Vanaja - Reaction

[India]

A movie that's worth watching if only for the beautiful Kuchipudi dancing and for the interesting display of South Indian culture. This film does an excellent job at capturing the atmosphere in South India through the characters, costumes, and setting.

It begins with a girl who decides she wants to be a dancer, joins a household ruled by an old dancer, gets lessons, and picks up dancing (almost impossibly) fast. It seems as if it would be a heart-lifting tale. But then the story splits. The main path follows her through a dark tale that begins with problems relating to inappropriate sexual conduct, problems that get exacerbated by her low station (caste) in life. This tale didn't appeal to me because it included very few positive relationships and implied all men, or at least all men depicted, are evil. Thus, I found I didn't care much about the characters.

Meanwhile, the other path is simply the girl learning to dance better. While I enjoyed watching it, I felt it had little substance and certainly couldn't hold up the movie on its own.

The film speaks about the caste system in India, the strength of family ties, and how one particular woman comes of age.

The director spoke after the showing. He was so eloquent and charismatic in speaking about the movie and the decisions he made that my assessment of the movie instantly increased. He described how he recruited some actors with elder-care help wanted ads, another with a posting in a gym, and the children by going to a school. For the former, he interviewed them and gradually changed the conversation to acting -- in effect, a bait and switch. Hence, all the actors were non-professionals and in effect were type-cast, playing a similar role to their real station in life. This worked really well: I couldn't tell the actors were amateurs because they all seemed so natural. This page includes some of these great stories about recruiting the cast members and filming. The cast page which gives the background of the actors, is interesting as well. The girl who played Vanaja didn't know how to dance before being recruited for the movie. She apparently picked up all her skills from extensive lessons over the course of a year. I imagine that's why the director thought he could portray Vanaja as learning as fast as she did -- because his actress learned impressively fast as well.

The director also described his ongoing adventures with the Indian censor board. He planned ahead a bit by filming alternative cuts of some scenes, but the board still has some quibbles that he's working on resolving.

This film was submitted as part of his MFA at Columbia. He should be proud -- it's pretty good for a first work.