Krishna (Kannada)

Starring: Ganesh, Pooja Gandhi, Sharmila Mandre, Sharan, Avinash, Vinayaprakash, Sudha Belawadi,
Bharat Bagavathar, RGV
Director: M.D. Sridhar
Producer: Ramesh Yadav
Music Dir: V. Harikrishna
Lyricist: Jayanth Kaikini, V Sridhar, Shashank, Kaviraj
Singers: Suma Shastri, Udit Narayan, Hariharan, Shankar Mahadevan, Nanditha, Sonu Nigam
Distributor: Moserbaer
Genre: Romance, Drama

Remake of Unnai Ninaithu Tamil
starring Surya, Sneha and Laila

Synopsis
Everyone is hurrying to get home by 5.30p.m. Why? They want to watch Krishna on the “R Music Show”. Krishna (Ganesh) is the anchor, and Rama (Sharan) is the one who answers the telephone. Krishna is very popular with all the girls, and Rama is jealous of all the attention that Krishna gets from his fans. They are friends, who live together as paying guests in the upstairs flat at the house of Krishnakumar. He has a daughter called Pooja (Pooja Gandhi), who is always unpleasant to Krishna, and fights with him at every possible opportunity. Krishna is also hurrying to get to the studio in time, while Rama looks at the studio phones ringing after each other, everyone wanting to speak to Krishna. Krishna complains if any of the callers say anything in English, he tells them they should speak pure Kannada, the language of Karnataka. He never appears nonplussed by what any of the callers say. His first caller the next day just laughs when he asks her name, then starts to praise him, then tells him twice he loves him – then Rama cuts the line. Krishna is annoyed, telling him he should have cut the line at once, the first time she said she loved him. When they return home, Pooja’s mother (Sudha Belawadi) is busy cooking, twenty-one dishes for the festival of “Gokulashtami”, a celebration of the birth of the Hindu God, Krishna. A team of young men form a human tower to reach a high-hanging pot of buttermilk and break it. Anyway, back to the story!
Next day, the girl who laughed is back on the line. This time she gives her name, Preethi. Again she says she loves him, and the line is cut. We then see Pooja being chased by five lads, and Krishna arrives on his way home on his motorbike, and rescues her. She’s not the least bit grateful – she was teased when she had to take her “scooty” to the garage because it had a puncture, and accuses Krishna of causing the puncture. Then Preethi annoys Krishna by calling him on his cell-phone, when he is at home. He goes to the clothes store in the shopping mall, where the owner is pleased with Krishna, because when viewers see the outfits that Krishna is wearing, they come to buy the same outfits. Preethi calls him there. She calls him when he returns home. Finally she calls him, saying that she will go to the “boating spot” at midnight, and if he does not come there by and tells her he loves her 12.05, she will commit suicide. He goes. Preethi is none other than Pooja. She tells him she had been in love with him for along time. She was frightened that he would reject her. She was afraid that if she was nice to him, one day she would blurt out that she loved him. So that it why she would fight with him, and be unpleasant to him.
When Pooja confesses her love to Krishna, Krishna informs her of his previous life – when he was a nobody and was deeply in love with Anjali (Sharmila Mandre), whose entire family was poverty stricken. Krishna helped them out, wherever and whenever he could. Anjali loved Krishna as well, and everyone, including Krishna, assumed that Krishna would end up with Anjali. Anjali’s father (Avinash) and mother (Vinaya Prasad) looked on him as their son-in-law. Anjali had a younger sister who was handicapped as a result of having had polio. One day, Krishna arrived at their house as the landlord was throwing their things out of the house, because they had not paid the rent. Krishna paid what they owed, and said he would pay their rent from now on. He bought groceries for them. He bought a cell-phone for Anjali so that they could always keep in touch.
Then one day an old friend of Anjali’s father arrived, saying that he was now rich, with a good job, and he wanted to marry Anjali, with whom he had been in love with for a long time. The father of one of his friends was a Doctor, who could make people walk who had suffered from polio, and he would take Shalini to London to see him, and Anjali could study medicine, an impossible dream that the family had for her – and the whole family could come and live with Anjali and him. So the parents agree to his wish, and try to persuade Anjali to agree to marry him. Krishna arrives to see the family, who are now making a fuss of Pratap, and calling him son-in-law. Anjali agrees to her family’s wish, and she breaks off with Krishna. A heartbroken Krishna came to Bangalore, unable to bear the sorrow.
Pooja, however, is confident that she will win Krishna’s love. However Anjali comes back into Krishna’s life, when her fiancé has ditched her. She is now penniless. Will Krishna forgive her and marry her, or will he marry Pooja who is in love with him? Watch the film to find out.

Songs:
1. Krishna
2. Hey Hudugi
3. Neenu Bandha
4. Mana Mohana
5. Hey Mouna

Released Year: 2007
Running Time: 125 minutes/Colour/Kannada

Review
This is another film that shows Ganesh at his loveliest (cf. “Aramane”). It shows the spirit of self-sacrifice that is such an important part of Indian Cultural Values. It also shows something that is difficult for Westerners to understand, the inability of Indian young people who are in love, to express their feelings of love. And Westerners would probably condemn Anjali’s family for rejecting the love of Krishna, in favour of someone who had a lot more money. Only someone who is Indian, or someone who is aware of what it means to be as poor as that family were, can understand, and not condemn what they did.
One “point to be noted” (a phrase often used in court-room scenes), is that whereas the period of time between the beginning of the film, and the point where Krishna discovers who Preethi is, is relatively short – the rest of the film shows events that took place over several years. That makes you see the characters in a different light, one of them in particular.

The songs were good – “Krishna” show all the exuberance of youth as the pot is broken in the festival. “Hey Hudugi” is a soliloquy, filmed in Thailand, in which Krishna tries to work out who his mysterious caller, Preethi is. “ Neenu Bandha” is a love song with Krishna and Anjali. “Mana Mohana” is a love-song, in the imagination of Pooja, alias Preethi, in which she dreams that Krishna loves her. “Hey Mouna” is almost like a film trailer, in that it summarises the story of the film – so do not watch it first: watch the film from the start!

5 stars

Rating: [5 of 5 Stars!]