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Director
: Pamela Rooks
Starring : Sobhana, Arif
Zakaria, Anoushka Shankar, Sameer Soni, Mohan
Agashe |
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Like a Man Movie Review : |
The
cultural dilemma and conflicts faced by exponents of
a fading art form seem to fascinate playwright Mahesh
Dattani. In "Morning Raga", a Carnatic singer
comes to terms with past tragedy and present exigencies
through her association with the young.
And in "Dance Like
A Man", which Pamela Rooks directs from Dattani's
layered and luminous play, we meet two bharatanatyam
dancers Ratna and Jairaj in the declining years of their
professional lives.
Initially, we see the
couple completely from the outside, first from the viewpoint
of their purported son-in-law Vishal (Sameer Soni) and
then their daughter Lata (Anoushka Shankar). This deliberate
exteriorisation of the narrative makes us stand outside
the protagonists' lives and yet be part of them.
Pamela Rooks, whose
adaptation of Khushwant Singh's "The Train To Pakistan"
captured much of the exacerbated ethos of those troubled
times in 1947, here goes for a more intimate portrait
of fissures. We see two fairly anachronistic characters
Ratna (Sobhana) and Jairaj (Arif Zakaria) as two individuals
trapped in a cultural chasm.
At times the politics
of aesthetics are shown to seep into their lives with
unsettling brutality, rendering their mutual and uncommon
love for a common art into a fight for self-assertion
rather than reason for collaborative creativity.
At first when we see
the dancing couple from Vishal's viewpoint, Jairaj and
Ratna with their dance-is-life theory of existence appear
ridiculously self-absorbed. The conversation among the
trio is so tangential as to appear ridiculous. While
Vishal wants to broach the subject of their daughter's
marriage, the couple is only concerned about their daughter's
endangered 'arangetram' (dance initiation) as the mridangam
player has broken his hand.
The sequence is constructed
as a typical chamber piece with minimal camera movement
and optimum communication of complex emotions through
the expressions of the actors as they plunge into their
characters with a relish afforded only in a cinema that
allows its emotions to emerge through the characters,
and not vice versa.
In what can be termed
an opera-in-reverse, Rooks records the bitterness, and
undercurrent of rivalry between the couple in a spiral
of tones that goes from their future son-in-law's mild
amusement to a grim and greatly disconcerting debate
on high art and its exploitation, even by those who
practise it with seeming single-mindedness.
As the slim but profound
story unfolds we see Ratna to be a woman of many devices.
Partly a devoted wife and defiant daughter-in-law (watch
Sobhana carefully in the sequence with pa-in-law Mohan
Agashe where she bursts into a totally improper giggle
when reminded of the effeminate nature of male dancing),
Ratna also unravels before us as a woman who has perhaps
used her husband to further her own vastly superior
dancing talents.
In his expressions of
bitter anguish and yet smothered rage, Arif Zakaria
reminds us of Amitabh Bachchan in Hrishikesh Mukherjee's
"Abhimaan". The male ego cannot comprehend
the phenomenon of the spouse overtaking his talent.
Though this is a far more complex film than "Abhimaan",
"Dance Like A Man" finally seems more stagy
than other films about two professionals married to
one another who fall apart in the race to the top.
Unlike Mahesh Dattani,
who has deliberately denuded his film "Morning
Raga" of the theatrical element, Pamela Rooks seems
to revel in the staginess of the original material.
Fortunately, except
for Sameer Soni who's a little too filmy -- or glamorous
if you will -- for the film's authentic albeit stage
ambience, the cast seems to instinctively grasp the
nuances and layers that decorate the drama of the driven.
Curiously, Pamela Rooks
films Jayaraj's troubled past with his autocratic father
(Mohan Agashe) in an orange-glow mood rather than the
usual sepia tones applied to cinematic memories. Flashback
in this way is fleshed with more flamboyance than usual.
Many of the play-on-film's
bland spots are easily overlooked by Sobhana's utterly
mesmerising pivotal performance.
As the dancer, wife
and mother overpowered by her desire to fill her life
and surroundings with aesthetic excellence even at the
cost of disrupting her domestic life, Sobhana brings
a lustrous texture and an inimitable ripeness not only
to her character, but also to the entire work.
Pandit Ravi Shankar's
daughter Anoushka's acting debut is not disappointing.
Not an actress but more a presence signifying that cultural
clash that layers the film, Anoushka dances well and
projects an inherited confidence so essential for her
part.
At a time when
Hindi cinema seems determined to strip bodies instead
of soul, "Dance Like A Man" brings an enchanting
soul-searching element into the art of cinema.
Courtesy
: Glamsham.com
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