Beautiful Manasugalu (Kannada)
Director: Jayathirtha
Cast: Sruthi Hariharan, Sathish Ninasam, Achyuth Kumar, Tabla Nani
Jayathirtha’s Beautiful Manasugalu begins with a lot of promise. For one, the film-maker takes a real-life incident and builds on it. The idea of a hybrid between fact and fiction could have turned out interesting. Second, the film, at least up until the second half, privileges the female lead, gives her role strength, vigour and progressive politics. Sruthi Hariharan too delivers a good performance.
And third, the film also offers a hard look at the ‘Breaking News’ syndrome and takes a strong stand against it. The fact that it shows the problems with the news cycle rather than list them out is appealing too.
But strangely, Beautiful Manasugalu manages to negate the value of all this by the end of the 110-minute runtime.
Nandini (Sruthi Hariharan), who works at a beauty parlour, ends up being framed in a prostitution racket. Prashanth (Sathish Ninasam), her boyfriend, too casts aspersions on her character. What Prashanth does after he realises the truth forms the rest of the story.
And this is where the fiction begins. Jayathirtha, rather conveniently, transforms Prashanth into a crusader, a vigilante figure who brings a corrupt system to its knees the minute Nandini’s name is cleared. This transformation of Prashanth into a sudden crusader of women’s rights is so unbelievable, mainly because it is given no time screenplay-wise. Also, the methods Prashanth uses to secure justice are not easy to digest.
More importantly, this turn in the narrative seems too clichéd for a film that begins in the real. It also seems like a convenient escape to a popular formula.
In the second half, the film, within the vigilante model therefore, focuses only on vindicating Prashanth. It also forces Nandini to accept him even though she does not approve of his methods. This, after building her up to be a free-thinking woman. Ironically, the story begins to resemble the hero-saves-the-damsel-in-distress plot by the end.
Beautiful Manasugalu set out trying something new but ultimately settled for the tried and tested.
In its form, the film is quite sensational. This works when the film-maker is showing bits about newsrooms that replay horrifying videos endlessly, but it does not work as an overall style. A number of scenes are rather loud and full of jarring shots.
Sathish is not convincing as the conflicted hero. Sruthi and Achyuth Kumar carry the film on their shoulders.
