Shakuntala Devi: An Overdramatic Average Film with Good, Honest Performances
By Avik Basak “Drama or nothing, we Indians are like that only,” Shakuntala Devi tells this to her Spanish associate to explain her eccentric personality. This statement is also a perfect clue to the audiences as to what to expect from this film. A biopic whose brilliance gets somewhat dampened by the overdose of melodrama. Maybe that is the way the genius mathematician’s life is supposed to be captured on the celluloid due to her own flair for drama but even with that condition in consideration, the film manages to exceed it by a fair notch. Based on the life of math genius Shakuntala Devi who was nicknamed “the human computer”, the film tells the story of Shakuntala, a little girl in the 1930’s Bangalore who is bestowed with genius-level intellect in maths and how she, without any formal education whatsoever, becomes the legendary mathematician we know. The events in Devi’s life and her journey have been interestingly woven in a narrative that keeps us invested until the end...