Shakuntalam

abhijana shakuntalam by Kalidasa a classic love story that has fascinated the Hindi dub at least the language is.

my biggest takeaway from Shakuntalam is that ALU Arha the six-year-old daughter of ALU Arjun is a natural-born star she comes into the film in the third act and brightens up the frame but before we get there we have to endure over two hours of Soul sapping tedium is such a deadly cocktail of theatrical acting and synthetic visuals that barely anything Rings true except area's outsized cuteness the film is based on the play filmmakers for more than a century the first film version was released in 1920. vishantaram made it twice first at Shakuntala in 1943 and then at $3 in 1961. this story has been adapted into Tamil Malayalam Assamese in Telugu it was made in 1966 with the legendary NT Rama Rao and bisa Roja Devi but Shakuntalam director Guna Sekhar has an advantage over all these filmmaker's technologies we now have the VFX that can render the forests and palaces that this story requires Cinema has Grand tradition of mythological Cinema going back to the classic Maya Bazaar should have been a dazzling tale of Dharma and Karma love and longing instead it's a crashing board

the first hurdle characters in a story from the Mahabharata cannot speak in contemporary lingo but the vocabulary here wears between incomprehensible and unintentionally comical like in one scene when Shakuntala confesses to her foster

a father that she and King Dushyant have had a Gandhar Viva she says when the king forgets her a pregnant Shakuntala is chased out of the Kingdom with onlookers exclaiming as the king exclaims early in the film

The actor Samantha Ruth's Prabhu and D Mohan take their cues from the words both are intentionally contrived this film rests on Samantha's shoulders and it is thrilling to see such a big budget project being led by a woman but the actor's last few outings have been as a Powerhouse action Queen in the family man season 2 and Yashoda or as that fabulously provocative dancer in pushpada rai's part once ooh Ottawa
she's submissive for most of the first

half she's either just scampering around with friends and animals in the forest or she's falling in love with the king or she's just pining for him perhaps the idea was to create a sort of dreamy Disney princess who symbolizes innocence the result is a character who is dramatically inert until the second half in fact shakuntala's two girlfriends whose main job seems to be just to provide explanations have more gumption than she does also the films archaic tonality is in direct contrast with Samantha's sculpted ABS clearly shakuntala worked out the screenplay written by Guna sekhar with dialogue by Sai mate bura is chaotic Exposition and backstories are rendered in animation action sequences come out of nowhere in the forest we see humans and animals living in complete Harmony the ashram even has a friendly tiger and the parrots are chanting mantras but then suddenly animals get into a rage and attack a village only so the film can introduce King dushyant and establish his bravery there's also a subplot about the rakshasals who just keep attacking but I was too distracted by their awful wigs to keep track of what their beef was the same for the scenes in heaven where shakuntala's mother menka keeps lamenting for her lost daughter but she does this while wearing so much the middle of a gigantic Hall the mix of unimpressive sets and sloppy VFX is heightened by the 3D the film strains for jaw-dropping scale but barely delivers it however shakuntalam features something that I thought had become extinct the Manji song I don't know how many of you are familiar with the Trope of the boat man singing a philosophical song like omanjiri Apna kinara and kushboo or dur hekinara in sodagar these songs were poignant pauses in the storytelling here too we have prakash Raj as the Manji who gives us and shakuntala perspective on life was pitched as mythology for Millennials but the storytelling is so Rusty that it doesn't even land for us gen xers you can see you what did you guys think of shakuntalam tell me in the comments

jewelry that I couldn't help thinking that she might be happier if she just dressed down incidentally Heaven has this tree with these roots suspended below