Chandramukhi Marathi Movie Review: Musical Masterpiece!

CHANDRAMUKHI (Marathi)

Producer: Akshay Bardapurkar

Director: Prasad Oak

Cast: Amruta Khanvilkar, Adinath Kothare, Mrunmayi Deshpande,  Prajakta Mali, Samir Chowghule, Mohan Agashe, Ashok Shinde and Rajendra Shirsatkar

Platform of Release: Theatrical

Rating:

By Jyothi Venkatesh

With larger than life takings and magnetic and mesmerising dance numbers reminiscent of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s sets, Chandramukhi, based on Vishwas Patil’s novel of the same name, is a love story/ political drama about the romantic as well as forbidden relationship between a rising politician and a folk dancer, and the disastrous repercussions of this relationship.

Daulat Deshmane (Adinath Kothare), a sincere politician with a bright future, is on the verge of becoming India’s next minister of commerce and industry. However, it just takes one photo of him and Chandramukhi (Amruta Khanvilkar), a tamasha dancer, who the happily married Daulat has fallen in love with, which is printed ( or call it planted)  in a newspaper to ruin the chances of his ascension to the post.

Screenplay cum dialogue writer Chinmay Mandlekar manages to capture the essence of the story, adapting from a story that originally runs over 300 pages though it is not an easy task The film is Amruta Khanvilkar’s first title role performance and she has worked her best till date and pumped sweat and blood into this role by undergoing tremendous physical transformation to suit the role of the tamasha dancer and what’s more, on top of it, also worked on getting the specific dialect right too.

Also read: Heropanti 2 Review: As terrible as it gets.

Rajendra Shirsatkar, who has also played the roles of the cop in TV serials an the lead in many Marathi films ably gets into the skin of his character as the menacing but simple villain Nana Jondhale effectively while Samir Chowghule underplays his vital character as the go between Battasha between Daulat and Chandramukhi with sincerity. Mrunmayee Deshpande is very impressive and steals the scenes where she appears with tremendous ease as Daulat’s legally wedded wife Dolly while Mohan Agashe displays how seasoned he is and creditably acquits himself in the role of Daulat’s father in law Dada.Ashok Shinde has not been utilized fully as the father of Chandramukhi.

Music by Ajay-Atul is indeed exemplary and the songs are catchy as well as melodious and seem to be the only thing glidingly taking you through to the next scene. Amruta Khanvilkar’s grace and poise are commendable while Prasad Oak ought to be praised for his ability in direction though he ought to have edited his film by at least half an hour to make it gripping to the core instead of wasting half an hour to show us the progress in Daulat and Chandramukhi’s love life initially.