Shwaas

The "Shwaas" -- the Marathi movie that won several national awards and competing for the academy awards -- team is trying hard to raise enough money to give it a fair chance at the Oscars. It seems they need almost 15 million ruppees to publicise the movie among academy members. (The total movie budget is a meagre 6 million). Yesterday NDTV reported that the team isn't getting much help from the big brother Bollywood. That's really sad. Of course, as Shashi Tharoor wrote some time back, true cinephiles do not bother much about the academy awards. They may be more curious to see what happens at Cannes or Venice or Locarno, but that's a different issue altogether.

NDTV also reported that only Amitabh Bachchan and Sunil Dutt dontated to the Shwaas fund from Bollywood. That too peanuts, compared to what some others have contributed -- notably Pramod Mahajan and Bal Thackeray. (I also liked Thackeray's recent dig at Tendulkar for his plan to auction his bat to contribute to the Shwaas fund instead of taking money from his own pocket). The report also said that Ashutosh Gowarikar, the director of Lagaan, who is on the Oscar Award Committee has till now not found time to watch the film!

I watched Shwaas more than a month ago without subtitles. I had some friends with me who speak Marathi, but I really did not need any help. As is often said, the language is not a barrier to appreciate a good movie -- a good movie has its own language. It's one of the finest movies that I have watched in recent times. The director, Sandeep Sawant, is a gifted artist, and I hope he comes up with more good movies in the future.

Here is a Rediff review of the movie, and here is the official Shwaas webpage.