Navarasa

Forget about navarasa (nine emotions), I couldn't feel even one rasa. Siddarth (bhaya) part is somewhat bearable. My three stars are for awesome cinematography and production values, what purpose they serve when the core emotion is missing.

Well, I was really excited about this series, but got disappointed.

The acting, cinematography and background scores are the best, direction is average but story is really poor.

I liked the 1st, 7th and 6th episodes the most, they really give some great message.

Some are average like 4th and 5th Some are really worse like the 3rd and 8th. If the know the 3rd episode's director's most of the movies end like that. For 3rd episode I'll say just adding confusing terms doesn't make a story great.

9th was bit confusing and incomplete storyline.

But really disappointed. I've rated as the average of all episodes.

Once again outdated mess.

Each and every one of nine parts lags and disappoints.

1. Ethiri - Whether the casting is strong the story and emotions falls apart. Nothing exposed.

2. Summer of 92 - This emotion is named as laughter, also they had a big opportunity to do that with casting like Yogi Babu. Still went on vein.

3. Project Agni - The only good thing happened in this Navarasa. The screenplay stands tall and casting too. Too much English sequences will confuse the audience more than the script itself.

4. Payasam - They called it embarrassing, is it ? Its fully compiled with jealousy.

5. Peace - The end is not actually replicates the title. The one good thing here is that long single shot.

6. Roudhram - They call it anger, what I witnessed is Embarrassing. But the making and casting is good here. Yet it never exposed the emotion anger.

7. Inmai - Another good thing in this navarasa is this film's casting. Both siddharth and parvathy does it well. Sidhharth really exposed the emotion fear. But the execution is not great.

8. Thunitha Pin - No word is there to explain how useless this film. Really no words.

9. Guitar Kambi Mele Ninru - As usual Gautam menon stuff not great and also it takes too much of time around 48mins, in this duration they could have explained very well but still something touch emotion missing here. Songs are good and casting is great.

Overall there is no such worst anthology like this. And please stop doing like this.

Cinematography is good. Music is good. Acting is fine. Stories are mostly uninspiring, uninteresting and weird.

Navarasa turned out to be a mixed bag given the range of (on-screen / behind-the-screen) talent on board. The Netflix anthology very clearly scores more lows than highs, with just a few segments managing to leave a solid impact. The concept behind it is actually quite unique, and its tasteful packaging (from the minds of Mani Ratnam and Jayendra Panchapakesan) also makes for a great reason to get hyped about it. Is it worth exploring? Let's go segment by segment:

Edhiri (Karuna - Compassion): The performances (Revathy, Vijay Sethupathi, and Prakash Raj) and the score by Govind Vasantha stand out in this one. Plotwise, it was okay.

Summer of '92 (Haasya - Laughter): Priyadarshan's writing is weak, and the only genuine laugh in this one arrives at the very end. The actor who played the younger version of Yogi Babu was impressive.

Project Agni (Adbhutha - Wonder): Karthick Naren's project is an ambitious sci-fi thriller that could easily work as a 2-hour feature film. This is probably the only segment with a definite ending.

Payasam (Bibhatsa - Disgust): While Delhi Ganesh's natural performance is a plus, the rest of the segment felt like a complete miss. It struggled to evoke the emotion it was supposed to.

Peace (Shaantha - Peace): Second time in a row (after the disappointing Jagame Thandhiram) that Karthik Subbaraj tackles the Eelam issue with uninteresting results. The presentation here (also featuring a 13-minute continuous shot) is slightly better in comparison to JT, though from a storytelling standpoint, I expected better.

Rowthiram (Raudra - Anger): Arvind Swami's directorial debut is focused around a basic revenge plot but the way he stages the whole thing (with a fantastic twist!) is awesome. Santosh Sivan's attributes a certain rawness to the visuals which works. A slightly better closing sequence would have helped.

Inmai (Bhayaanaka - Fear): This has an inventive plot but the actual scare factor is zero (more like implied horror!). Performancewise, there isn't much to bicker about. Vishal Bhardwaj's musical score is remarkable.

Thunindha Pinn (Veera - Valour): Difficult to fathom that it was written by Ratnam as the dialogues are all over the place. The segment comes off as the weakest overall, with director Sarjun KM displaying no creative control over the politics it tries to profess or even the characters.

Guitar Kambi Mele Nindru (Shringaara - Romance): GVM's concept of love hasn't aged one bit. It's still superficially at first sight, starts off as platonic before sexy revelations are made, highly expository in nature, set against the backdrop of hummable tunes (by Karthik) and mug-focused expressive visuals (by PC Sreeram). Suriya's screen presence is unquestionable but the plot and its nuances feel like déjà vu.

Overall, Navarasa is an okay effort when it should have been downright amazing!