Rating: ****
Panchayat in its third season,is high on credibility and intelligent insightful writing. What we get are teasing, heartwarming scenes from a rural life that is rapidly vanishing from the cinematic radar. Hold on to it. The stillness of a smalltown is still unnerving in Amazon Prime Video’s Panchayat,a splendidly executed series about rural India where…well, nothing happens. Life goes on without adventure or change, let alone transformation
After a point, the cruel insubstantiality of the lives being described in the series, begins to get to you. There is no hope of a better tomorrow for villages such as Phulera. What keeps the episodes from sagging under the weight of its own despair is unflagging positivity of the characters. These are not people who are aware of the futility of their existence. In fact they are proud of it.
The very reason why the characters who populate the village of Phulera (Uttar Pradesh) in Panchayat seem so frozen in time, makes them the cause for much curious probe and idle gossip in the series.
Director Deepak Kumar Mishra, still firmly in command, and his writer Chandan Kumar plunge into thes einert lives stirring up what can be called a storm of inconsequentiality.
The series is defined by the very essence of nullity that permeates these lives. There are long stretches of barren building-less land in the third season of Panchayat. Not much has changed in the topography and emotional map of the Phulera dwellers since we last met them.
No one except the village Pradhan’s daughter Rinku(Sanvikaa) talks about leaving the village ,and she too does so only in passing.The Pradhan and her husband played with smug worldweariness by Neena Gupta and Raghuvir Yadav, continue to be incurable status quoists. In this season where more of nothing happens in these placid lives, the most exciting debate in their household is on whether to serve lauki or kat-hal for the visiting administrative office.Daughter Rinki plods to a neighbour’s house to borrow a kat-hal: clearly the highlight of her day.
The camera lurches through the Pradhan and her rubberstamp Husband’s large(by the village standards) half-constructed pukka home(this is a village built on mud and hope rather than cement and mortar) like an elephant determined not to trample over the grass . awkwardness during the courtship is ably expressed by the actor.
There is a deliberate selfconsciousness , a calculated awkwardness , if you will, about these characters .The series’ protagonist Abhishek Tripathi(Jitendra Kumar) has a romantic interest in Rinki.His
Sandhya Suri’s Stunning Santosh Representing the UK Has Made It To The Oscar Shortlist Of… Read More
Girls Will Be Girls, A Powerful Flawed Feminal Gem To End The Year With Rating:… Read More
It is here, at last! So go have a blast. The ‘blast’ is 3 hours… Read More
Before Vikrant Massey takes that break, he may be shooting for Farhan Akhtar’s Don 3 … Read More
While we have been constantly bringing voices from the film trade to comment on the… Read More
It isn’t clear as yet why Vikrant Massey has decided to quit acting just when… Read More
Leave a Comment