Rating: ★★★ Genres: Drama Censor: U Duration: 120 min. Studio/presenter: Great Maratha Entertainment Producer(s): Aniruddh Deshpande, Medha Manjrekar Director: Chandrakant Kulkarni Music: Ajit Parab Writer: Prashant Dalvi Cinematographer (DOP): Ajith Reddy Cast: Mahesh Manjrekar, Ashwini Bhave, Abhijeet Khandkekar, Mrunmayee Deshpande, Madhav Abhyankar Movie Review by: Ulhas Shirke

Every actor or actress desire to perform a lifetime role in their acting career, be it on stage, television or films. And, very few of them get an opportunity to do so, in their second innings. Actor Amitabh Bachchan did find such opportunities through films like Cheeni Kam, Black, Paa, Piku & Pink. In Marathi, Nana Patekar found it in ‘Natasamarat‘. But, all are not lucky, especially the female artistes. But, Ashwini Bhave has found one such role in latest released Marathi film ‘Dhyanimani‘. She is the backbone of this film.

The film ‘Dhyanimani‘ revolves around her central character of Shalini Pathak a 40+ wife of Sadanand Pathak ( Mahesh Manjrekar) based in Roha on an job assignment. A newly married young couple Aparna ( Mrunmayee Deshpande) & Sameer ( Abhijeet Khandkekar) arrive in their house on a short vacation, as Pathak couple is close to Sameer’s father, a retired and highly respected school teacher( Madhav Abhyankar) .

Sadanand & Shalini welcome the young couple but soon the young couple notice some mystery in the strange behaviour of the couple. At the stroke of interval, the young couple and audience receive the first jolt and in the second half it is the uncovering of the mystery. ‘Dhyanimani‘ is based on the Marathi play by Prashant Dalvi which was staged in 90s. The play was directed by Chandrakant Kulkarni , who has now directed this film with the same name. Through this film, he has managed to present this mystery based screenplay of Prashant Dalvi well and has also skilfully exploited the best out of all four lead artistes well, but, he hasn’t taken much cinematic liberties through this film. Therefore, in many scenes the film has the look of a stage play, with more emphasis on long dialogues, especially those uttered by Ashwini Bhave.

Nevertheless, Ajith Reddy’s camera work, Paresh Manjrekar’s editing, Ajit Parab’s background music and Sandeep Mochemadkar’s sound design are plus points of this film. All in all,’Dhyanimani‘ film is not entertaining like typical Marathi films; but, does offer something different for those, who love to watch mystery based subjects with good performances.