Did you know that the Odia film industry picked up a National Award every year from 1960 to 1968? During the decades after that the Odia film industry kept churning out realistic films on par with Bengali and Malayalam but perhaps never got its due.
ASHOK’s FIVE takes you back to 2002 and features director #PrafullaMahanta’s #MaguniraShagada an Odia classic, written by #GodbarishMohapatra. Interestingly, it featured #JayaSeal who went on to star in #KahaniGharGharki many years later!
1. The simple storyline details out the life of Maguni (#AsruMochanMohanty) who plies his bullock cart in the village. He is a man about town and is in love with his two animals Kaalia and Kaasra and has helped out anyone in need. His parents get him married to the beautiful Kusum and life seems pretty. Along comes mechanisation in the form of a bus service that tears apart his trade and sends his idyllic life into a tailspin.
2. The film takes you back to a time when time stood still, and the greenery of the village had an attractive charm about it. The images of the green-coloured bus trundling through the foliage are what remain with you after the movie is over.
3. The film uses the metaphor of the bus service impacting Maguni’s business for a larger story of life and how factors like poverty, belief in fate and the fickleness of human-kind make life what it is. The scene where a hapless Maguni calls out to his neighbours and reminds them of the times when he went out of his way to help them is extremely poignant.
4. What stood out for me is how the film makes a commentary about mechanisation and therefore industrialisation, ungratefulness, creation and destruction without resorting to pontification. It uses the simple story of a man and his bullock cart to tell all this and so evocatively.
5. The human spirit is a wonderful thing. Provide it all the right stimulus and it can be nurtured. The moment things turn adverse, it can degenerate twice as fast and that is a terrible thing to watch. The manner in which both Kusum and Maguni completely break down in spirit is overwhelming.
I think #MaguniraShagada is a very simple premise and a throwback to all things simple. What it does is not just tell a story but as the final lines creep up on the screen, the voice-over says it’s the story of life and how the wheel keeps turning. A rare Odia classic. Available on #Mubi now.
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