Karma Review

Director Saikiran Adivi shot into fame with the success of `Vinayakudu'. However, his second film `Villagelo Vinayakudu' failed to click and remained an average flick. The passion of making a cinema also gripped the director's brother Adivi Sesh, who stays in the US. He prepared a subject based on beliefs, faith, God, ghosts and supernatural elements and gave it a celluloid shape with the title `Karma'. The entire movie was shot in the US, though it was a Telugu film. In fact, the movie is completely an off-beat flick in all aspects whether onscreen or off-screen.

Story

Padma (Jade Tailor) is an Indian kid whose father dies in the hands of the temple priest, when he questions the priest about the misuse of donations offered to the temple for drug- peddling. The ghastly murder takes place right before Padma's eyes. Out of fear for life, Padma's mother (Bhanu Yanamandra) takes away Padma and hides in a remote city of Shamrock. She brings up Padma for some time and by the time Padma turned young, she too dies. Padma has a friend called Raj (Sher Ali). After the demise of Padma's mother, Raj offers Padma to marry, but she refuses. So, Raj tells her that he will remain a friend for whatever need for the rest of her life. At this juncture, Padma finds some surprise guests from India at her place. They are Dev (Sesh Adivi) and Sumati (Rashmi Rustagi). In fact, Sumati is the friend of Padma's mother. They claim that they came to know about the death of Padma's mother and came to console her. But Padma is in a surprise as their whereabouts were kept a top secret and how come Sumati and Dev came to know about them. When questioned, Dev simply says, he just `knows' certain things even before they happen and about all those had happened earlier. Learning about hit skills, Padma gets attracted to Dev and both of them lose their hearts to each other. Padma keeps learning more and more about the events that are going to occur? Why did Dev come to US from India? Does he has the special and supernatural powers? What are the special powers? Can Raj win over Padma even by the end? What would be the fate of Dev? What happens to Padma's strong beliefs? Answers to all these questions form part of the climax.

Performance

Sesh Adivi looked quite handsome and has the ability to delivered freshness in his performance. Especially, he is good at facial expressions to suit his character. His diction and dialogue modulation is also impressive. However, at times, especially when the situation is quite emotional, he went a little overboard but could be understood. Jade Tailor, being an American, failed to impress the viewers and the audiences could not receive her as an Indian-American. She too failed to control herself during emotional scenes and her performance proved to be awful in certain scenes. The director tried to etch her character with discipline and made her to walk and talk like an Indian woman and Jade too cooperated well in this aspect. Sher Ali played another key role in the film and he perfectly fit to the character. His body language, style and performance were apt. In some scenes, he reminded Prabhas in some angles. Child artiste Ria Cheruvu also gave an impressive performance. Bhanu Yanamandra, who played the heroine's mother is a classical dancer by profession and hence she could emote well, with a lively smile. Rashmi Rustagi was adequate The others did their bit as required.

Technical

There are a lot of interesting tehnical points in the film. Let us take cinematography (with a Red One system, using it the second time in a recent Telugu film, Eenadu, beautiful locales were chosen and the expertise of the cinematographer is visible in capturing their beauty. There are too many close up shots. However, good lighting scheme and color grading made the film impressive. The film producers and director are quite passionate towards their language and hence they did not compromise on Telugu and most of the dialogues in the film are totally chaste and in pure Telugu most of the time. There are only few scenes which had English dialogues, but only one such scene had Telugu subtitles. The background score and the songs (lyrics included) were recorded by non-Indians, probably for the first time in a Telugu film, but thanks to all the care taken, the audience get a novel feeling but not feel foreign. Art department too needed compliments. Editing could have been crispier; a tighter screenplay with good editing could have unveiled the theme much better. The last 20 minutes of the film, the graphics in the Kalki Avatar scene and the cinematography are the highlights of the movie. The director should be complimented for making the film with excellent technical values and for the selection of locations, visual effects, sound effects which are masterly. However, he should have ensured the pace of the movie as the scenes move very dull in many scenes forcing the audiences to leave their chairs.

Remarks

The story is said to have been inspired by a personal experience of the writer-director, Sesh Adivi. He came out of a near-death car accident in 2007. However, the film is not just really about the accident or the experience but it triggered thoughts in him. No doubt, it is purely for a bold attempt made by speaking about a concept and the high quality of technical standards followed in the execution. The story of the film was penned out of Hindu mythology (which incidentally resembles a part of the Revelations in the Bible, too), and philosophy.

Released on: 26th Nov, 2010