Looks like this is the season of directors/writers pushing the envelope. Only two weeks back, we were treated to a refreshing tale of friendship from the eyes of a guy and his childhood friend, a girl, in the form of Oh My Friend. This week, Solo explores new ground in terms of responsibly delineating the psyche and emotions of a heart-broken lover, who will not abandon his convictions come what may. Just as OMF, this film too scores because of its honesty and vivid emotions. To sketch Solo, one may say that it is the story of a youngster who wants love to come as a family package in his life.
Director Parusuram scores some brownie points by skilfully interspersing evocative dialogues in the narrative. This works in the second half to a good great extent in making the audience empathize with the battered soul, The Solo (Gowtham, played by Nara Rohit). For want of a better comparison, we may draw a parallel with the character of Sukumar's Arya, who, like our Solo, knows how to love more than others. It is because these family-deprived souls are more capable of loving others, more imaginative in love, than all the family-embedded characters around them.
Gowtham is an orphan, who, having been a loner for the 25 years of his life, has no other goal in life other than entering into a wedlock with a girl who is a member of a close-knitted joint family. For him, leading life with a wife and children is not fulfilling. Thus, he will not settle for anything less than a wedlock that comes with the bonanza of a complete family package (for want of a better word!). Speaking in plain terms, love for the girl and being a member of her family are indivisible and non-negotiable. (To digress a bit from talking about Solo, our hero here is the ideological opposite of Ek Niranjan, who loved an orphan).
On the day that he sees Vaishnavi (Nisha Agarwal) for the first time, her image keeps popping up in front of his mind's eye for the whole day. He starts pursuing her and when he knows that she does have a large family, he is convinced that she is destined to be his wife. He plays cheap tricks to meet her every day; he once even falls on her legs begging her to come to the movie theater. Before long, he disturbs Vaishnavi.
Enter Prakash Raj, the girl's father. The film presents the first contradiction in the form of the father, who wants to marry off his daughter into a close-knitted joint family for the reason because his sister (Jayasudha) had been living the life of a loner as she suffers because of an unsympathetic husband but she has no one to share her woes with in the family of orientation.
What follows is definitely not on predictable lines and this is the biggest merit of Solo. What does Gowtham decide to do when Prakash Raj asks him to think from the shoes of a helpless father? How does he approach his love which now stares him in the face and asks difficult questions in the form of Vaishnavi? The answers to these interesting questions are found in the second half, which is a whiff of fresh air.
Solo has one too many highlights. Dialogues are a major plus because they mirror the inner turmoil (in the case of the hero) and feelings of the three characters between whom the drama unfolds (that is, Rohit, PR and Nisha). Each character behaves within the limits of its role. Rohit's character, which espouses love-and-family agenda is refreshing and mature lines only perk up the emotional appeal of it. The subject grows on you as it progresses towards the end in the second half. This is caused in no mean measure by well-etched sequences involving Rohit and PR.
Performance-wise too, Solo ranks well. If Rohit is decent, PR is at his usual best. With their minimalist approach, they lend a touch of realism to the sentimentality. Nisha is okay, though she needs to improvise on her expressions.
On the flip side, the father of Nisha's groom (played by Sayaji Shinde) putting the condition that her ex-lover should be present for the marriage is unconvincing (though plausible for the story). Also the screenplay in the first half could have been better. The director could definitely have avoided all the run-of-the-mill fluff. (Sample this: when Gowtham comes to know that Vaishnavi's family is large, it would have been entertaining if he had imagined a song where he succeeds in winning her love and happily married into her family rather than a song where he describes her beauty).
All in all, Solo is a good senti ride which is well-executed. For a film in which the predictable scene of the father asking himself the 'Did-I-do-a-mistake' question would invariably be included before the curtain call, Solo is a fairly entertaining attempt.
Released on: 25th Nov, 2011
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