SONATA -- a review

SONATA – A Review
By – Dola Dutta Roy

Saw SONATA by Aparna Sen last evening.
While I watched the film I couldn't decide whether I was enjoying it or not. I gave myself the opportunity to cling to the classic theory of 'willing suspension of disbelief'. But when I came out of the hall, I was definite it didn't touch me at all.
Adaptation of a chamber play, Ms Sen, I think, made a hash of it. The set was beautiful, the actors were gorgeous and competent, the theme was contemporary but then there it ended. What went wrong then?
What went wrong, in my opinion, was the sham of it all. None of the actors could do justice to the roles they played. The dialogue seemed sterile and stifling. It was stilted; the put on accent to sound regional in delivery almost gave you an ear-ache. Ms Sen's appearance, body language, behavior and speech were unconvincing. She looked positively stiff in her role as Aruna Chaturvedi, a middle class scholar and writer, who chose to shun men. Shabana Azmi sparkled every now and then and yet seemed uncomfortable playing Doel Sen, a successful, emancipated woman with heartaches that turned hera shrew. Lylette Dubey, however, managed to carry it off to some extent with ease playing the aggressive journalist who appeared to be a helpless masochist in the hands of her unruly boy-friend. Very common cases in today's world -- when women have broken prehistoric social norms to make a life for themselves. Nevertheless, the three main characters seemed wooden and couldn't gel together, perhaps, in the claustrophobic environment of a single room that was weighing down on them
Meera, played by Anusuya Majumdar, was, of course, an atypical case, and only she did a brief but wonderful job.
Frankly speaking, the film didn't seem like a movie but a well crafted play on celluloid. The point is, it failed to present the poignant moments of closely guarded secrets and sufferings of these three apparently liberated, working women --uprooted from suburbia to a racing metropolis like Mumbai and languish in self pity like ultimate stereotype Indian women who accept being exploited, betrayed and even abused.
I give it a thumbs-down.
Copyright (c) Dola Dutta Roy

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