Place: Chennai
Date: August 2020
Mode: Amazon Prime
My latest watch is Shakuntala Devi. My mother and I watched it together, and enjoyed it. I first heard of the movie via Nayanika Mahtani, the writer of the movie – we are both in one online group. I got curious to see how the movie has been written and to my pleasant surprise, it is well written and well edited. As with any biopic, I am left with questions around how true the incidents depicted in the movie are, but I must say that I liked that the movie didn’t have too many songs. Perhaps the casting of Vidya Balan in the lead role had something to do with this – she isn’t known for her dancing skills.
Both my parents have witnessed Shakuntala Devi in action when she visited their educational institutes, and while I had heard of her, I must confess that I didn’t know much about her. Via the movie, I got to know that she opted to marry a divorcee and herself got divorced later. It makes me view her as a gritty woman. Her difficult relationships with her mother and her daughter have been fleshed out well, and I shed tears in one scene where she visits her childhood home after her mother has passed away, and she bawls at the sight of her mother’s material belongings that include newspaper cuttings of her performances.
The feminist flavor given in the movie to her choices make me want to know more, especially in the context of her book on homosexuality where she has referred to her ex-husband as being homosexual. The movie shows that she says this to sell the book better, but the Wikipedia entry says her book went unnoticed when it was published.
The movie made on the “Human Computer” is worth a watch.
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