Katyar Kaljat Ghusli - review

Katyar Kaljat Ghusli is the first Marathi movie, I have ever watched in theater. It is also my first movie watched after a break of almost 2.5 years in theater. Last movie, I watched was Ironman III. And it was not a great experience to spend money on.

So, after reading many reviews, listening to experiences of those closed ones who watched it, I, one fine day, decided to watch this movie.

Now, I have seen this play earlier, where Rahul Deshpande plays the role of Khan Saheb, and it was an impressive performance. Subodh Bhave, there, played the role of Kaviraj, and he made that role look significant. A comparison between the play and the movie is thus inevitable.

Let's talk of movie first. Songs are all awesome. The most beautiful part of the movie. Surprise package:  Shankar Mahadevan. He has really brought the character of Pandit ji in reality. Ofcourse, he must not have to take any extra efforts for the lip sinking on his own songs. But, he managed to protray different age shades of the character very well. I actually believed him as an old Panditji from his body language. Only scene, where I didn't feel connected is the one where he looses his voice near the lake. There was too much of special effect tried in there.

Subodh Bhave has also done a fantastic job. He has actually enacted the singing style of Mahesh Kale, who has given him voice. A similarity I found between movie and play where Mahesh Kale himself played this character. What I couldn't digest is a slight aggressive nature induced in this character. The play protray this character as a person, who just want to learn music. The feeling of revenge, never appears in the play for this character.

The weak link of this movie, according to me is Sachin's Khan Saheb. People may say, that he has done an awesome job, but I personally felt it more of overacting. After watching Rahul Deshpande as Khan Saheb, I just couldn't digest him in the character. I feel he was supposed to induce egoistic nature in the character because of the singing prowess he has achieved over the years. But, here, it seems like a mixture of hatred, revenge and egoistic nature ( without even actually  defeating Pandit Ji). Sachin has survived only because of dialogue delivery in Urdu, else, I consider him as a weak link here.

All other characters are fine. Mrunmayi Deshpande and Amruta Kahnvilkar are ok.

I felt bad about the character of Kaviraj. Compared to the play, his character in the movie has been degraded badly. It has been made pretty much unwanted.

Inspite of this, over all, the movie is good. It is worth spending money on. It does not give you complete satisfaction, but it provides you some old tunes ( redone here) to humm in spare time.