Suntali – Fresh and Beautiful

Suntali's poster (courtesy: www.suntali.com)

Movie: Suntali

Director: Bhaskar Dhungana

Starring: Priyanka Karki, Suryamala      Khanal, Karma, Arpan Thapa, Pramod  Agrahari, Rajkumar Pudasaini, Bipin Karki

Rating: *** (out of 5 stars)

One word that sums up all the beautiful features of Suntali is “fresh”, ‘fresh’ in terms of location, storyline, presentation, music, cinematography and performances.

Plot:

Suntali (Priyanka Karki), as an unexpected guest, with an unknown minacious man Bajrang (Pramod Agrahari) returns to the village at the time of engagement of Sundar (Karma), son of Chinmaya Subedarni (Suryamala Khanal) who is the powerful matriarch of beautiful village.
In her sole aim of taking revenge against Subedarni, sharp-minded Suntali befriends Shyam (Arpan Thapa), a mute tailor master, and renews her relationship with Sundar while other villagers are constantly backbiting and drooling over her. As the past story behind Suntali and Sundar unfolds, things later turn out different when Subedarni herself wises up against Suntali after knowing about Suntali’s plot. At last, only one of them wins leaving the villagers shocked.

What I felt:

Director Bhaskar Dhungana has done a good job in turning out the story into a well-crafted movie. Writing (Prawin Adhikari) is good; tale of revenge in theme of “Sin returns to roost from rooftops” has been sharply webbed into the beautiful plots and dialogues are natural, humorous and witty. Every scene between Suntali and Sundar are brilliant, so is the climax. Presenting cock, ring, locket, Rajesh Hamal elements as symbols seems nice. There is very deep detailing in most of the scenes which comes as artsy and beautifully done but at the same time, it seems long and boring after some while.

Beautiful Bandipur
source: You Tube

Cinematography (Ondra Belica) is top notch. Beautiful Bandipur has been captured wonderfully. This particular location seems very very fresh. Costumes (Swechha Nakarmi) and Art (Menuka Rai) fit well to the theme of story and settings. Background score (Robert Jisa and Jason Kunwar) is wonderful, so is the only song Paani Bina (Jason Kunwar and Sumnima Singh).

The main problem of this beautiful movie is its very slow pace. It has frequent humor elements from start to end but it does not let audience stop from getting bored sometimes because of slow pace. Even the otherwise very beautiful background music seems way too long at some times. Few scenes such as storytelling of Inspector Sapkota (Rajkumar Pudasaini) and scenes between Suntali and Shyam seem a bit exaggerated and unnecessary.

Karma
Photo Courtesy: www.suntali.com

Priyanka Karki
Photo Courtesy: www.suntali.com

Performances of every major and minor actor are good. Priyanka Karki has done a good job in essaying the title role honestly. She looks beautiful and acts well, but somehow seems a bit reluctant in emotional scenes. Suryamala Khanal is wonderful as a smart and cunning woman. Karma effortlessly sinks into the character of awkward, coward and loving person. Very fine performance. Arpan Thapa, though not having any lines, is nice in his expressions. Pramod Agrahari, Rajkumar Pudasaini, Bipin Karki, female actors playing a maid Kamala and four sidekicks of Chinmaya are good in their respective roles.

Final Say:

As a whole, Suntali is fresh, beautiful and well-crafted movie with fine performances but only having a problem in its slow pace. One such movie that can be called “Maulik Nepali Chalchitra”.

I loved the movie but didn't get completely satisfied as I had bigger expectations with this one.