Film: Hombanna
Cast:Subbu Talabi, Dhanu Gowda
Direction: Rakshit Thirthahalli
Rating: 3/5
Hombanna, by Rakshit Thirthahalli, is a movie with a good heart. It claims to be the first to deal with forest encroachment and the eviction of farmers. While the intent is noble, sadly the movie loses its focus with a romance, too many songs and tackling too many issues.
The film is a narration by a lawyer (Suchendra Prasad) to a journalist, and he talks about the difficulties protagonist Hombanna and his family face when they are asked to leave the forest. How will Hombanna fight the system and win the battle forms the curx of this film.The story gives the audience an overall picture of lives of people living in the forest and the difficulties they face.
Except for seasonal actors such as Dattatreya, Suchendra Prasad and Ambujakshi, this film has a cast mostly of newcomers from Malnad region and a few IT engineers. The amateur performance by various newcomers - Subbu Talabi, Dhanu Gowda, Ranjitha, Paramesh Doddenahalli, Subramanya, Dhananjay, Varsha Acharya, Krudan, Shabarish, Savitha, Jagadish and Anish -- fails to capture the seriousness of the issue. The romance between the city boy and a village girl is left unresolved and it distracts the viewers from the main storyline.
The only highlight of Hombanna is the scenic landscape captured well by cinematgrapher Praveen. The movie’s music by Vinu Manasu stands out.
Hombanna deals with an important subject, the impact of laws on the forest and the lives of its people. This is a sincere effort made by upcoming talents, but a little more attention should have been paid to the details to make the storytelling more impactful.