Jump to content
Objectivism Online Forum

Manichitrathazhu Movie

Rate this topic


human_murda

Recommended Posts

I actually began writing this as a post to compare an Indian movie with 'Black Swan', especially the climactic dance scenes of the two movies (but I wrote too much).  There is also an old (1993), malayalam movie (from Kerala, India) which reminds me of 'Black Swan': 'Manichitrathazhu'. It's not a Bollywood movie; it's part of the local, malayalam movie industry (which has lower budget that Bollywood).

It's a story of a woman who goes to live in her ancestral house (tharavadu) and becomes obsessed with old village tales about a Tamil dancer (Nagavalli) who got murdered in one of the rooms in the tharavadu. She is bored and lonely (the movie has a song to represent her loneliness):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSHBCtZqK6s

 

She begins to investigate and discovers what used to be Nagavalli's room (beginning of the video):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rSs1olQLNM

 

She identifies herself with Nagavalli and becomes obsessed with the authenticity of the story. She becomes increasingly psychotic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f5Psw53aDwmultiple

and eventually is shown to have multiple personality disorder. However, the superstitious family members believe that somebody in the house is possessed. The climax of the movie includes a Classical Indian dance (Bharatanatyam), where she completely "becomes" Nagavalli:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrjWtszKPkU



I actually liked this dance performance. For one, most Indian movies nowadays almost never employ Indian Classical dance (although most Indian movies have some kind of music or dance). I think this dance also conveys her mental derangement and the emotions that Ganga feels as Nagavalli. The song also switches between her real and imagined self. It's way older than 'Black Swan' (2010), but I thought there were some similarities in the story arcs (and there's a Bharatanatyam dance at the end as opposed to Ballet).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...