Bhaai – Vyakti Kee Valli (Purvardh) Review: A Biopic Overflowing with Sweetness!

Review: Bhaai – Vyakti Kee Valli (Purvardh)
Cast: Sagar Deshmukh, Irawati Harshe, Mrunmayee Deshpande, Padmanabh Bind, Ajay Purkar, Swanand Kirkire, Veena Jamkar, Sunil Barve, Satish Alekar, Sarang Sathaye, Deepti Lele, Sagar Talashikar, Vidyadhar Joshi & Mahesh Manjrekar
Director: Mahesh Manjrekar
Writer: Ganesh Matkari & Ratnakar Matkari

Quick Viewpoint: Bhaai – Purvardh is a refreshingly simplistic biopic. It needs to be judged in totality after the second part comes out, but as of now the first part makes us fall in love with Pu La – the human being all over again!

What Works?

• It doesn’t follow a set pattern of the three act structure & hence it ends up being very unique on narrative level. It strongly believes that no artificially added drama is required for this film, & designs itself considering the full of life personality of Pu La!
• Sagar Deshmukh is perfectly casted as Pu La & his natural sweetness makes the performance even more authentic & lovable. Irawati Harshe as Sunita Bai too is equally perfect! The actual age difference between the two actors is never evident on screen.
• Even if there isn’t any artificially created drama, there’s one emotionally solid sequence in the film that humanizes (to errr is human) the character of Bhaai as seen from Sunita Bai’s perspective.
• Mahesh Manjrekar is a brand of its own. His films usually have certain traits that have his directorial style imprinted on it. But in ‘Bhaai’ the director is invisible in a good way. The content seems to dictate the style of the film more than the director imposing his own style.
• ‘Bhaai’ has a sweet light hearted romance (of course between Pu La and Sunita Bai) like the way we used to see in the old Hrishikesh Mukherjee – Basu Chatterjee movies!
• ‘Bhaai’ focuses less on the professional career of Pu La as a writer & artist & more on his personal life & the people in his life, hence for those unfamiliar (say the non-regional audiences) with Pu La’s works it might not work as a informative film about the writer! Yet the viewer would instantly connect with the character & get interested in his antics!

What Fails?

• Not really a failure but there’s a long song where we see Kumar Gandharva (played by Swanand Kirkire), Vasantrao Deshpande (Padmanabh Bind), Bhimsen Joshi (Ajay Purkar) & Pu La performing ‘Savare Ay Jaiyyo’ & ‘Kanada Raja Pandharicha’ in an intimate personal ‘Mehfil’. This song comes by the end of the film. As audiences we are completely blown away by it, it feels like a real concert & hence it makes the narrative (before in the second half) slightly fade away from our memory. We forget we were watching a film!

Final Verdict: The second part of the film releases in February, which seems to capture the phenomenon of Pu La the famous ‘artist’ more specifically, this first part is more about Pu La – the human & his way of life. The film captures his human essence exactly in the way his humor used to be, full of life loving sweetness!

Rating: 4/5