With a powerful plotline of finding one’s mission in life, the film struggles to find footing in other areas of filmcraft
Film mogi
There comes a time when you hear a certain call. A call to explore the unexplored! Turmoil in your personal life leads you to an unknown land and while trying to live a life that is not your own, you accidentally discover that you are on a mission; a mission of truth-finding! Sincerity coupled with dedication and hard work will reward your efforts with success. that is the message of the film Mopa Diary.
Storyline: A journalist is fired for shoddy reporting and is given an opportunity to report good stories. Meeting a friend, he spends time drinking and reaches home late only to find a fuming wife. The journalist finds himself out of his house and luck takes him to a traditional village Mopa where the rule of land is the dictat of a landlord. He lives a life of another man that resembled him. It is here that he realizes that the individual whom he impersonates is actually dead. There begins his journalistic investigation which ends with the maxim ‘Satyameva Jayate’.
Screenplay: The storyline was interesting but the screenplay was poor or rather non existent. There is no logic in the developments. It can rather be said that the sequences incorporated are more tiatrical than cinematographic in nature. The reason for the wife to close the doors to her husband and drive him out of the house is that he did not remember their wedding anniversary. This is too flimsy and difficult to accept. The treatment given to the development of story into a screenplay is quite immature.
Music: There is some good music set to the film. The background musical score is effective. Chris Perry’s composition ‘Poilo Kiss’ rendered by Olavo is great. But the picturisation of the great musical track is disastrous. The good looks and charming personality of Olavo could not be captured by the camera and that was a misery of the only song of the film. Being a masala thriller film, there was great scope for songs and music, but the director seems to have no clue on how to proceed.
Acting: John D’Silva does a good job but his dialogue delivery was in the tiatr style-loud. Even the whispers had a great tenor. Antonet is heroine material, but the screenplay lost track of this lead artiste. Satish Gawas was effective but not at his usual best. Anil Pednekar is great in his portrayal. Mathew as the compounder was quite effective. There are a lot of newcomers but lack of direction and vision failed to project them in the right manner .
Cinematography: The film has no great and exotic locales. Beautiful locations in Goa are displayed but the camera failed to pick the beauty of the locales due to faulty angles of the shots. Even though Rane has experience of film-making in Bollywood, he has miserable failed to use this experience or probably ran out of ideas in conceptualizing the film.
Direction: This is one department where the film falls flat. There is no direction in anyfield. It looks like a writer has written the dialogues which the artistes have emoted and delivered and the cameraman has caught the same on camera. There is whatsoever no directorial thought put in; probably each one doing what they think is best. This problem is further compounded by the non existant sound technical team.
After Nachum-ia Kumpasar, K Sera Sera, Enemy, Poltoddcho Monis were screened in Goa, the Konkani film culture was revived and people ventured out to watch Konkani films. Our Konkani film culture is in its infancy and Konkani cinema today needs good films to cement its place of pride in peoples hearts. Konkani film industry should grow and people too should patronize Konkani films for its growth. But when such unprofessional films are produced, the audience are put in a fix as to whether to watch them or not. When they decide to watch and realize that the film has no sound filmcraft their interest will diminish and they will give up patronizing films. Hence people venturing into Konkani cinema should have a sound technical team to back them.
Concluding, we would like to thank our beloved readers who have motivated us to give an honest review. We thank you all for the numerous calls made to our office, the letters and messages we receive for this column. We stand committed to present before you every week a true and honest review. From this Sunday we commence reviewing Konkani films too. Hope to receive all love as you have bestowed earlier.
