Chauranga Movie Reviews

With a brilliant theme, a narrative structure that flows, and social relevance that hooks the viewer, Chauranga makes for a powerful watch.

Watch Chauranga because it is honest, provocative and piercing. It announces the advent of a promising new voice in Mumbai’s independent cinema.

Chauranga makes an engrossing watch, although one wishes there was more to its story.

In debutant director Bikas Ranjan Mishra’s Chauranga  there are so many scummy characters swimming in the tides of a temporal debauchery and greed that you desperately look for ways to tell yourself, life is worth living after all, like you do in the best morality tales of our times.

Chauranga is certainly not your regular popcorn flick, with several scenes that will make the popcorn in your stomach toss and turn. But if you are an admirer of realistic cinema, this can be your movie of the weekend.

As against a seething, fuming Fandry, Chauranga is a lot more muted and quiet in its rage. But the thread of protest runs through it nonetheless as Santu retaliates against each bit of random violence heaped against him or his brother.

Chauranga is a dark, cryptic and provocative look at cast oppression as seen through the eyes of a young innocent boy. This is the world of Shyam Benegal’s Nishant and Prakash Jha’s Damul. But a lot more murky and yes, clumsy. There is way too much fondling, pushing and touching, not all of it appropriate or even apt. Sanjay Suri’s love making scenes with Tannishtha Chatterjee show him copulating violently, with his pyjama on.