Phulrani Review - Pygmalion Destroyed In A Modern Way

Vishwas Joshi sits in the director's chair for a Marathi cinematic adaptation of the evergreen Pygmalion, Phulrani, starring Subodh Bhave and Priyadarshini Indalkar. Firstly, how many of us are familiar with the origin of this word, Pygmalion? So, Pygmalion was a sculptor who fell in love with a statue he had carved. In 1913, the legendary George Bernard Shaw wrote a play that put life into Greek mythology and gave us one of the greatest stories ever. After 3 cinematic adaptations in foreign cinema industries, Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard adopted Shaw's legendary story in 1938 and gave us the best cinematic adaptation of the play. Frederick Loewe added colors of music in his stage adaptation, and then we got the Oscar-winning musical My Fair Lady (1964) with Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn. Purushottam Berde made an unofficial adaptation, Hamaal De Dhamaal (1989), with a gender swipe that nobody noticed, and then we all know about Bhakti Bharve's Ti Phulrani. When one story transcends so many adaptations over the course of decades, you know there must be something great in it. For me, out of all the 10,000+ movies I have seen, Pygmalion is one of the best stories ever. There are so many metaphors in Pygmalion that I can't stop raving about them. Joshi's Phulrani has made me forget the legacy of all of them and how. This is, by far, the weakest adaptation of Pygmalion. Actually, it is not a cinematic adaptation but a daily soap adaptation.Pygmalion starts on London streets with Higgins taking on the challenge of his fella processor as he takes a cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to his home to make a Duchess out of her. One must understand that the moment they meet for the first time and the age difference. Phulrani takes off with a lot of turbulence, and the first 10 minutes bore you with a useless ramp walk. Taking a street girl to make a duchess for an egoistic challenge with a friend is one thing; taking a flower girl to make a beauty queen to satisfy one's ego by making it viral news is another. During an argument with a journalist, Vikram Rajadhyaksh (Subodh Bhave) takes a flower girl, Shevanta (Priyadarshini Indalkar), to his academy to make her the next beauty queen. Shevanta, feeling awkward and being bullied by other urban girls in the academy, quits. Vikram, who is rooting for her revival, convinces her to return and takes her home instead of the academy so that other girls won't bother her. Soon, they fall in love—as expected—but the problem appears in the challenge that Vikram has to win. Will Shevanta be a dolly bet for him or will Vikram genuinely root for her? That is all that forms Phulrani's script.Written by Guru Thakur and Vishwas Joshi, Phulrani is a horrible adaptation of the legendary classic. Pygmalion is all about metaphors and unspoken outbursts and love, but here they have made a typical, crap, melodramatic daily soap of it. Let's discuss them all. To start with, there is an age difference between the hero and heroine. Higgins and Eliza never look good together due to the age gap, and that's why they never speak about love. That's one of the major metaphors missing here. Two, it's about two equally stubborn sides. Higgins is an egoistic guy, and rightfully so because he has mastered the phonetics. Eliza is transformed from a street girl into a lady, and that's why she has to be stubborn enough to face the ultra-high ego of Higgins. She has to leave the house only to make him understand that he can't do without her, and that's how Higgins realizes her importance, as he has become habitual of her exercises. Not a single scene shows us that they love each other, but somewhere we know that it's there and it shall remain unspoken so. In Phulrani, Shevanta never becomes accustomed to Vikram, nor does she ever feel alone with him. The love story is so open, spoken, seen, and torturous that you never feel interested in it. In one of the versions of Pygmalion, Eliza leaves and marries Freddy, while old Higgins is happy for her. This is a simple, ordinary ending that no one would have cared for. However, the 1938 film scripted a happy ending, as Eliza returned when Higgins was feeling low, and suddenly, the next moment, both took a fresh start. "Where the devil are my slippers?" leaves you grinning, not knowing why, but you prefer going home with them. In the previous scene, you see Eliza yelling at the professor (yes, the man who made her big), and Higgins tells her that this is what he has made her: an independent girl. Phulrani neither has this much of a profound argument nor those simple learning scenes. A poor attempt to integrate The Rain in Spain from the 1964 musical with Borkar's poem is kiddish and useless. Those recorded phonetics and memories Higgins had are erased here. The friendly battle between the professor and his friend is wiped out. That selfish father of Eliza is converted into a wannabe noble drunkard. That ex-student of Higgins who might expose Eliza is not found here. Those eclipsing moments in Eliza's life, when she successfully wins a challenge for Higgins but suddenly realizes that from this moment there will be no classes, no arguments with the professor, and that she has now become overqualified to sell flowers on the street, are trimmed here. Phulrani is the remodified body of Pygmalion with the heart, brain, liver, and intestines removed from it. Why the hell did they adopt it then? If they wanted to make a soap opera, why didn't they write an original script? And why didn't they telecast it on Zee Marathi, Colours Marathi, or Star Pravah, which have rubbish serials running the whole day with repeat telecasts?Speaking of the cast, I don't think any of the characters fit into what I had imagined of Pygmalion. Let's not compare anybody with the great work done by Leslie Howard, Wendy Hiller, Rex Harrison, and Audrey Hepburn. Subodh Bhave, one of my favorite actors in the Marathi industry, gets into a new zone. This is quite like a rom-com, not biographical or some intense stuff, and Bhave does a decent job. Priyadarshini's character is irritating and poorly written, but let's not blame her for that. She is decent too, despite some irregular accents and a childish attitude. Her transformation doesn't look much different because she is shown pretty well-dressed in the introduction scene, so there are hardly any modern changes. Had she been shown dirty in the first scene, like Wendy Hiller was in Pygmalion, then I think the impact of her transformation would have looked better. The entire supporting cast is misplaced, and none of them suit their roles. Vikram Gokhale, in one of his last roles, is still a delight to watch, but I don't know what his character added to the narrative. Ashwini Kulkarni, Sushant Shelar, Vaishnavi Andhale, Gaurav Ghatnekar, Milind Shinde, and others are those good-for-nothing characters that you see daily on your TV sets.The music is a big letdown here, as the songs do nothing but add extra fuel to your boredom. The dialogues are poor, sometimes cheap, and too predictable. What you see in the camerawork will not please your eyes at all, even though there are some beautiful locations like the beach, farmhouse, pool, ramp, and the classrooms of the academy. The production design seems lavish. Vishwas Joshi is the main culprit here, as a writer too, but mainly as a director. Phulrani could have been a decent or average film even with many mistakes in the direction, but here it has gone even lower. Joshi is responsible for that. First as a writer for poor writing and then as a director for turning a cinematic adaptation into a slow-paced, outdated daily soap. Marathi cinema is lagging behind as far as content-driven cinema is concerned in the post pandemic era, and I was really hoping Phulrani would be a good flick, a nice and intelligent change in the rom-com genre since I have seen Pygmalion, My Fair Lady, and Hamaal De Dhamaal many times and know what content they had to offer, but all my expectations are swept away by this childish adaptation. Why did they have to choose Pygmalion and ruin it like this? I would've been less furious if it was an original script, but spoiling one of my favorite stories is not acceptable.