These films must not be incorrectly tagged as the ‘greatest Marathi-language films,’ for that is subjective. In the process I will also try to address a more pressing question: “What makes them great?” I can only recommend the films that are personal favourites of mine, films that I have seen and marveled at time and time again. I will only be tackling one in this piece: “Where to begin?” What are the essential Marathi-language films that a novice needs to watch? It’s a tricky question, for there cannot be any such definitive list. Among the latest Marathi movies, it was Aadish Keluskar’s daring and elusive Kaul in 2016, Avinash Arun’s magnificent Killa, a year prior to it and very recently Lapachhapi.Īnd yet it remains largely inaccessible to audiences outside Maharashtra for several reasons. I now find that every year there is at least one Marathi-language film that reminds me how wrong I was about Marathi cinema as a kid. It shook my world, and I am glad that it did.
Growing up in Mumbai, for a Marathi movie to evoke the kind of response it did was as astonishing a feat as any. If it weren’t for that film, I would still be thinking poorly of it and the kind of talent it nurtures. I write about Shwaas because it is the film that irreversibly changed the way I regarded Marathi cinema. It’s a profoundly moving film, modest and straightforward, a rarity these days, and it was a rarity back then, too. To say Shwaas is a seminal work of Marathi cinema is not an exaggeration. I didn’t watch it until seven years later. I did not know what the critics thought of the film but I made up my mind to watch it. It was a time when film reviews languished somewhere inside the pages of the newspapers.
Its word-of-mouth was particularly strong, and it was a time when a film’s word-of-mouth was a more reliable factor in deciding if a film was worth watching. It was so popular among the people I knew, who made up my world back then, that I was curious. Suddenly, my friends were talking about it. Their penetrating themes escaped me, but their craft was exemplary. My grandfather greatly admired them, and he insisted I watch them with him. The only Marathi-language films I had watched by the time I turned 10 were V. Sometimes I’d watch Marathi plays but Marathi movies, no. I thought them loud and over-the-top, a combination that never did work for me. Nothing about Marathi-language films appealed to me. Although my band of friends as a child consisted of mostly Maharashtrians, and could speak and understand Marathi perfectly, I was more attracted to Hindi- and English-language films back then, not because they were of a better quality, but for an obvious lack of choice. (It’s among the best Marathi movies, and one that sparked a revival of sorts for Marathi cinema). My curiosity in Marathi movies was aroused, if I remember, in 2004, the year Shwaas released.