Natarang

Natarang is recently released Marathi movie and in my opinion a serious contender of next year's National awards. With Marathi movie what comes to mind is laugh riot by the likes of Laxmikant Berde or Ashok Saraf. But, this movie is quite different from the current genre of movies. Setup completely in a rural backdrop and a subject that young generation might not be able to directly connect to but believe me in the end of the movie, you will be completely soaked into it. Mind you, language spoken is not polished too; though two of us who grew up in Maharashtra found it hard to decipher each and every word.
Natarang is a story of a village labourer with a strong likening towards Tamasha. He has a family to support who does not quite approve of his Tamasha indulgence and is finding it very difficult to meet ends. The story tries to do justice to each character involved and manages to do quite well in it. In my view, movie could have been longer and could be higher on sentiment-count, but creator have kept it a fast paced especially in the later half. There are no super-heroes in movie, every character is shown constrained and close to reality (with grey shades in Mayur's words). Tamasha being the central theme of the movie, there are many song and dance sequences, both of which being convincingly handled by the people involved. Finally, it is a story of triumph of one man's passion and perseverance. All the actors have performed very well and efforts put in by Atul Kulkarni are quite exceptional and evident. Finally bonus of this movie is new actress "Sonalee", that girl just blew our minds off...enjoy some of her photos here. ;-)
Guys, if you know Marathi, you simply should not avoid this movie, the songs would be quite enjoyed in a theater only, don't miss it for sure.