Navarasa (transl. Nine emotions) is an Indian anthologystreaming television series created by Mani Ratnam, who also collaborated with Jayendra Panchapakesan to produce the series through their respective banners Madras Talkies and Qube Cinema Technologies. The series features nine stand-alone episodes based on the Indian concept of the Navarasas, filmed by Priyadarshan, Karthik Subbaraj, Vasanth, Arvind Swami, Bejoy Nambiar, Karthick Naren, Gautham Vasudev Menon, Sarjun KM and Rathindran R. Prasad.
Navarasa as the name suggests is an expression of 9 human emotions (rasas) in form of 9 short films featuring stellar ensemble cast with popular directors and technicians on board. With all that we get ready for an extremely emotional ride but the ride isn’t interesting enough to get us intrigued.
So for me 3 out of 9 worked and the rest merely had good efforts but failed to translate the vision or message of the story teller.
Here is a short review on my top 3 episodes:
Inmai (Fear) stars siddarath and Parvathy was an eerie take of an islamic horror, folklore, thriller with a twist served to perfection in terms of performances,cinematography, direction & production design. For a short film this was a stand out for me.
Rowdhram (Anger) had an usual story of poverty and life struggle of a single mom to keep her kids happy but the expression of anger towards the exploitation in our society was subtly put in form of one boy’s anger. This was a surprise directorial debut by actor Arvind samy who also appears in one of the shorts.
Payasam ( Disgust) transports us to the world of Kumbakonam Brahmin family’s marriage and happens in 1965. The whole plot on envy, ego, jealousy transforming to an act of disgust was skilfully emoted by the legendary Delhi Ganesh.
Bottom Line:
See over all Navarasa had strong acting and execution but didn’t have equally strong substance in the storyline. So we didn’t get invested by all the emotions and we leave with a rasa of “feeling flat”.
Watch Navarasa For Its Technical Brilliance And A Wonderful Toorigha Song
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