inspiring no-doubt!! It is heard that
three times, shobana has to travel between US to Dubai and India,
to keep her dance performances going while "mitr-my
friend" was on the sets in the US within a forty-five-day-period.
Imagine the jet lag one could come across and she is said to be
radiant, full of zeal and delight.
Now,
since the best actress award is conferred on shobana for "mitr-my
friend" in the 49th National film awards for the second
time (she was awarded best actress before for Manichitratazu in
1994). I told myself shobana is a p-e-r-f-o-r-m-e-r..be it classical
dance, or movies. She seems to give-her-best in complex roles with
so-much-ease … that arch-feet of her still haunts…I smile
and say Yeah…she is a classical danseuse too…a big thing
ofcourse for me.
keep-it-up-buddy…
Srilakshmi
Katragadda
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