Chaitanya Tamhane’s The Disciple (2020) | Zoo Entertainment
On screen, Hindustani classical musicians have been mostly played as caricatures, venerable otherworldly figures in shawls or eccentric comics. Till Chaitanya Tamhane’s
The Disciple hit Netflix with a slow-burning story of an idealistic young khayal singer’s existential struggle.
Here finally was a film that spoke of the joy and terror of being an inheritor of a formidable legacy, the complexity of guru-shishya ties and the desperate fight for recognition and space. And the best part – it had a cast of real-life musicians, not actors hamming it wildly.
You would have thought the film would be greeted with whoops of joy by the fraternity but what