Nerve Endings Firing Away

Shwaas (breath), the National Award winning Marathi movie has been nominated as India’s entry to the Best Foreign Language Film category. This may generate a “so what?” reaction amongst most of you, but amongst Maharashtrians, it instills a sense of pride to see their “dead” movie industry produce a gem worthy of recognition at the world stage.

After enduring a flood of slapstick comedy movies and atrocious antics of Dada Kondke, Laxmikant Berde, and Ashok Saraf in the past two decades, the Marathi film industry nearly shut down and instead concentrated on its vibrant theater scene. The past glories of V Shantaram, who produced gems like Pinjra are forgotten. The last Marathi movie I saw in a theatre, Maherchi Saari was such a tearjerker that I felt like a jerk for having accompanied my mom to see why it was such a big hit. Chaukat Raja was great just for Dilip Prabavalkar’s acting. My mom still gets ragged when me and my brother imitate his “aye..aaayye..aaayee” way of calling out for his mother.

Unfortunately I haven’t seen the occasional films like Vazir, Kalat Nakalat, Tu Tithey Mee, Anahat ,and now Shwaas that have been hailed by critics as examples of good cinema. Chances are that I may not watch them at all here because the local video store believes in stockpiling only crappy Hindi movies. But I hope that Shwaas breathes life back into the Marathi movie industry although its chances at the Oscars are bleak.

PS. If you have a copy of the movie, please let me know.