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How Shyam Benegal has managed to handle such a vast and loosely scattered subject and presented such a fine piece of cinema? How he has managed to present so many differently looking and behaving characters in a single film? How he has managed to give so different physical gestures and psychological understandings to different characters?

As its known he was born in Hyderabad then how he managed to take that kind of performance from Ila Arun, which could be completely alien for a non-hindi speaking person? Vijay Tendulkar was not present in his team, Pt Satyadev Dube was not writing dialogues for this film and still he has managed so well in characterization department. From where comes, his deep and vast understanding about the people?

Socio-political commentary has been an integral part of almost all the films of Shyam Benegal since the time of Ankur. His films could have some …

In a Shakespearean tragedy, one cannot but get sucked into the emotional cauldron. Be it Othello or King Lear or Macbeth or Hamlet, its all about great emotional upheaval when it comes to the core of the Bard’s plays. In Rituparno Ghosh’s The Last Lear, Amitabh Bachchan’s (as well as most of the cast’s) first full-fledged English role, Harish ‘Harry’ Mishra too is a character full of Shakespearean pathos. Quite naturally, it is but natural to expect that Harry’s character would draw you in with its raw emotional power.

Strangely, it does not happen, except in sporadic scenes. It is hard to say who is at fault – Bachchan or the script. Bachchan gives a performance that is one of his best, but even though there have been raving reports about this being his best-ever performance, there is actually nothing much that takes forward his histrionics from the point where he …