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(Out of 5) |
Afterthoughts
As I said earlier, this movie makes me mad. Vishwanath is a mean, mean, man. Nana Patekar does a marvelous job of playing a sadistic, jealous husband. He's insane without being over the top. His quiet chuckles, his calculating manner, and his low-pitched quiet voice all come together to make him a very real, believable threat. In particular the whipping scene had my blood boiling. I am willing to attribute some of that to my own fondness for Ms. Manisha, but that brings me to another point.
Manisha Koirala does a great job of portraying an abused wife. When Vish is in the middle of his fits of rage, she really looks terrified and helpless. Add to that the fact that she's trapped with this bastard and you can really feel her vulnerability. I thought these two worked very well together to bring this tragic couple to horrifyingly realistic levels.
Jackie Shroff was also good in this film, but more so in the first half than in the second. He's not given as much to do I thought, as the story moved to focus more on the dynamics between Vish and Madhu.
My complaints are more of the technical nature this time out. There were several scenes where the substitution of dolls for the actors was very evident. The fire jumping scene and the car crash towards the end were both clearly using mannequins. Also, what happened to Ulmi? She's prominently featured in the first half hour, then again in another scene or two a little later, then she disappears completely after the scene where Shivangi is waking up in the hospital. After all the attention she and Ravi were getting early on, I figured they'd be key players throughout. Not so. Ravi does come back in the second half, but he's mostly just following Suraj around. Still, the story with the three main players was engaging, and I can overlook the technical problems in light of the emotional response the main plot drew out of me.
Negatives:
Mannequins, and lots of them. I understand those scenes were dangerous, but when the camera lingers on them for so long it's very clear what one is really looking at.
Not sure if this really counts as a negative, but there were only a few songs in this one. I'm getting used to five or six, and this one only had four. Nit-picky I realize, but hey. I know what I like.
Once again choppy editing rears its head.
The whole ruse at the end seemed a little far-fetched in what had been a pretty realistic story up until that point.
Positives:
The acting was great! Manisha and Nana were outstanding, and everyone else did a good job. No one stood out as being hammy or silly. Everyone portrayed believable characters and made the whole story much more engaging.
Fun songs throughout. I only wish they'd subtitled them.
Ravi and Ulmi made a fun, cute couple. I'd like to see more films with either or both of these actors. It was a shame more time wasn't spent on them.
Seeing this film showed me that Manisha was a great actress. She'd been good in the others I'd seen at this point, but I thought this was a challenging role, and she knocked it out of the park.
For this film, I will use a can of Doom as my unit of measurement. I saw this on the checkout line in the grocery store scene, and knew this was it the moment I saw it.
Agni Sakshi (1998)
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(Out of 5) |
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