Kurmavtara (Kannada)

Starring: Dr Shikaripura Krishnamurthy, Jayanthi, Apoorva Kasaravalli, Harish Raju, Cheswa, Rashmi Hariprasad
Directed by Girish Kasaravalli
Rating: ***

n 1987, Girish Kasaravalli made Tabarane Kathe, a moving tale of a retired, old man, struggling against a callous system, to get his due pension. In Kurmavtara, Kasaravalli trains his camera on an elderly man again. However, here it is not his circumstances but his inner demons that seem to tie him down. Rao follows a defined routine, his life revolves only around his job. The Bhagavad Gita is what he lives by and his motto is Sukhe Dukhe Same Kritva, to not get affected by either happiness or sorrow. Then, out of the blue, comes an assignment to play Mahatma Gandhi in a TV serial. A man who stayed calm and composed even on his wife’s death, Rao is unable to bring alive on screen Gandhi’s deep anguish and despair at Partition. Soon, his ostensibly straight, simple life gets complicated as he begins to see, metaphorically speaking, Gandhi as his mirror image. His past is dredged out; his life held up for questioning: how he could not grieve for his wife, how he couldn’t send his kids for tuitions, how his honesty got them nothing but unhappiness.

It takes a while to get into the narrative flow but slowly you become one with Rao’s world and can sympathise with his dilemmas. Isaac Thomas’s plaintive music adds to the feel. Kurmavtara is fuss-free, minimalist story-telling. With whimsical moments thrown in, like when Rao’s boss serves notice to him only to withdraw it lest someone misconstrues it as “a notice for playing Gandhi”. Kurmavtara is pensive and poignant.