I had been planning this one for some time, and finally watched it yesterday.
Cinema probably started as a media and art for story telling. But as technology improved and the culture of hero-worship flourished, the idea of story telling faded and gave way to more dramatic things like techno wizardry, action and excessive portrayal of the mundane. Especially in Indian cinema, all these new things were sufficient to get people sit up and notice, and filmmakers over the years have been happily rehashing a formula or two to make new movies.
Aa Dinagalu is a clear exception, and has gone back to the basics. The movie has no thrilling sequences, no mind boggling technical works or special effects, no 'extra emotions' or nothing else that can help the audience watch the movie 'scent by scene'. It is a package as a whole, and tells a remarkable story with greatest simplicity, and as naturally as possible. And that is where the strength of the movie lies. Things keep moving smoothly and quickly on the screen, and when I came out I exclaimed to my friend - "Oh! It is a two-and-a-half hour movie, I did not realize I was sitting inside for that long".
Much has been already said about the storyline of the movie, and how, despite being a movie on rowdism, is devoid any on screen violence that is lately part of series of rowdism based Kannada movies. So I will leave the part of getting into those details here. It is already a 100 day old movie, and before it goes away from the halls, go watch it.
