Baba Amte is my hero. Swar Sudha shows marathi movies in California, and one of the movies I saw was Hemalkasa (Hindi version of Dr Prakash Baba Amte).
The movie starts with Nana Patekar emerging out of the river with a very CGI tiger. This might have worked if there were no other animals in the movie. But since there were 2 leopards, multiple monkeys, a bear, multiple snakes, one wonders why couldnt they have used a real leopard instead of the CGI tiger. The movie plot is Nana reminiscing about his life while he is at an award function in the US. Right from the start, the character of Mandatai Apte is portrayed as a weak-spirited, almost stupid woman. To innumerate a few instances:
1. She is checking out the hotel suite and accidently turns on a shower. While this scene is apparently in place for a romantic moment, it comes off as very misogynist. While there is a small possibility that such a thing might actually have happened in their lives, what was the point of involving it in a movie? Did they want to portray that the Amtes have been so dedicated to grassroots that they are unaware of western conveniences? If so, there were better opportunities to do that.
(Also, the hotels that I have been to, there is no way that your hand touches the shower faucet accidentally and it spurts all over you. Maybe the Amtes were put up in a ultra-futuristic hotel with highly touch-sensitive faucets?)
2. Mandatai is shown to be a Anesthesia resident when Dr Amte meets Mandatai. Infact she is so skilled in surgery that while Dr Amte is the surgery resident, Mandatai performs the surgery. Later in the movie, Mandatai asks Dr Amte to touch a child and confirm that it has fever. Then she asks him what should she do, and Dr Amte says to give the child paracetamol. Really director? Did you know that a MBBS doctor is academically trained in almost all fields of medicine? Not only that, but the MBBS course also involves clinical residency rotations? Did you bother to fact check?
3. Dr Amtes beloved leopard is dying of snakebite and Mandatai informs Dr Amte that she injected the antivenin but the leopard is not responding to the anti-venin. Dr Amte then has to verify the quantity of anti-venin that she has injected. Sure this is something that must be regularly happening when one doctor takes over from another, but going with the overall chauvinism elsewhere in the movie, this scene did not sit well.
In reality, the altruistic task of Dr Amtes would not have even started, let alone bear fruition without Mandatai.
4. Also talking about fact checking, in the movie they say that Dr Amte was in his last year of MBBS when Baba Amte took the younger Amtes to Hemalkasa during their medical school break. Later he gets married, and then he moves to Hemalkasa. I assumed that he had completed the last year of his MBBS in the meantime. Later in the movie, Dr Amte says government sent him a "love letter" because he is performing surgeries. Again, just for the information, the full form of MBBS is Bachelor of Medicine and bachelor of Surgery. If he indeed completed his MBBS, not only is he qualified to practise, he is also qualified to perform surgeries. It was not clear in the movie why was the government not happy about him practising.
5. In the scene when Dr Amte performs eye surgery on an old woman, he says he is required to perform the surgery because opthalmologists wont come to Hemalkasa and the woman cannot afford to go to Nagpur. Few scenes later, they show that they had atleast an occasional medical Ambulance ferrying patients between Hemalkasa and the better equipped Anandvan.
6. After a course of some years, only Dr Amte and no one else from his team can decipher the Adivasi language.
7. One of Dr Amte's accomplices starts teaching the kids. His alphabet and the words that he uses are foreign to the kids. (When, as kids, we were taught English == a language that was not our mother tongue, the inital objects were identified by pictures.) The camera pans over kids doing kiddy stuff like being unruly or picking their nose. Instead of acknowledging his incompetency at teaching, the accomplice makes a comment that the kids have no brains. Crass humour.
Nana Patekar shines in his portrayal of Dr Amte. Few scenes here and there do show that the director might be talented. For instance, after Dr Amte's beloved leopard Negal dies, the Amtes plant a tree at the spot where the leopard is buried. Nana later walks past the tree and nuzzles the tree. Another scene thoroughly enjoyed by the movie-goers in California was when Dr Amte cooks for his brother when his wife is not at home.
To summarize, the task undertaken by the Amtes is beyond doubt unparallelled. The movie could have done better justice to the Amtes.
The movie starts with Nana Patekar emerging out of the river with a very CGI tiger. This might have worked if there were no other animals in the movie. But since there were 2 leopards, multiple monkeys, a bear, multiple snakes, one wonders why couldnt they have used a real leopard instead of the CGI tiger. The movie plot is Nana reminiscing about his life while he is at an award function in the US. Right from the start, the character of Mandatai Apte is portrayed as a weak-spirited, almost stupid woman. To innumerate a few instances:
1. She is checking out the hotel suite and accidently turns on a shower. While this scene is apparently in place for a romantic moment, it comes off as very misogynist. While there is a small possibility that such a thing might actually have happened in their lives, what was the point of involving it in a movie? Did they want to portray that the Amtes have been so dedicated to grassroots that they are unaware of western conveniences? If so, there were better opportunities to do that.
(Also, the hotels that I have been to, there is no way that your hand touches the shower faucet accidentally and it spurts all over you. Maybe the Amtes were put up in a ultra-futuristic hotel with highly touch-sensitive faucets?)
2. Mandatai is shown to be a Anesthesia resident when Dr Amte meets Mandatai. Infact she is so skilled in surgery that while Dr Amte is the surgery resident, Mandatai performs the surgery. Later in the movie, Mandatai asks Dr Amte to touch a child and confirm that it has fever. Then she asks him what should she do, and Dr Amte says to give the child paracetamol. Really director? Did you know that a MBBS doctor is academically trained in almost all fields of medicine? Not only that, but the MBBS course also involves clinical residency rotations? Did you bother to fact check?
3. Dr Amtes beloved leopard is dying of snakebite and Mandatai informs Dr Amte that she injected the antivenin but the leopard is not responding to the anti-venin. Dr Amte then has to verify the quantity of anti-venin that she has injected. Sure this is something that must be regularly happening when one doctor takes over from another, but going with the overall chauvinism elsewhere in the movie, this scene did not sit well.
In reality, the altruistic task of Dr Amtes would not have even started, let alone bear fruition without Mandatai.
4. Also talking about fact checking, in the movie they say that Dr Amte was in his last year of MBBS when Baba Amte took the younger Amtes to Hemalkasa during their medical school break. Later he gets married, and then he moves to Hemalkasa. I assumed that he had completed the last year of his MBBS in the meantime. Later in the movie, Dr Amte says government sent him a "love letter" because he is performing surgeries. Again, just for the information, the full form of MBBS is Bachelor of Medicine and bachelor of Surgery. If he indeed completed his MBBS, not only is he qualified to practise, he is also qualified to perform surgeries. It was not clear in the movie why was the government not happy about him practising.
5. In the scene when Dr Amte performs eye surgery on an old woman, he says he is required to perform the surgery because opthalmologists wont come to Hemalkasa and the woman cannot afford to go to Nagpur. Few scenes later, they show that they had atleast an occasional medical Ambulance ferrying patients between Hemalkasa and the better equipped Anandvan.
6. After a course of some years, only Dr Amte and no one else from his team can decipher the Adivasi language.
7. One of Dr Amte's accomplices starts teaching the kids. His alphabet and the words that he uses are foreign to the kids. (When, as kids, we were taught English == a language that was not our mother tongue, the inital objects were identified by pictures.) The camera pans over kids doing kiddy stuff like being unruly or picking their nose. Instead of acknowledging his incompetency at teaching, the accomplice makes a comment that the kids have no brains. Crass humour.
Nana Patekar shines in his portrayal of Dr Amte. Few scenes here and there do show that the director might be talented. For instance, after Dr Amte's beloved leopard Negal dies, the Amtes plant a tree at the spot where the leopard is buried. Nana later walks past the tree and nuzzles the tree. Another scene thoroughly enjoyed by the movie-goers in California was when Dr Amte cooks for his brother when his wife is not at home.
To summarize, the task undertaken by the Amtes is beyond doubt unparallelled. The movie could have done better justice to the Amtes.
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