Director: Girish Karnad; Producer: Shashi Kapoor; Cinematographer: Ashok Mehta; Editor: Bhanudas Divkar; Cast: Rekha Ganesan, Shashi Kapoor, Anuradha, Shankar Nag, Shekhar Suman, Amjad Khan, Kunal Kapoor, Annu Kapoor, Neena Gupta, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Anupam Kher,
Duration: 02:35:25; Aspect Ratio: 1.333:1; Hue: 15.942; Saturation: 0.230; Lightness: 0.445; Volume: 0.176; Cuts per Minute: 6.280
Summary: An exuberant but unsuccessful picaresque film
set in the 4th C., when Sudraka is supposed to
have written one of the most famous plays in
Indian history, a love story between the
Brahmin merchant Charudatta (Suman) and the
beautful courtesan Vasantsena (Rekha). Karnad
also introduced Vatsyayana (Amjad Khan) as a
voyeuristic lecher peeking into various brothel
chambers to write his famous Kama Sutra.
Vasantsena, a beautiful prostitute of Ujjain, runs
away from the villain Samasthanaka
(S. Kapoor), the libidinous brother-in-law of
the king, and hides in the house of Charudatta,
a music-lover, with whom she falls in love. She
loses her golden necklace in Charudatta’s
house and when it is stolen, Charudatta’s affair
with the prostitute is exposed. Samasthanaka,
who believes he killed Vasantsena when he
tried to rape her, accuses Charudatta of the
deed. When Charudatta is sentenced to hang
for Vasantsena’s murder, she turns up, alive and
well, to try to save her lover’s life. Just then, a
horeseman arrives to declare that a new king
has been crowned and has pardoned all
prisoners. Charudatta is reunited with his wife
while the populace turns on the villainous
Samasthanaka. He drags himself to
Vasantsena’s house who, this time, accepts
him. Karnad uses the conventions of the Hindi
movie to explore the rasas of Shringar (the
erotic) and Hasya (the comic), on which India’s
classical aesthetic theory of performance is
based, and intended the film as a celebration of
life and love. The location scenes, filmed in
Karnataka and Bharatpur because of the
traditional architectural styles available there,
were completed by studio scenes shot in
Bombay. Apparently a more explicitly erotic
version of the film was created for the Western
market. This expensive film was producer
Shashi Kapoor’s last effort at an art-house
production.
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