Nani and Keerthy Suresh in Dasara. (courtesy: nameisnani

Cast: Nani, Keerthy Suresh, Dheekshith Shetty, Shine Tom Chacko and Samuthirakani

Director: Srikanth Odela

Rating: Three stars (out of 5)

Popular films typically fall prey to the second half curse. The power-packed and interesting Dasara, directed and co-written by first-timer Srikanth Odela, doesn’t. It treats its first half basically as a springboard for a profitable post-interval leap to a meaningfully greater aircraft. And that’s the place the movie stays perched all the best way to an impressively executed finale.

Other important attributes set the Telugu-language movie aside from blockbusters like Baahubali and Pushpa. Its exploration of entrenched caste dynamics, bitter political rivalries and debilitating social ills in a coal mining village in Telangana pushes it nearer to Tamil movies from the Pa. Ranjith, Vetrimaaran and Mari Selvaraj stables.

Dasara stays steadfastly inside the parameters of mass-oriented cinema and employs acquainted Ramayan-centric analogies to hold the story ahead. It nonetheless manages to interrupt free at essential junctures from its stylistic inspirations to decorate an previous, even maybe trite, assemble in contemporary, eye-catching apparel.

Dasara is a country love story-cum-bromance dovetailed right into a revenge drama with a powerful emotional underpinning. The composite is introduced with a directorial imaginative and prescient that implies that Odela might, and will, produce works of better originality and distinction. This movie testifies to his talent – and the imaginative and prescient – to faucet massy, straightforward to know strategies to inform necessary tales.

The denuded panorama displays the state of the lives that Dasara depicts. The movie is about in Veerlapally village, a speck on the map. It is a spot that swarms with males who drink themselves foolish and the ladies bear the brunt of their unruliness. At the centre of the village is a bar – it’s named after Silk Smitha – that’s out of bounds for all however higher caste drunks.

The narrative straddles a decade and a half from mid-1995, the ultimate 12 months of NT Rama Rao’s third time period because the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, to 2010. The movie’s two principal male characters – Dharani (Nani) and Soori (Deekshith Shetty) – pilfer coal from operating items trains when they aren’t sloshed.

They are in love with the identical lady, Vennela (Keerthi Suresh). The three have been mates since childhood. The altruistic Nani, who’s meek-natured and believes in staying off confrontations, steps again and lets his greatest buddy profess his like to the lady.

Several years on, the love triangle is aggravated by unseemly energy politics between Rajanna (Saikumar) and Shivanna (Samuthirakarani), two half-brothers at warfare for management of the village and the bar. The latter has a son, Nambi (Shine Tom Jacob), whose aggression triggers a tragedy on the movie’s midway mark.

A blood-curdling act of violence throws Dharani’s life into disarray. He is a cowering mess till he gathers the braveness to plan a retaliation. The timid, responsibility-shirking man is compelled to select between being resigned to his destiny and taking a stand.

The first half, expended on making a context for what’s observe, takes its personal time to select up momentum. Parts of it meander a tad and even really feel considerably wayward. But the turning level simply forward of the interval offers the deliberate and staccato tempo a rationale.

The troubles that confront Dharani, whose identify means Earth, Soori (which means Sun) and Vennela (alluding to the Moon) are brought on by one man. The villain’s motives are hackneyed and the threats that he makes spring from the facility that he wields on account of his political and caste clout.

One needs Dasara had pushed the caste divide envelope a bit of additional and likewise confused upon the connection between the three most important characters with some extra readability when it comes to its wider societal implications. Is it doable that Dharani’s suppression of his love for Vennela has one thing to do with the place he stands within the caste hierarchy? The movie doesn’t increase that query, not to mention dedicate a minute or two to reply it.

Another level at which Dasara slips up a contact is within the method during which the important thing feminine character is disadvantaged of company in terms of deciding her personal future? Dasara makes amends of types when the girl calls for an reason her consent wasn’t sought earlier than a life-altering selection was made on her behalf. The man spells out why he did what he did. While his defence of his motion is not totally convincing, his apology is.

In the matter of plotting and pacing, Dasara is not excellent, however Sathyan Sooryan’s lensing and lighting and Santhosh Narayanan’s lush and phenomenally efficient musical rating are each of the very best order. The latter lends the movie a propulsive rhythm with its mix of the earthy and the digital.

Sooryan’s camerawork creates a palette that alternates between the inky and the auburn and is skilfully illuminated by the muted glow of non-electrical sources of sunshine.

A de-glammed Nani makes Dasara a high-voltage affair. The screenplay and his personal acumen permit him to ease himself into the character arc and seize the person’s evolution from a feckless, evasive youth to a person of motion after fifteen Dasara celebrations have come and gone with him letting his life drift aimlessly.

Dasara additionally offers Keerthy Suresh a variety of feelings to convey. Even in essentially the most melodramatic of moments, she retains management of her schools and the scene. Deekshith Shetty operates inside a extra restricted bandwidth however makes a long-lasting impression. On the flip facet, the power of evil that Shine Tom Chacko embodies doesn’t convey the requisite menace.

The rousing climax is invested with nice energy in time period of of each visualisation and execution. The weapons used within the ultimate act in addition to earlier within the movie inform their very own story. To start with, the villain’s henchmen wield sharp scythes and sickles, that are farming appliances-turned-arms.

In the violent climactic conflict culminates in tree-cutting axes, digging shovels and rock-breaking hammers making an look – a not-so-subliminal metaphor for a as soon as agricultural group that has been compelled into mining as a lifestyle.

A couple of wobbles however, Dasara is a triumph as a result of it achieves a fragile steadiness between the flashy and the important and, within the course of, delivers a bit of extremely dramatic fiction that ceaselessly appears to have emerged from the true world.