Galipata

Watched the Kannada movie Galipata last weekend, and it did leave some pleasant after-taste.
The movie, while story line has been sequenced with a string of close to untenable situations, is still not all that bad, and in fact could be seen as a clone of Mungaru Male. A group of three boys in trouble, fleeing from their miseries, end up in a lovely hill station, most conveniently adapted by the story to be an ancestral home for one of the boys. And most conveniently, three girls await them, and that too at a friend of the grandfather of one of the boys.
What stands out is the stunning photography, shot amidst the hills of Kodachadri, Agumbe and Thirthahalli, the most beautiful and pristine green places in Karnataka. What also stands out are the dialogs, and rendered so beautifully by Anant Nag, Ganesh, Rajesh Krishnan and Digant, to mention a few. Daisy Boppanna, the model/actress, has few words to say through the entire movie but stands out for her simple beauty, pitch black hair and elegance. Ganesh, I don't know if all Bangalore "padde hudugaru" speak the same Kannada dialect these days, makes you laugh with the fresh language that is devoid of obscenities, so common in most Kannada movies these days. I keep hearing from folks back home that the most likable aspect of Mungaru Male was not necessarily the story, but screenplay that had no obscenities and the most enjoyable dialogs, not to mention the haunting melodies. Songs from Galipata, while very well rendered, do not stand out in the same class, but I still rank them better than the ones they all go to Switzerland,Malaysia or Czechoslovakia to shoot. "Minchagi Neenu Bande" and "Kavithe" do manage to linger in memory for a while, and some how my kids took fancy to "Na dheem dheem tana" song :)

I cannot forget the striking colors, through the entire movie, that go so well in contrast with the green hills and floating clouds. The sight of clouds rubbing shoulders with the hills at Agumbe made me home sick.
Last time I had driven down to Agumbe, with my entire family, a good ten years ago, with every intention to stay for at least a day and enjoy the fabled rains and sun set. Pity, accommodation was pretty bad, and the sole guest house we knocked the doors on, had broken down toilets, cobwebs hanging around, and a dank, musty interior, and the caretaker was apologetic all over. We took some pictures around and left.
I have not watched enough Kannada movies to make out if the Tamil culture of experimenting with fresh faces has caught on, and I still keep hearing the names of the Rajkumar clan and Sudeep more often than not, but it was refreshing to see some fresh faces and some old ones from my generation.
I am sure to watch this movie all over, if I can, on the DVD.