Two sides of the same coin?

I finally got around to watching two of the most hyped Marathi films in recent times - Deool and Shala - and I must say the experience was a bit like having a Krackjack biscuit. Lets talk about Deool first.

Deool is a very well-directed, well-enacted tale of beliefs and how man uses God for his own benefit. Its starts off slow and slightly difficult to decipher, but grows with each scene, until it reaches a high-point by the intermission. The scenes in the second half are well etched too and the end is just perfect, fittingly allowing Girish Kulkarni a couple of scenes of his own with "his" Datta. The village setting, the lingo, the playful politician couple, the mandatory female Sarpancha backed by a stronger hand, the older generation's obsession with TV soaps, the youth leader's mental tussle between backing his uncle who brought him up and backing his instincts which could open more doors for him, the transformation of the village from a serene place to a bustling worship-center, the economic upturn and its downsides, the demoralization of a good-natured man who wants to do good for his village but cant make others see it, and ultimately, the mental turmoil of the simpleton who is the reason for the change but not the beneficiary - it is all protrayed so well, that the director Umesh Kulkarni deserves a pat on his back. He has tried hard to stay on course and although there are a couple of weak points - like the item song under the garb of using a celebrity show for publicity and using a famous actor in a gimmicky cameo in the climax - those are minor abberations in an otherwise well-conceived project. All actors do full justice to their parts - right from Dilip Prabhawalkar as the well-meaning Appa, Nana Patekar as the chameleon-like Bhau, Hrishikesh Joshi as the ridiculously-named Tomya, Srikant Yadav as the seething-with-anger Anna, Sonali Kulkarni as the flirtatious Vahini saheb, and last but not the least, National award winner Girish Kulkarni as the god-fearing simpleton Keshya. The dialogues strike a perfect balance between being hilarious and poignant, and the irony in the scenes takes the movie several notches higher. The songs are just awesome - especially the bhajan Deva Tula Shodhu Kutha and the parody Phoda Datta Naam Taho. They are not only well sung but also brilliantly penned and add to the sarcastic nature of the story. The end is very apt and makes you cry for the poor Keshya who has lost his cow to the commercialization of God, but who finally comes into his own by sending a message back to the establishment, even though he knows it will have only a minor effect. Deool entertains and also makes you think about what is wrong with the way we view progress and the cost at which we achieve it. A movie you cannot afford to miss!

Shala, on the other hand, is a take on adolescent love in school days, with the backdrop of emergency. It tries to provide an unbiased view of how teens think and behave, and what shapes their thoughts, without being judgemental. Shala is helped by a very good performance from Anshuman Joshi as the main protagonist Joshya, through whose eyes we see the world. The setting is authentic and the camaraderie between Joshya and his buddies Fawdya and Mhatre is sure to bring back memories of your own buddies from school. Ketaki Mategaonkar is sweet as Shirodkar and you can see why Joshya falls for her. Most of the teachers do a good job and a few scenes like the one which draws parallels between what is happening in the country at the time of emergency and what happens in the classroom when Shirodkar doesnt put a brown cover on her book, or the one where Joshya's father listens to his side of the story considerately before reaching a conclusion, are very well handled. Where the movie falters big time is in its direction, in all senses. The story does not have any direction, and while it is quite understandable that debutant director Sujay Dahake wanted to come up with a slice-of-life film, Shala does not have enough entertaining or interesting moments to keep you hooked for 98 mins. Now when a movie cant do that for such a short span of time, its asking for trouble. Most topics broached are just poked at and then left alone, which left me tremendously dissatisfied as a viewer. For eg. the parallels between emergency and classroom atmosphere started out very well but the emergency angle petered out very tamely in the end. The issue of a newly admitted Bandra girl trying to commit suicide because her classmates tease her using their favorite teacher's name was handled very very amateurishly. If the issue was not important or did not deserve a proper conclusion, why bring it up at all! The character of Joshya's uncle was half-baked and did not go to its full potential. Even Joshya's own philosophies were under-developed, and while that is understandable since he is only 14 years old, the message that the movie gave out was terribly confusing and that is not pardonable. Every movie need not have a message or take a stand, but a half-baked, lily-livered message is worse than no message at all. Shala succeeds on one count, and that is invoking nostalgia. Unfortunately, it fails on most other counts - story-telling, entertainment and holding the viewer's interest. Its not so much a bad film as it is an amateurish attempt at making a feel-good film. Ultimately, it ends up being a pretentious, wannabe film, that could have been so much more.