Manto gets a thumbs up
Nandita Das’ film Manto, based on the tumultuous life of writer Saadat Hasan Manto, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival 2018 to a packed theatre. The biopic left the audience stunned. After the screening, female lead Rasika Dugal talked about the film’s reception. She said, “I could feel that the audience was with the film and the story while we were watching. People seemed to have genuinely connected with the film and were quite moved.” Rasika plays the role of Manto’s (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) wife Safia.
The film got rave reviews in the press. In his review for Hollywood Reporter, Deborah Young said, “DP Kartik Vijay creates an arresting ambience in scene after scene, working with Rita Ghosh’s stunning sets of old Calcutta and Bombay, which gave way to the postwar shabbiness of lahore under reconstruction. The dramatised short stories are aptly translated to the screen with a dreamlike sordidness. Siddiqui hurls Manto’s talent, wit, self-destructiveness and tragic gravity at the world like a punch in the stomach.”
Screen Daily’s movie critic Wendy Ide too was all praise and wrote, “Nandita Das has assembled a first-rate crew, with Rita Ghosh’s atmospheric production design a particular stand out. The contrast between the well-appointed privilege of life among Mumbai’s literary elite and the blighted, scarred streets of lahore is stark. It mirrors the change in Manto’s increasingly embattled state of mind. Always impressive, Siddiqui is as commanding presence as Manto.”
Though Das is relieved that her film Manto is garnering rave reviews but the filmmaker says the fact that the movie eventually materialised is nothing short of a “miracle.”
The actor-director said presenting the biopic on legendary Urdu short story writer at the ongoing film festival was an unnerving experience
Talking about her “roller coaster ride” over the last five days, Das said, “On the day of the premiere, I was neither euphoric, nor nervous. Just happy. The fact this film actually got made is a miracle. For it to be in Cannes, is the second miracle.” “At the premiere, we got a four-minute standing ovation, strangers hugged me, sobbing. Some just sat in their seats still immersed in the experience. Some chose to walk out quietly, as if not wanting to break their experience,” she said. The director said she is elated as “six years of relentless work” has finally paid off “There was no review that panned the film and that itself was a relief as Cannes critics can be merciless,” she added.