Shaakuntalam Movie Review: Samantha's film is all heart but no soul – India Today

By Latha Srinivasan: In recent times, motion pictures based mostly on Indian epics have been making a huge impact on the viewers and other people have beloved them. Telugu movie Shaakuntalam, directed by Gunashekhar, falls on this style and focuses on the story between Shaakuntala and Dushyant written by Kalidasa in his play Abhijana Shakuntalam.

Menaka abandons her child within the forest and a sage names her Shankuntala and takes her to his ashram. Shakuntala (Samantha) is raised as his personal baby and her total world is the ashram, the forest and animals, just like the deer and peacocks, who’re her pals. Shakuntala is born to Menaka and Vishwamitra and her life is stuffed with woes. Someday, Maharaja Dushyant (Dev Mohan) involves their space, and so they find yourself assembly. She falls in love with him. Her love for him is so sturdy that she agrees to a Gandharva Vivaha (a wedding based mostly on mutual acceptance with no rituals or witnesses) and the wedding is consummated.

Dushyant guarantees to return again and take her again to the dominion with full pomp and splendour as his spouse, however he by no means returns. In the meantime, Shakuntala tells her foster father about this marriage and discovers she is pregnant. Sage Durvasa comes to go to the ashram and Shakuntala, who’s misplaced in her personal world, is cursed by him. The remainder of the story will likely be identified by many because it’s a well-liked story that has been informed in books and different movies as properly.

The primary half of Shaakuntalam is kind of sluggish. It sees Samantha in only a few scenes although the film has been projected as revolving round her. Because the viewers begins watching the movie, it seems like an animated youngsters’s movie with plenty of fairly animals and birds introduced alive attributable to intensive VFX. It’s within the second half that the story picks tempo and unfolds.

Director Gunashekhar should be appreciated for trying to make this movie, however he appears to have been in a dilemma as as to whether to make this movie for adults or children. The story narration is simply not gripping sufficient to maintain you engaged and, given its sluggish tempo, it’s a tedious watch. Given the title, one would have anticipated the story to be informed in Shakuntala’s voice. Sadly, it’s narrated by others round her in bits and items.

Dushyant and Shakuntala could also be all coronary heart within the first half, however there isn’t any soul to this romance. One doesn’t connect with the characters which have been poorly written. There are different actors like Gautami, Madhoo and Prakash Raj, who make temporary appearances and don’t add a lot to the story’s proceedings. The director has gone all out to make it heavy with grand units and VFX and has missed out on a narrative that might go together with it. One is reminded of some telefilms and collection that have been made a long time again.

Watch the trailer of Shaakuntalam right here:

Samantha is nice within the movie and we do have to present it to her for making Shaakuntalam watchable. If the director had written a stronger position for Samantha – on condition that this story revolved round Shakuntala – the movie would have been taken a number of notches larger. Dev Mohan too, gave a very good efficiency and Allu Arjun’s daughter, Allu Arha, is a delight on display!

Shaakuntalam is an epic that leaves us craving for the story very like Shakuntala’s craving for Dushyant.

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