Nandi gives two art-house wonders their due

Nandi has raised a toast to two humble films.  For the year 2012, if 'Eega' won the Best Film Award, the Second and Third Best Feature Film Awards have been bagged by 'Minugurulu' and 'Mithunam'.  Two beautiful films, while the latter is popular enough, thanks to SPB and Lakshmi, the former (a children's film) is not that popular.  But it is no less aesthetically brilliant.

Directed by Ayodhyakumar Krishnamsetty, 'Minugurulu' tells the story of the hapless and harassed blind inmates of an orphanage.  As our review of the film had said, "Minugurulu's sensibilities remind one of high-brow cinema.  In the midst of squalor and sad lives, Raju (an orphan) tries to find a way out.  The boy who always wanted to be a filmmaker before he became blind can't be a slave who has to be at the mercy of a corrupted human being.  The director portrays the underlying emotions of the children and the inner churning in Raju with dexterous sublimity."  Our review further said, "The scene where Raju discovers the source of the leaking water stands out for its ability to sensitize us to what all administrative indifference leads to.  Apathy and corruption means hell for the downtrodden and this film speaks to these twin ills rather unintentionally."

About Tanikella Bharani's 'Mithunam', we had written, "Tanikella shows his deft as a director with a rare sensitivity and a sensible writer with a flair for irreverence. He doesn't romanticize old age love or project a utopian couple as the idea. His characters are very much human, they live little lives, the husband is hurt that his wife keeps regretting that her parents did not marry her off to the owner of a grapevine yard, only to be told on a pleasant evening that the story is fictitious."

"The best asset of 'Mithunam' is the healthy thinking that SPB and Lakshmi reflect. SPB is not a bit emotionally dependent on his children," we further wrote.