Recently while browsing through UPenn's video library catalog I was surprised to see forty one Kannada movies in it. Last time about four months ago there were only a handful. So I decided to checkout and watch some movies. This post would be the review of one of the popular movies made some ten years ago called 'Amritavarshini'. I would post the reviews of other films in subsequent posts.

'Amritavarshini' I feel had been quite a popular (hit) film with its name floating around lot of tongues around that time. After watching it I realized that it was solely for the reasons like good music, presentation and a descent star cast and nothing else. I feel the primary flaw of the movie is its not so impressive storyline. Again story has the same essence of triangular love involving 'husband', 'wife' and the bad 'friend'. The plot is very very simple. In short 'Husband'-'wife' in love with each other, 'friend' develops liking for 'wife' and kills 'husband' hoping to marry the 'wife'. 'Wife' comes to know about it and denies herself to him and as a martyr kills herself in front of him. Though it doesnt look so novel and interesting, it definitely is a typical Indian film story. So whats wrong with story in the first place?. I think the flaw is in the portrayal of the 'friend Abhishek's character played by Ramesh Arvind. Apart from the fact that he killed his best friend, from start to finish he has been portrayed as a very good, innocent, peace loving poet hearted person. Its very hard to imagine how such a naive, quite personality suddenly turns so cruel so as to kill his best friend 'husband' Hemanth played by Sharath Babu for the sake of immoral likeness he develops towards the 'wife' Veena played by Suhasini. Its very hard to imagine the existence of such a personality in real world who is a savage murderer and at the same time a very shy and dumb headed person as enacted by Ramesh. Two extremely contrasting behaviors mixed up in one personality.



Ok, lets take the story for granted. Story is a story, good or bad. Lets try to see if it really makes any sense. There are two possibilities. Firstly its possible that because of some circumstantial reasons Abhishek developed love towards Veena and was so mad in love that he became very inhuman and killed his best friend. But nowhere in the story there are convincing circumstances or events which strongly suggest towards that. Also dumb-headed personality played by Ramesh never convinces anyone that he was ever madly in love with Veena in the first place. Abhishek develops likeness towards Veena just because shes an active personality , sings well which are good reasons in any love story, but not in this scenario involving a married woman that too who is the wife of his best friend. One more possible but weak and poorly convincing reason given is that Abhishek still deeply depressed by the loss of his beloved lover Shruthi, finds Shruthi in Veena and begins to like her and goes mad about her. For me it seems very unnatural for such a quite, naive and important a sad, depressed person to love his friend's wife and upon that grow into a insane killer. Its a reason, but realistically a very very poor reason.

Second possibility is that though Abhishek was a quite, poet hearted person, he could have had a dark side. Outside he was good but from within he was very very bad. People like that generally fit the role of a villain, not a good, soft spoken guy. The role played by Abishek should at least have given some indication of that villainous conduct. The Ramesh's portrayal of Abhishek gives a clear picture of a very very good guy who somehow by chance suddenly commits a dastardly act. It rather feels as if he is a perfectly good guy who is drawn by some sudden evil force or demon outside his control to commit such acts.



Second flaw is again in the story sequence near the end where Veena foolishly commits suicide as a symbol of revenge. The not so convincing reason given by her is she wants 'Abhishek' to suffer all his life from the pain of not having her. This makes no logic at all. She could have as well done that by simply not marrying him and alienating herself totally from him. The most practical thing to do as a brave single woman instead of simply dying would have been to handover Abhishek to police and see that the justice is served. By committing suicide she sets a very poor example and its a rather cowardly, senseless act. But who cares about practicality in films?
The guy who wrote the story is not a literary person, hes just a filmy guy who is after a populist climax sequence as desired by majority ordinary public.

Standout performance is by Suhasini as Veena, very bubbly and expressive. Though technically Ramesh as Abhishek acts well, he fails remarkably since his portrayal doenst do justice to his character in the context of the real world for the reasons I mentioned earlier. Personality of the character itself is uncertain, confusing and unrealistic. I have high regard for Ramesh as a talented actor, but probably he was simply not a good choice for this villain's role. Sharath Babu as Hemanth is good within his limited scope. Direction is good by Dinesh Baboo Other good aspects of the movie are the music by Deva and presentation of sequence flow of events in the movie.



Overall the film suffers from a very much illogical, poor story and poor, non-realistic portrayal of 'Abhishek's role. Its unfortunate that a film has to become popular because of secondary reasons like music and presentation rather than the practicality of the story. All the audience wants is a sensational sequence of events no matter how improbable or meaningless they are. Film makers exploit this public immaturity and feed the people with such non-nonsensical stories which are no good. Instead even in commercial cinema if filmmakers come out with novel, meaningful stories or adapt stories written by adept writers and do a descent job in presenting that through the film, masses will definitely like it and its good for everyone. There are lot of examples of that too. But who cares? majority of the people are just after money and populist ways to earn fame.