Deool- a must watch Marathi movie

Yesterday I watched the Marathi movie ‘Deool’ which means temple in Marathi. It was an amazing experience to watch this movie, the screenplay, casting, direction, and acting all was amazing. All characters are very well defined and are there in a movie for a reason; rarely we see such a perfect balance achieved in a Marathi movie.

The movie broadly talks about religious faith and its commercialization at the cost of real development. During the movie director very cleverly comments on various contradictions observed in Indian society. It also shows if people decide to take on some task (like temple building in the movie) and are really passionate and united for that cause nothing is impossible even in Indian system which is plagued by red-tapism and dirty politics.

Girish Kulkarni’s role as Keshya is just amazing; he has captured all the mannerisms and details of a typical village boy character. The movie shows an interesting scenario where two people poles apart from each other, pure and innocent devotees Keshya and Anna, people with a more scientific approach towards faith and God understand each other very well but the rest of the society just doesn’t try to understand both of them. The relationship between these two characters is a very interesting part of the movie according to me. Dilip Prabhavalkar’s character (Anna) is interesting as he is not against personal faith or any religion but also cautions people that faith is a personal matter and should remain personal and development is necessary for the village and not to mix them together. He feels sad when people get carried away because of prosperity which comes to them suddenly because of the construction of the new temple and its popularity. It also very nicely shows people's attitude towards popular temples in India. At most of these places, everything is just about money, and bhakti or devotion takes a backseat. These temples are big commercial power centers and money-making machines. It also shows how villagers get rid of real devotees (Keshya) and thinkers (Anna) when they don’t find their presence very convenient. These two people are two rare protagonists whom we don’t see around nowadays and all villagers make use of them for their selfish reasons and don’t even think twice before dumping them.

Dialogues of Keshya with his God are very interesting, especially when he talks with God after the construction of the temple. It also nicely comments on what might happen if we implement the women's reservation policy without any prior training for women to handle the power that they will get because of that policy (see the character of women Sarpanch of the village). It also nicely shows the effect of globalization (sudden availability of money and technology) on India's small towns and villages. It is an Indian language film to be really proud of. Don’t miss it.

(Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing)