An ideal family watch

Satish Vegesna’s Shatamanam Bhavati makes for an ideal family watch during the festive season

Peppered for Sankranti: Actors Sharwanand, Anupama Parameswaran, Prakash Raj and Jayasudha give the movie a right balance with their performances.

An idyllic Atreyapuram, a grandfather who says farming isn’t a job but a way of life, a large joint family, estranged sons and daughters returning to their native town where Sankranti is around the corner, you can only marvel at the timing of Shatamanam Bhavati ’s release for the festive season. A rather saccharine and fragile conflict aside, the film’s heart lies in its rural setting dosed with flavour. The storyline is not of the material to tug our heart strings, yet the mood the director Satish Vegesna and cinematographer Sameer create and how they pepper it to appeal this generation makes it an ideal family watch.

Satish Vegesna makes it clear that Raghava Raju and his wife are his lead protagonists (played by Prakash Raj and Jayasudha), the younger characters only lend support in fulfilling their intentions.

In a film with umpteen characters, the distinctions are impressive though many have familiar tropes. Like how the urban and the NRI breed in the film surrender their lives to technology, the one belonging to a village is destined to have a clean heart, forever looking at larger good. In fact Raju, an IT student in the village, creates a cycle for one to climb a tree where kallu is collected in a pot. Yet there are a lot of rooted parts like Bangarraju nicknamed Kangarraju (played by veteran actor Naresh) for his forgetfulness, another harmlessly indulgent friend (played by Praveen) who disturbs Sharwanand whenever the latter has a private moment with his maradalu. There’s slice-of-life enthusiasm for us to appreciate, thanks to the clean, mostly underplayed humour.

The romance between Raju and Nithya is treated as a sub-plot that appeals intermittently. The use of the song

Nilavade where the actors go retro in their styling is the track’s highpoint. Rest assured, you’re left with an impression that the two are only delaying the inevitable. This is where Shatamanam Bhavati plays around with the breezy nature of the plot beyond necessity, like the Dubsmash sequence, despite its entertainment value, stretches the elastic a tad too much. Given the plot’s predictability, the narrative runs out of juice as it nears culmination, only to be resurrected by a ‘Swamy Kalyanam’ episode that reaffirms its priorities.

Prakash Raj and Jayasudha, very minimalistic in their craft, anchor the film’s soul. Veteran actor Naresh, Praveen and his gang of friends are the ones to provide life to the film’s chirpy environment. Sharwanand and Anupama Parameswaran give measured performances, yet you feel that two capable actors deserved better than uni-dimensional parts. With a small twist to a pristine exterior and a familiar core, Shatamanam Bhavati gets its balance right predominantly due to the performances, humour and Mickey J. Meyer’s music.

- Srivathsan Nadadhur