Aa Dinagalu is set in the period of 1980’s. The way the characters are self introduced is nice. For the first 15 minutes, we can’t even smell the traces of underworld. Then the face of underworld is revealed. First, both underworld and love story move separately, but later they both get together.
The film is based on real life incidents. We can find all the characters in the film which we hitherto read in newspapers. The film has only two songs which are placed in the exact place. The second song is only a minute long, hence it doesn’t harm the pace of the climax.
The screenplay of the film is tight. Not a minute is boring. Every minute, we are exposed to things unknown to us (since it is based on real story). After second half, we keep waiting for the killing of Kothwal character.
The climax scene where Kothwal is silently killed is shot very well. The end scenes in jail and the textual information at the end is also good.
Artiste’s performance:
Chethan has acted in such a way that we do not feel he is a newcomer. Archana has also acted well, without any problems in her lip movement and dubbing. Girish Karnad, Vinaya Prakash and Chethan’s sister do not have much scope to show their acting skill.
But the real and powerful performances are given by the other set of artistes who have played the characters of Shridhar (Kamalesh Pandey), Bachchan, Kothwal (Sharath Lohitashwa), Jayaraj (Ashish Vidyarthi), Sadar, Shetty, Oil Kumar (Achyutan), Danny, Samson and others. Sharath Lohitashwa has given a wonderful performance.
Camera work:
Camera work by H C Venu is made well to set the story. Different colour schemes used for different scenes deserve a mention. Venu has used green, yellow colour for love scenes. He has used yellow, brownish colours for rowdy scenes.
The high vertical angle shot shown from above a tree in the song “sihi gaali” song, the camera placement to showing Jayaraj moving a drawer are all examples for the good work of Venu. In the song sihi gaali, the use of early morning sunlight is good.
Direction: The director has taken care to portray the Bangalore of 1980’s. Hence he has avoided the multi storey buildings, IT industry, fly overs etc. Use of old telephones and STD booths gives us a real effect. He takes us to the old Bangalore by creating an ambience and environment of those days. Showing of Vikasa soudha in a scene could have been avoided. The director has not forcefully put any stereotype scenes, songs and dialogues. Nor has he put any so called commercial elements like item songs. The scene where Jayaraj reveals his story to a prostitute would have been misused by other directors. But Chaitanya has been loyal to the screenplay. Handling of the whole film gives us an indication that Kannada has got another young talented director.
The director has given the sub-title to the film as “preethiya kulumeyalli nalugida bhoogatha jagattu” (underworld which struggled due to love). We thought that it is usually the opposite of that. But the director has shown how the underworld struggled due to a love story.
Aa Dinagalu is a sincere attempt by young director Chaitanya.
