Shakuntala Devi

“Vidya brings a full-bodied feistiness to Shakuntala… What the film leaves you with are some meaningful questions. About career, parenting, ambition, and why we judge women more harshly than men when it comes to their outlook on these matters.”

Rating: 2.5 stars | Full review

“Can a biopic about a singular woman who stormed the male bastion of mathematics stay out of her domestic affairs? Shakuntala Devi goes further than most films in providing a layered portrait of its subject. It’s a pity that the movie eventually abandons this pursuit in favour of sentimentality and family drama.”

| Full review

“The film gently derides the perception of being “normal”, and how that pursuit is futile. But time and again, it comes back to its main curiosity: the desperation of people balancing parenthood and stratospheric fame. Math can sometimes be as cruel as life: the multiplication of a negative and a positive number (no matter how big) is always negative. Shakuntala knew all the mathematical tricks, but for her daughter, she remained chalk on the blackboard.”

| Full review

“Shakuntala Devi‘s flamboyance overshadows nuance… Scenes of introspection wherein the film-maker gently identifies the pattern of children subconsciously becoming the parent they so didn’t want to be are telling.”

Rating: 3 stars | Full review

“Presents a buoyant, inspiring portrait of a woman who lived life on her own terms, often came close to paying a price for it but never allowed herself to wonder if the choices she made in life were erroneous.”

Rating: 3 stars | Full review

“My problem is not so much with the familial framing, but with the fact that it ends up dominating the story. As the film progresses, the frame gets tighter, simplistic, and Shakuntala Devi’s playground shrinks. Biopics of men also often venture into the personal, but they are not contained within that one narrative, one point of view. There are more voices, more points of view.”

Rating: 2.5  stars | Full review

“That Shakuntala was never going to toe any line, or be any kind of ‘normal’ woman, is the line the movie takes, and does well by… Balan owns the material that she is given, course-correcting every time she tends to slip into being mannered.”

Rating: 3 stars | Full review

“You can tell this is a movie re-written/re-imagined, if not smartly rescued, at the editing stage.”

Rating: 3 stars | Full review

“Makes you want to know more about Devi, after seeing her in all her larger-than-life splendour, but the desire, ultimately, is more to do with what the film leaves out, rather than what it opts to include.”

| Full review

“The screenplay jumps back and forth in time distractingly, muddying rather than clarifying the emotional journeys… Shakuntala Devi does allow its protagonist room to be selfish and shallow along with kooky and brilliant, but all the deep-seated emotional trauma is handled in a manner that’s hurried and facile.”

| Full review