Marathi Legends: Ashok Saraf

 Ashok Saraf Marathi Actor is a living Legend. Although he is mostly remembered for his comedy roles along with other legendary actor Laxmikant Berde. But he had time and again proved his metal by enacting many negative as well as Dramatic  Roles.

 Born: June 4, 1947 (age 68), Nagpur
Spouse: Nivedita Joshi Saraf
Children: Aniket Saraf

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Movie Review: "Nishani Dawa Angatha"

Movie Review “Nishani Dawa Angatha”

Genre: Comedy

Director: Purushottam Vrede

Language: Marathi

Star Cast: Ashok Saraf, Dilip Prabhawalkar, Makarand Anaraspure, Nirmiti Sawant, Mohan Agashe, Vinay Aapate

Special Appearance: Bharat Jadhav, Sanjay Narvekar

“Nishani Dawa Angatha” is a film based on a novel of same name. Author of this book is Ramesh Ingale. As per Marathi film industries ritual this film is a comical farce on very serious issue. This film talks about why there are so many illiterate people in rural areas although Indian Government runs so many literacy programs over the years. And which had been very successful on papers. “Nishani Dawa Angatha” shows the loopholes in such government programs.

The story happens in a village name ‘Savargaon’ in Buldhana district in Maharashtra. In the village there is a school run by six male and six female teachers. Principle of school is played by Ashok Saraf. One day principle received a letter from government announcing that adult literacy program is started and all the teachers are expected to do extra duty for the same i.e. they will have to work after their normal working hours and teach illiterate adults at nights 8 to 10 pm. Although everyone is irritated with this, they had to do this as it is governments order.

But as it happens in any government work, people start find loopholes to miss the work. Everyone involved in the program right from teachers, supervisors, officers tries to save their skin. They run this program for three years and without creating anyone literate, the village bags the award for the excellent work in literacy program. That is what movie is all about.

The movie got excellent storyline. But there is much more scope of improvement in screenplay, and direction of movie. Director Purushottam Berde tried to be true to the novel all along but little bit of cinematic liberty could have added charm to the movie. All the actors were brilliant. If I have to rate this movie I will give it 7 out of 10. But it is still a must watch movie and highly entertaining too.

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Mastar Eke Mastar

“Movie Review: Mastar Eke Mastar”

Director: Sanjay Surkar

Language: Marathi

Genre: Comedy

Cast: Ashok Saraf, Pramod Joshi, Mangesh Desai, Deepali Sayyad, Surekha Kudachi, Vijay Khote and others

Released: 2009

Education is one of the biggest money making business today and it is getting bigger and bigger every passing day. We know many politicians turning into Educationalists or vice versa. There is nothing wrong in making big education empires. It only provides opportunities for students in higher studies in India itself. But trouble is that these so called Educationalists are more interested in making money rather than providing has become a big business. Educationalists are more interested into making money than passing on knowledge to deserving people. This movie ‘Mastar Eke Mastar’ is exactly tells the story of an ordinary Mastar (teacher) who becomes an educationalist with the help of all immoral and illegal ways.

Movie is about the Bappa More, played by Ashok saraf. He is a primary school teacher in government schools. He has all the bad habits of drinking, gambling and scheming mind on top of that. He makes students do his personal work. Just to get benefited from government’s policy to help divorcee women by giving them teacher’s job. He divorces his wife. This is how his story starts and he ends up being a wealthy man with two wives and big education empire.

I really like the core concept. And I was expecting a lot from this movie. As I said idea of the movie was brilliant, movie has Ashok Saraf as lead actor, and Sanjay Surkar as director. But movie failed in all departments. It has weak script and above all weak direction. After movies like ‘Choukat Raja’, ‘Tu Tithe Mi’, ‘Satchya Aat Gharat’ this movie is really a mediocre performance by sanjay Surkar. Without the presence of Ashok Saraf the movie would have been too dull to watch.

Lately the Marathi movies I watched had good subjects, good acting talent, and enough technical support; but they are lacking directorial and script level proficiency. So people making Marathi movie should really buck up. As I am sure they will not want the flow of audience to Marathi movies to dry out again. As for this movie if I have to rate it, I will give it 4 out of 10.

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