A tale worth knowing but it tests our patience.
I got to know of this through a friend Abhijeet Kulkarni (a big fan of singer Kishore Kumar) who "I like it because its my idols favorite movie" and watched it nearly 3 years back for first time. When I revisited it now I am just all over in love with it for the first hour, the second hour seemed dragging and I had to sit through 3rd just to finish it. Over three hours long, this tale of a family of Tevye (playe by Topol) becomes too sardonic and too painful by the end. Had it been a tad shorter, it would have just right up there as a great movie. Now, still its definitely a good movie and worth watching for many reasons. Top most reason being there to see Topol playing Tevye, the family runner, a man for a family.
Topol is just so fine and brings so much more to the character Tevye is that there is no escape form empathizing, falling in love with Tevye and embracing him for the way he dealt with his things. Setup in 1900's Russia, this is a tale of a family of Tevye who has 5 daughters and he has to get them married, now tradition is what he believes in sticks to and he has to fore go a few beliefs too for his own family and he does that too and becomes so very humane.
Now, did I ever mention that its a musical and oh wow, the music is so good, 'Matchmaker' and 'Do you love me' are two songs that are my favorites and will listen them over again and again. John Williams for sure has produced a supreme soundtrack and worth a collection. So is the cinematography and art direction which are simply superb.
Now, editing is not up to the mark and this being a musical I agree it has less scope and it needed a large landscape to take us and make us delve into the niceties of such place and also its grave atrocities. It's great if looked at as a play for its completely performance oriented but as a movie, I wish it was just shorter by say half an hour.
It's 3/5 for a good movie and definitely worth a watch for TOPOL and surely thanks to Kishore da and Abhijeet for making me watch this.
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