ABHINETRI REVIEW - THE TRAGEDY OF A LEGEND (2015)

Abhinetri is a Kannada movie released recently. The story is based on the late actress Kalpana’s life story. Pooja Gandhi plays the lead role. She was average. The other actors were average. The Props were average. The story line was average. The film overall was average. The reviews were average. That’s about it where the movie is concerned. Here’s my take on why it could have been better.

Let’s talk about Legends for a minute. You’ll find that most and I say most, not all, have a pattern.

1. Born in a poor family, struggling for a living.

2. Have a passion and talent that is unique and will do anything to fulfill it.

3. Crawl their way to the top. Some get exploited in the process.

4. Become super famous and get used to a certain lifestyle.

5. Develop big time attitudes stemming from insecurities from the past and fear of losing what they already have.

6.# 5 above ultimately leads to their downfall – mostly self created. They suffer humiliation, loneliness, take to substance abuse, self harm and die.

Had the movie centered around what fame does to a person as a theme and revolved around a random story, the movie probably would have worked. Movies as this have been made

Down – Rise-Peak-Fall pattern and there is a lesson in it every time.

The pattern dint vary in this movie either.

BUT we are talking about Kalpana – Kannada’s Minugu Thaare (Shining Star) who’s acting is par excellence. Whose Iconic songs are played over and over again even to this day, and some of the scenes from her movies are truly unforgettable.

I tried to be open minded about it. It does take guts to pull off a role representing the late actress. I know it is unfair to compare. These are two different individuals.

BUT we are talking about Kalpana.

Having watching Sharapanjara (played by Kalpana) a few days before watching Abhinetri one can take lessons on to portray pain. And in this movie, watching songs like Tam nam, Tam nam modernized, replicating Sharapanjara’s climax scene even as part of the movie made me wish for one thing throughout as I sat seated in the theatre :

LEGENDS ARE BETTER LEFT ALONE!!

And that says it all.