The sharp writing, typical of Tendulkar, is what first caught my attention. With nothing but the truth on his side, the idealistic Master (as the baron addresses him), accosts the queasy but influential sugar baron to own up. The sugar baron is rich and successful, feared by his people, and the drunk uncovers dark secrets of his, while under his hospitality. Samna (“Confrontation”) is a duel of wits between an egotistical and crafty sugar baron and a former teacher, now the local drunk. Samna, made in 1974 from a script by the great playwright Vijay Tendulkar, has not aged as well as one would have thought, but its message is still pertinent. Jabbar Patel’s entire filmography (especially Umbartha) deserves a place on this list, but this is the first of the two films of his that I will include. These films must not be incorrectly tagged as the ‘greatest Marathi-language films,’ for that is subjective. In the process I will also try to address a more pressing question: “What makes them great?” I can only recommend the films that are personal favourites of mine, films that I have seen and marveled at time and time again. I will only be tackling one in this piece: “Where to begin?” What are the essential Marathi-language films that a novice needs to watch? It’s a tricky question, for there cannot be any such definitive list. Among the latest Marathi movies, it was Aadish Keluskar’s daring and elusive Kaul in 2016, Avinash Arun’s magnificent Killa, a year prior to it and very recently Lapachhapi.Īnd yet it remains largely inaccessible to audiences outside Maharashtra for several reasons.
I now find that every year there is at least one Marathi-language film that reminds me how wrong I was about Marathi cinema as a kid. It shook my world, and I am glad that it did.
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Growing up in Mumbai, for a Marathi movie to evoke the kind of response it did was as astonishing a feat as any. If it weren’t for that film, I would still be thinking poorly of it and the kind of talent it nurtures. I write about Shwaas because it is the film that irreversibly changed the way I regarded Marathi cinema. It’s a profoundly moving film, modest and straightforward, a rarity these days, and it was a rarity back then, too. To say Shwaas is a seminal work of Marathi cinema is not an exaggeration. I didn’t watch it until seven years later. I did not know what the critics thought of the film but I made up my mind to watch it. It was a time when film reviews languished somewhere inside the pages of the newspapers. Its word-of-mouth was particularly strong, and it was a time when a film’s word-of-mouth was a more reliable factor in deciding if a film was worth watching. It was so popular among the people I knew, who made up my world back then, that I was curious. Suddenly, my friends were talking about it.
Their penetrating themes escaped me, but their craft was exemplary. My grandfather greatly admired them, and he insisted I watch them with him. The only Marathi-language films I had watched by the time I turned 10 were V. Sometimes I’d watch Marathi plays but Marathi movies, no. I thought them loud and over-the-top, a combination that never did work for me. Nothing about Marathi-language films appealed to me. Although my band of friends as a child consisted of mostly Maharashtrians, and could speak and understand Marathi perfectly, I was more attracted to Hindi- and English-language films back then, not because they were of a better quality, but for an obvious lack of choice. (It’s among the best Marathi movies, and one that sparked a revival of sorts for Marathi cinema). My curiosity in Marathi movies was aroused, if I remember, in 2004, the year Shwaas released.