Sandeep Sawant – Shwaas (2004)

The New York Times
Shwaas,”the debut feature by Sandeep Sawant, is the teary, slow-moving story of a grandfather (Arun Nalavade) who has brought his young grandson from their rural village to the big city to seek medical attention. The boy, a wide-eyed moppet named Parashuram (Ashwin Chitale), is losing his sight, and tests reveal that he is suffering from a rare cancer. His only hope of survival is an operation that would leave him permanently blind.

Mr. Sawant does his best to balance hopeful sentiment with the depressing prospect of a child’s world going dark, and he tries to infuse this simple melodrama with a sense of tenderness and beauty. There are lovely, elegant shots of the verdant coastal landscape the boy has left behind (and will most likely never see again), and hectic scenes in which adults – including a kindly, harried doctor (Sandeep Kulkarni) and a sympathetic social worker (Amruta Subhash) – fret over Parashuram’s fate.

The simplicity of the tale becomes a bit tedious after a while, though. The adult conversations tend to ramble on, and there is not much sense of dramatic conflict, just the agonizing preparation for inevitable sorrow.

According to its press materials, “Shwaas” has won many prizes in India, including the Indian National Award for best feature film of 2004. It will most likely prove a bit mawkish for American audiences, who may find its subject matter better suited to basic cable programming than to commercial cinema. It is unusual, and strangely gratifying, to see such a small story filmed with such luster and grandeur, not just on the big screen but in the wide, epic dimensions of CinemaScope. The format seems too big for the picture, but at the same time it is somehow comforting to see such grand attention lavished on such a little boy.

Shwaas.2004.DVDRip.XviD.avi

General
Container:  	AVI
Runtime: 	1 h 47 min
Size: 	704 MiB
Video
Codec: 	XviD
Resolution: 	640x288 
Aspect ratio:  	2.222
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	806 kb/s
BPP: 	0.182
Audio
#1:  	2.0ch MP3 @ 96.0 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/E0F9EF7A193E015/Shwaas.2004.DVDRip.XviD.avi
https://nitro.download/view/7732E3C26FD1330/Shwaas.2004.DVDRip.XviD.srt

Language(s):Marathi
Subtitles:English SRT