The Disciple

The Disciple (2020)

If you want to walk this path, learn to be lonely and hungry.

Self-doubt, sacrifice and struggle converge into an existential crisis for a devoted classical vocalist as the mastery he strives for remains elusive.

Date of release
2020-09-27
TMDB
6.8 / 10 (59)
Runtime
2h 8m
Genres
Drama, Music
Director
Chaitanya Tamhane

Casting

Interesting facts

The Disciple is a 2020 Indian Marathi-language drama film written, directed and edited by Chaitanya Tamhane. It stars Aditya Modak, Arun Dravid, Sumitra Bhave, Deepika Bhide Bhagwat, and Kiran Yadnyopavit. Alfonso Cuarón serves as an executive producer.

Production

After the release of his debut directorial film Court in April 2015, Chaitanya Tamhane worked through an extensive research to write a script based on Indian classical music in September 2015. Around March 2016, he started the writing works of the project which took more than 18 months to complete, as Chaitanya stated that "the first page of the script, was very difficult to crack.

As a part of the research work, Chaitanya travelled to various cities including Delhi, Kolkata (ITC Sangeet Research Academy), Varanasi, Pune and Ahmedabad. He added that apart from interviewing musicians, he also had to form genuine friendships and build a rapport with them so that they can "open up and let understand their inner world".

It is a journey of an Indian classical vocalist who has been raised by his father and inculcated into this music. He has grown up on these stories of masters of the past, the secret knowledge and the intimidating, complex art form that they are trying to perfect. The kind of values that vocalists grow up on.

For the role of Sharad Nerulkar, Tamhane stated that the person must have abilities of singing, acting and also fluent in Marathi language. In an Hindustan Times interview, he added "We went with a newcomer [Aditya Modak, a classical singer and chartered accountant] because we figured it would be easier to get a musician who could act rather than vice-versa. But we had to do this for most of the key roles, and casting alone took us a whole year."

In Baradwaj Rangan's interview with Film Companion, Tamhane added that the essential conflict in The Disciple comes from Grey Elephants — the play he made with Vivek Gomber. He further added that "I fell in love with the theatre field because of all these stories, and secrets, this lost, ancient knowledge, and this complex, intimidating genre of music with roots in religion and spirituality. All of this collectively fascinated me.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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