The two abiding strengths of Marathi cinema – strong writing and naturalistic performances – are evident in Gharat Ganpati. Navjyot Narendra Bandiwadekar’s comedy smartly deploys the familiar trope of a family coming together and threatening to come apart during a religious event.
The Gharat clan has been celebrating the Ganpati festival at their ancestral home in the Konkan for generations. This year too, Janaki (Sushama Deshpande) and her husband Jayantrao (Sharad Bhutadia) prepare to welcome their brood for the seven-day event. Not every one of their children is happy about the financial and emotional costs of maintaining the Ganpati and Gauri idols for a week.
City slickers Sharad (Ajinkya Deo) and his wife Ahilya (Ashvini Bhave) carp about having to frequently bail out Sharad’s brother (Sanjay Mone) and his wife (Shubhangi Latkar). The sniping between the ones who moved out and the ones who chose to stay behind escalates when Sharad’s son Ketan (Bhushan Pradhan) turns up with his girlfriend from Delhi.
Kriti (Nikita Dutta) tries very hard to please this Marathi-speaking cohort – perhaps a bit too hard. Kriti’s ignorance of local customs as well as her tendency to put her foot into her mouth divides the family.
Gharat Ganpati can be rented from Prime Video. The device of using an outsider to witness a proudly Maharashtrian practice doubles up as a way to initiate non-Marathi audiences into the festival’s celebration in the Konkan. The prettiest part of Maharashtra has been seen in numerous films. Viewers who might feel encouraged to look up hotels in the Konkan after watching the gorgeous locations in Gharat Ganpati are advised that the movie has partly been shot in Kerala.
The movie’s concerns are of a domestic nature. Fathers and sons, sisters-in-law, and cousins go to war, the festive spirit all but forgotten. Kriti’s entry into the Gharat household sets off truth bombs lying around in plain sight.
Despite the rancour, the treatment is consistently pleasant, warm and comedic. The jaggery in the modaks that has gone rancid is miraculously restored to its original sweetness. The significance of Ganesh as a remover of obstacles is cleverly deployed in the script by Alok Sutar, Bandiwadekar and Vaibhav Chinchalkar (Sutar also has a creative director on the movie).
Alongside morality lessons and nuggets of traditional wisdom, there are mini-lectures on the need for Maharashtrians to be more tolerant of other cultures. Gharat Ganpati balances its insistent feel-goodness with deft performances, sharp dialogue and moment of acuity. Atul Parchure voices Ganesha, who watches over the fractious mortals with humour and the knowledge that everything will work out in the end.
