MOVIE NAME: Nil Battey Sannata
CAST: Swara Bhaskar, Ratna Pathak, Pankaj Tripathy
DIRECTOR: Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari
GENRE: Drama
DURATION: 1 hour 44 minutes
CRITIC RATING: 3.5/5
AVG viewers’ RATING: 3.4/5
Story:
It is a very simple story of a mother Chanda (Swara Bhaskar) who want to see her daughter Apu (Ria Shukla) shine. She is a maid who has huge dreams for her daughter, but Apu is an immature teenager who can’t understand scarifies her mother is making for her. She is happy being lazy. Chanda gets herself enrolled in her daughter’s class and she becomes everyone’s favorite in no time.
Review:
Nil Battey Sannata is a type of film that will move you to tears but also leave a smile on your face. It is pleasing to see something modest in times when masala movies are taking over the Bollywood.
Chanda dream big for her daughter Apu but her world collapses when her daughter says, “”Doctor ka beta doctor, engineer ka beta engineer, toh bai ki beti bai hi banegi na…” The stubborn teenager hides her laziness behind her status. Even when Chanda works 4 jobs to make sure that her daughter doesn’t have to make any compromises, but Apu remains impertinent.
But, Chanda is a fighter and she collects all the courage to go back to school. Dressed in a typical blue and white school uniform, she joins her daughter’s class, wins over her friends and becomes everyone’s favorite in no time. The teenager convinces as well as blackmails her mother to drop out of the school and Chanda gives a challenge- beat me in math and I leave the school. The math phobia is given a nice clever spin- great job by writers. It is fun to see the mother daughter duo to have a daily struggle with trigonometry. Laced with wit, it is fun to see them learn formulas.
The tempo drops in the second half, but movie doesn’t lose its charm and performances of all the actors are amazing. The simplicity and innocence of the movie wins you over.