When I saw director Hrushikesh Mukherjee's name in the credits of the film Anuradha, I immediately knew I was about to see a good movie. And I was not disappointed. The story is very simple, nice and quite realistic; in a space of two hours and 20 minutes, Mukherjee traverses the relationship of an idealistic, humanitarian doctor and his wife, the titular heroine who aspires to be a singer and escape the rustics of the provincial life. In the last millennium there were not many movies you could genuinely call 'realistic'. By realistic, I mean, you could say, "Yes, this could have easily happened." The wife used to be this famous singer before she enters into a love marriage and gives up music. The world then loses a great singer to a marriage. The story sounds simple, but is it really? The way it is developed, the film shows how a deceptively simple story can become quite complex in real life when human emotions and nature comes into the equation. To Mukherjee's credit, he handles it without any extreme theatrics. If I were thinking hard where the story becomes unrealistic, it really feels like finding a needle in a haystack.
I was in two minds about rating between 7 and 8. I could have rated it at 7 because in spite of a nicely made movie, it is slightly boring. But then I compared it with the film Guide, which was made few years later. It also dealt with emotional complexities around man-woman relationship. Guide had fantastic music, dances and songs. However, ultimately the story writer seemed to have lost control. So I bumped my rating of Anuradha to 8. Lastly in terms of music-- what can you say when the music director is none other than the legendary Maestro Pt. Ravi Shankar. The songs are outstanding. I only wish we had more of these beautiful songs. All in all, Anuradha is a good movie to see with your family on an evening when you just want to sit in front of TV and relax.
