Annahat
Topic: Movies
Annahat - starring Sonali Bendre, Anant Nag, Deepti Naval directed by Amol Palekar....Marathi movie with Eng sub-titles.

Very nice movie. Off beat movie from Amol Palekar. Palekar who excelled as an actor during 70s and 80s has been very active on the stage and theatre scene. Started directing movies and delivered many nice movies such as 'Kariee' and other great movie on gays etc.

This movie is set around the kingdom of 'Malla' and royal couple. King has been in power for more than 7 years and still issueless in this case heir to royalty. Per the customs of that time and per applicable scriptures, royal assembly made up of influenctial people like key ministers, royal priest etc. pass a resolution where by the queen will have to choose a 'part-time' husband to conceive royal heir.....

With this back ground, rest of the story revolves first around the anguish and confusion suffered by royal couple....King is coaxed to agree to the decision by being told over and over that he has to endorse it because king's first duty is to care for the welfare of the kingdom and all personal stuff come next.....Queen also goes through similar dilemma...

Finally, the royal couple agree and queen chooses a temporay husband and spends a night with the man...this choosing process is not shown.

When the queen returns after spending the night with chosen stranger...she is a totally transformed person..however her admittance of how she felt as a woman for the first time and how she missed all the pleasures her impotent king husband could not deliver...she comes across as a woman of loose character to kings courtiers....

She argues for the realization of her womanhood and engages in an intellectual debate with her confidant who agrees with her that choosing to fulfil requirements of personal pleasures are ok but not to be shared lest she will forgo all the sympathy that people would have showered ......

Queen has seen the zenith of personal pleasure for the first time and want it more and more like any person....so she asks the ministers to arrange 2 more sessions as allowed by the rules...this comes as a rude shock to them as they expected her to indulge in this activity for the sole purpose of progeny and not to satisfy her personal plasure needs.....

Very well directed.....wish it had been dubbed to hindi as one has to really understand the dialogs which seemed quite powerful.

Deepti Naval excels as the common confidant of king and queen patiently listening to their anguishes....she is a great actresses who excelled in both commerical and art cinema.....

Sonali Bendre delivers a solid performance as the queen...especially after her first encounter....

Anant Nag is also quite good in the role of king....

Palekar has taken every care to make sure that historical scenes are really well shot...all in all he creates the royal kingdom as it might have been 400 years ago...hat's off Palekar....

All in all - 4 stars...