Great Movie: 13 Conversations About One Thing

It is very easy to make a movie about happiness. It is very tempting to sermonize to take life a moment at a time and take nothing for granted. Not that such an approach or such an intention is to be dismissed off as just dumbing it down for the audience or being afraid to be realistic. We often see film makers start with characters who are radical, but we can see them disappointingly shy away from letting their characters' lives take turns that would have been inevitable for them if they existed in a real world. They redeem these characters from themselves and their demons for a happy ending or to endear them to the audience. Take "As good as it gets" for example. In that movie, Jack Nicholson is a man who in real life can never have a relationship, thanks to the 765320462 insults he manages to throw at anyone he meets, in just a couple of minutes. People like these, the victims of their own mentalities can never afford to have another person sympathize for them even if they themselves painfully try to not be themselves. But the audience love such transformations and miracles, and thats what tempts filmmakers to trade off their movie's reality for popular appeal. While critics might express their disappointment, people feel rewarded for the dose of assurance they get that hope wins and everything will be alright in life, anyway. Of-course I am sure that the cinematic-climax of "As good as it gets" is responsible for the public appeal and acceptance of an otherwise depressing film.

This is the reason why I liked, appreciated and fell in love with this film "13 Conversations about one thing". The theme of the movie is "Happiness", and the story (if it can be called a story) is about how happiness plays with humans. May be happiness has no intention of playing with our lives, but we are so hellbent on being happy all the time and dismiss off any other state of mind as being robbed off by life. "Happiness is not the norm" say some yogis, whose logic is that all the feelings including happiness, grief, sorrow, anger and sadness are more or less the ripples of the waves the activity of life creates (and thus they convince that crest follows trough). But man always prefers to be smiling, happy, successful, loved, warm and beautiful. And this expectation is what makes life so disappointing and confusing, given the way life presents itself as the time given to man to do what he wants to do. That's what this movie discusses.

We meet several characters in this film all of whom have one and only one obvious goal, happiness. We meet a lawyer in a bar( Matthew McConaughey) who celebrates his victory with booze and is in no mood to give "Luck" its due acknowledgement and even dismisses if off as a sorry excuse of losers. He argues with a pessimist that life is not as complicated as they say and that conscious actions and decisions govern the outcomes we enjoy or suffer, and nothing more or less than that. It is not very surprising to see someone who is enjoying the privilege of getting what they deserve from life, completely dismiss the impact of things that are not in an individual's control and yet manage to change his game. Ironically, he on his way home hits a girl and seriously injures her and presumes she is dead. He helplessly watches his own life being shred to pieces and is painfully made to observe the powerlessness of his decisions or the order that he presumes is in the world, to redeem him from the claws of fate. What does this imply? Nothing. That's why I liked this movie.

In another story, we come across a girl who tells her friend how she is saved from death and how that made her think that there is a reason why she is given a second chance. She talks about a vision she had when she was drowning, and it all sounds convincing to her till she gets hit by Matthew McConnaughey's car. Her life is pushed back to years and she cannot do anything about it, except to try in vain to find a "reason" behind this. What does it imply? Nothing. There are some other characters and events in this film that present different journeys and stories but no conclusions can be made from their stories.

There is no message conveyed here, no redemption arrived at, no meaning of life found out. What does this film portray? Reality. The way man cons himself to believe that it all makes sense in someway or the other. Good people suffer, and bad people prosper, and not much can one do to prevent it. People who are happy till then, will be turned upside down suddenly and lose so much. They might manage to crawl back to where they have been pushed away from but so many years will be blown off from their lives, and they do not stand there with any compensation except with a lesson that they presume life taught them. I never came across a man who made use of a "lesson" that life taught them, for any substantial achievement. I know an old man who is cheated by his friends and is taken advantage of. He used to tell me that life taught him never to trust anyone, but he never again had money enough to use that precaution, neither did he live long after that. The "lesson" that he thought life taught him, proved to be a lesson that could have benefited if had not been taught. In other words, not a lesson at all.

The movie presents the world around us, as it is. There are lucky people, who get parties from life. There are not so lucky people who are denied things but who work and manage to get what they are not given. And then there are unlucky people who try but not succeed. There are people from whom everything is taken away, just as they begin to appreciate it. There are people for whom it is impossible even to try. Yes, and a million other cases exist. Some guys believe that there is a higher consciousness sitting above the clouds that takes the responsibility of managing who should get what. And some comment that no such entity exists and that if it is true it should be despised for its sadism rather than being looked at with reverence.

Films like these might  be hard to digest for those who share "Life is Beautiful" wallpapers and "Keep Smiling" quotes on Facebook, but I saw very few films that came as close to the reality of life. The director chooses to capture the game rather than trying to drive it. Rather than telling fairy tales about happiness it just makes us look at life as we should. Not with reverence, or not with despise but with an acknowledgement of the sense that no matter how it is, our only option is to deal with it and carry forward. May be not all who watch this movie might agree with me. "You didn't get it, idiot" they might say. But whats important is, it makes us have our own conclusion, by not giving a conclusion. Long live great cinema.

GREAT FILM: THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS

Agent Starling is a trainee at the FBI and her boss Jack Crawford gives her an assignment, to talk to Dr. Hannibal Lecter (nick named Hanniball-the-Cannibal) who has been serving life in a mental institution. A psychopath killer named Buffalo Bill is on the run in the city killing women and skinning them. And Crawford sends Starling to talk to Hannibal as he beliueves Hannibal might offer some insight into Buffalo Bill's psyche which might help them get closer to catching Bill.

Dr. Hannibal is not some mere psychopath. He was a psychiatrist, a very good one indeed and his love for the science to read people's minds is intense but not as intense as his taste for people's livers and kidneys taken raw out of their bodies and dripping with blood. He is primarily a cannibal who is aided with his wonderful ability to manipulate people's minds. The deep and dark areas of human mind are no secret to him. Just by talking to Agent Starling for five minutes, he tells her native place, her insecurities and hence  her repressions. He considers himself highly intellectual way above than the people around him. And he is right. While sending Starling to Hannibal, Crawford warns Starling not to reveal anything about her personal life to him. "Trust me, you don't want Hannibal inside your head" he says to her.

"Crawford sent a trainee to me?" Hannibal says. And why would the FBI boss send a trainee when he can send an expert in criminal psychology? Because they are no good to Hannibal, and all the previous attempts by the best of psychiatrists to analyse and hence conquer Hannibal are blown to pieces by Hannibal's mastery in psychiatry and his crude insults. Here is a man, who knows all the tricks. Crawford believes that this new  serial killer Buffalo Bill whom they are failing to trace can be unlocked only when they can gain some insight into his psyche, and the best person who can take them into the killer's mind is none other than this veteran cannibal genius.

Dr. Hannibal Lecter, who has never co operated with investigation so far, and who insults his investigators to the core and remains silent, chooses to talk to Starling. She approaches him, not with the confidence and arrogance of  an FBI agent but as a student who regards her master as a man of great understanding. When she initially greets Hannibal, we see in his wide open eyes an amusement. And he is happy to get a subject, with whose mind he can play. He entertains her because he sees no agenda behind her approach but a polite attempt to "dissect" him. Crawford knows that if he tells her the purpose even before she talks to Hannibal, he would not have talked to her. "He would have toyed with you and went to silence". Because what Hannibal wants is a subject, but not a situation where he is being subjected to basic level standard psychological examination. That's why Starling's  questionnaire disappoints him. " You think you can dissect me with this blunt little tool?" he asks her, looking at her questionnaire.

When she is desperate to catch Buffalo Bill and seeks Hannibal's help, he doesn't simply offer her a visual of Bill's head charitably, but he asks her to take him to her past. He asks her to tell her about her past in exchange for his diagnosis on Bill's case.  He simply asks her to put herself in a position where she doesn't want to be at all, and smiles seeing her helpless from having no other option. But his offer is not sadistic. Here we meet a man who has been locked inside a cell for 8 years and the only way he can get out is through other people's minds. Hannibal knows the limitations to his good behavior, and others' as well. Unlike the Joker in The Dark Knight, he doesn't want to celebrate it. He simply coexists with society to the extent where tolerance fades out of significance and the only question that matters is who is smarter and quicker. He likes Clarice, for reasons best known to him. May be because he smells from her a similar childhood to his. This psychiatrist, for whom the mind is not a puzzle but a text book is disconnected from the morals and ethics of civilized society and hence is free to do whatever he wishes.

We like his character, not because we begin to sympathize with him but because he likes and helps Clarice, with whom we identify. His character design is enchanting, not only because he is a man-eating psychiatrist but because we feel as much thrilled as Clarice when there is only a glass between the prey and the predator and given the glass breaks the predator wont even think for a second to rip her heart out and eat, yet a conversation goes on where both of them keep down their predator-prey roles and shift to master and student roles.

Clarice, on the other hand is a less complex character. She has a painful experience in her childhood when she tried to save a lamb from being slaughtered but failed. From then on wards she was being haunted by nightmares involving the cries of the lambs, and all she seeks is their silence. (Hence the title). However in her present adult mind, the lambs are the victims of crime and she hopes to silence them by saving them from the slaughterers.

"The silence of the lambs" remains a classic to this day and will continue to be. It is not usual for a horror film to derive its strength from character study rather than from genre thrills. Its not easy to forget the performances of Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster. And the entrance shot of Dr. Lecter, to this day, stands unbeatable.

Why "A"?

Some films aren't as much about the story as they are about the characters. Not that the characters have a story to tell, but some films' characters lift the burden of connecting with the audience from the shoulders of the twists and turns in the story and they carry it with a conviction. And such characters do not occupy the movie universe but inhabit a real universe, so that they have the weaknesses, aspirations, ramblings and temptations of an everyday average man.

In the film "A" we meet two characters whose chat is so casual and sounds so unimportant but that small conversation tells everything about them. Let me name them for you. Lets call them "The good guy", "The bad guy" and "The boss".  Now as the topic has come up, why didn't I name them? They don't have names in the movie, which is because I chose to present them as representations of the contradicting personalities inside a same person. Just think once. How many times do we want to do something and not want to do the same thing at the same time? Many times right? Similarly, we pack some jealousy towards the people we love most. We root for the bad guys whom we don't want to see in the society. We all have a wild side inside, which we tried to tame and failed but can smell its presence in the dark prisons of our mind. And in spits of anger, or burst of happiness we can see them trying to unleash outside. That's why these unnamed characters inhabit the same abandoned bungalow trying to reason with each other and trying to control each other, just like the contradicting personalities and emotions inside our minds. In a way, the abandoned building represents our dark motives and obsessions and these characters represent our motivations, temptations and dilemmas regarding them.

Back to the point again. The conversation. In the conversation, the good guy (Or the hero) tries to say that "If one shouldn't become the joker, there is no option but to leave the game". He clearly meant their criminal life, when he said "game" but the bad guy is too dumb to catch the reference, and we can see a sad smile on the good guy's face as he lacks a companion who tries to understand what he says. And the bad guy then says "You don't deserve to be here. You deserve more. I can see that you are smart. But since I am not as smart as you, I cannot acknowledge it. Many of us are not in their rightful places in this world. This is an unjust world." Now how does the bad guy know that he is dumber? How does an intellectually inferior person say all this intelligent analysis?  Remember that all of this is a dream inside the good guy's head. His thoughts are playing with each other in his subconscious and this dream is staging the conflicts his thoughts are carrying. It shows that the dreamer is being tormented by his self elation that holds himself in high regard in his mind but in reality chooses to make money by killing people. this is the reason for the conflict in his mind.

After they decide on who should kill and who should watch, the good guy wants to see who is inside. But the bad guy wants just to finish his task, not because he is cruel but because he is afraid of the truth. I represented the truth just as in real life. Truth is always covered. Truth is always expressed in an abstract way. Truth is never an absolute. Here, the truth is the face inside the mask. The good guy wants to face the truth, but the bad guy warns him that if the truth is unmasked, it will take away our comfort. The bad guy represents our psychological repressions and the way our mind cons us to protect us from the heat of truth's flame. The bad guy chooses to let the truth pass away than to look into its eyes as he fears that it will shatter his life. The bad guy prefers a comfortable and convenient lie to the disturbing truth. The bad guy is our eye when we look at the mirror and choose to tilt our head in an angle in which we look beautiful. The bad guy is our photo shopping skill. The bad guy is our unwavering trust in our cheating girlfriends. The bad guy is our belief that everything in this life makes sense and the reason it appears otherwise, is because we cant figure it out. The bad guy is our idol in the temple. The good guy is our science, The good guy is our inclination towards reason, The good guy is our dare with which we agree that life has no inherent meaning and whatever meaning it has is imparted by us. The good guy is our gut telling us that we are just animals who can think. The good guy is our atheism.

The film introduces the characters as two guys sitting in front of a horrifying building playing cards(deciding their chances). It is underlined with a mournful music which the movie begins with. The music establishes the characters as two unfortunate guys risking their lives to chance.

The frequently underlined fact in this movie is the probability that king becomes a joker, which actually means the cruel and unexpected twists and turns that fate presents in a game of crime. And that no one's position is unexposed to chance and fate. The good guy is so terrified of the power of the uncertainty of chance that he dreams of a King card to have a joker on the backside.
While the good guy is making a critical choice, we can see light dancing behind his head as if it is trying to get inside into his head. This is the subconscious representation of wisdom trying to enlighten his mind.

While the bad guy points out that no one has the power to handle the truth, we see the truth (The masked face) being handled by the

good guy with care. The cards being shuffled is played as a suggestion as they unmask the boss, as this indicates the intensity of the probability and chance that it could be anyone.




As a bottom line I would say that my film is a man's dilemma between choica and chance. Thats the reason we show a coin

(representing chance which he cannot control) and the good guy at a cross roads (representing choice which he can decide on).  While the cards thrown at the boss' face by the good guy symbolises his quit to the game, the shot where he runs away, alone explains the theme of the entire movie


I wanted to tell this story, and I told it. Forgive the bad lighting, as we shot the entire film on natural lighting only. And our camera is an age old iphone.

And finally "Why "A"? "

The characters are represented by cards. The boss is the king, the bad guy is the joker and the good guy is the ace. When you place "A" at the starting of the sequence, its value is one. But when you place the ace at the end, it is greater than the king. When the good guy leaves the bungalow (The criminal world), he crossed the sequence and became greater than the king. The king becomes the joker in the end.

INTERSTELLAR and 2001:A SPACE ODYSSEY

I tend to get more drawn towards something that I do not completely understand than towards something that I know inside from out. Because when the blanks are left out for you to fill, you might be surprised to find the innumerable ways you can arrange the set of answers to obtain completely different and far fetched conclusions. That's why people who like poetry, like it. And until a film can come as close to poetry as Kubrick's masterpiece 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, it cannot boast of trying to outsmart it.

No. I am not trying to belittle "Interstellar" here. I am trying to establish that Interstellar just didn't even attempt to outsmart 2001, but rather tried to pay homage to it or tried to fill in the blanks it left, with its own set of answers.

In 2001 (From here on wards 2001 means 2001:A SPACE ODYSSEY) we see the film begin with man's ancestors the apes living their own life of reality and fear until a strange object, a black monolith suddenly makes its appearance out of nowhere. The curious apes (hence our ancestors) touch it and after that we can see an ape making a tool out of a bone and using it to kill its competitor.

The scene emphasizes that the contact with the monolith has made the ape smarter and has drawn it closer towards becoming a man. What is inside the monolith and how can it make people reach  their next level of evolution is what puzzles the audience, and some people might have blamed the director for not explaining it. But the funniest part is, why do you think he has put a black monolith, which doesn't have any inscriptions or which is not in any shape that resembles any religious symbol, which is neither beautiful, nor horrifying? Because he wants it to stand as a symbol for something that has the answers to the most complex questions and hence it doesn't bother to feel the urge to represent or resemble something. Because it is a whole. And the whole is always the simplest because there is no part of it that it yet needs to get attached to, to make sense. It is only the part of the question or the part of the answer that represents or resembles something. The whole doesn't need to do it. It is the infinity and hence the zero. Only because you cant yet figure out what or how this world makes sense, you keep digging and push yourself to the farthest reaches of your imagination. There would be an answer and that might sound utterly ridiculous when you understand it in its entirety, not because the answer is dumb but because it becomes finite and is nothing when compared to the infinite length your question blew your speculation to. The rule is simple. If you want to create something the size of the universe, just write something on a paper, and leave the story uncompleted. It will give a possibility to N number of interpretations and hence can accommodate even the last particle of dust in the last corner of the furthest galaxy. Your creation is just an unfinished story on a paper, but it is as vast as a vessel that could fit a thousand universes. Thats what God did to man. He created everything with his limitless knowledge and gave man the ability to comprehend only a part but not the whole. hence man kept exploring, wondering and digging and he never ceases to being a man. Not because the universe is limitless but because the answer is hidden.  And that's why a simple, smooth black monolith. That's why Kubrick is a genius. That's why Interstellar can never be as big as 2001.

See, all of the above might not be the reason for Kubrick to choose a black monolith to be the object but I have speculated all of this just because Kubrick left space to accommodate my imagination. That's what "Interstellar" doesn't.
(Nolan rather tries to detail it down. He gives a very well explained and scientifically accurate explanation that gravity is the key for communication through space and time.) But that's why it manages to stand as a more original film than what it would have been if it chewed a little more from 2001.

What stopped me from having further doubts whether Interstellar is inspired from 2001 is the third act. They are noticeably similar. In Interstellar, Coop falls into a black hole which happens to be a place that the future humans build a tesseract which facilitates Coop to send signals to his past self, as time is represented there as a physical dimension. The audience are shocked because his daughter's bedroom is the last thing they expect to see inside a black hole.

In 2001, Bowman encounters a monolith in space and is teleported through a "star gate" which is

visually conveyed to the viewer through some best special effects (of that time) and ends up in a hotel suite kind of room where he sees his old self having his dinner. The old Bowman turns back and looks at the astronaut Bowman, comes near him, and we do not see the astronaut bowman any more in that room (The astronaut has become the old man) The old man similarly becomes Bowman-near-death. And the dead bowman becomes a child the size of a heavenly body. As surrealistic as it sounds, this is the third act of 2001. It is hinted that the monoliths one of which transferred Bowman through space and time to a hotel suite and made him a star child are placed in space by aliens who are more advanced than humans and want to help humans evolve away from their limitations. The final sequence of 2001 looks like it appears in Bowman's head and hence some think it is not real. But as Dumbledore says to Harry Potter why should something taking place in the head mean that it is not real? Real or metaphysical, the sequence hints at man crossing the hurdle of his limitations and achieving a superiority over his past self and it is not ironical that he looks like a child after he achieves the ultimate transformation. What does that mean? That the final monolith has made him into a God by feeding him all the data of the universe and transforming him into a giant embryo (thus pushing away physical limitations)? Is God just an alien more advanced than humans?
The aliens are not shown in the fim but talked about. That is a very fine choice as that lets us visualize them as beings who do not necessarily have to be bound by physical appearances. It buys us the convenience of believing that they are advanced beyond the humanity's perceived limits of physics.

That's where "Interstellar" takes off. In "Interstellar", the people who placed the worm hole near Saturn are not aliens. "They" are not "aliens". "They" are "us". Interstellar prefers a more "real" and a more comprehensible(at least to who know physics) depiction of the redemption of humanity. Nolan, rather than going poetic, went scientific. That hits the right note with today's generation who are used to precision, specificity and accuracy. Interstellar in one sense, is the fine grained version of the more abstract 2001.

However 2001 chooses to tone down its emotional inclinations because it looks up to the ultimate enlightenment and the ultimate transformation as its peak, it's flag has to fly high above the emotions of us lesser beings. The coldness with which it shows us the proceedings asks us to try to cope up with the nullifying of emotions that the transformation brings. Interstellar does the reverse. It highlights the human emotions and goes to the extent of making love to become the key to the redemption of humanity.

While 2001 penetrates your subconscious and paints a bewildering abstract masterpiece in your mind, Interstellar touches your heart.

Long live great cinema

Manam Review - A tale of love

It is difficult to decide what to start with, when it comes to writing about a film like Manam. The plot is stupid. But so is love. The characters are too sweet. But so is love. The feel is too optimistic. But so is love. And why do all these immaturities and imperfections do not bother you? because this is a tale of love, and that's how it should be.

Revealing anything about the plot is a great crime, and I wouldn't spoil the experience for you. If I have to manage without playing a spoilsport, it is a story of people who lost the love of their lives and how they regained it. You wouldn't be thinking whether it is logically possible for such things to happen in real life, thanks to the sweet narration of Vikram the director of the film, you would only wish and try to fool yourself into believing that love actually has the power to make things happen as they do happen in the film. It's characters crave for love, ooze out love, lose it and find it. The characters are all sincere and the sky is always blue. The clouds might dim the brightness for a while but it all ends with the showers of love.  The universe in which the story takes place, is lovers' utopia where destiny wouldn't dare to end your life-death loop till your thirst of love is quenched. Unless you get in tune with this, you wouldn't begin to enjoy the ride. And what kind of a person doesn't want to live in such a world? At least for a couple of hours! People who like this film and people who don't like it, have the same reason. The above.

The plot starts slowly and progresses at its own pace. Thankfully, there are no "entrance scenes", "build up" scenes and all the rot that Telugu film industry is dishing out lately. The characters are well conyained within the screen and they dont peek out at us to remind that they are the Akkinenis in the real world. Except when the characters reveal their names( Nagarjuna is Nageswara Rao, Chaitanya is Nagarjuna and Nageswara Rao is Chaiyanya) amd the "Drinking" scene. Nagarjuna- Sreya's part is my favourite. It has been very well done talking of the period detailing and the dialogues as well.

Initially when the story unfolds we might feel awkward at the little oddball revelations and developments that turn out (Like when Nagarjuna calls Samantha as "Amma"), but it is not awkwardness that we feel but a strange sweetness that only films like this can pull out. It is very easy for the director to fall in doubt whether the audience feel the same way as he intends them to feel, but he is gutsy enough to proceed with his story without adulterating it by adding the (god forbidden) commercial elements or by trimming the oddball parts.

Attempting something like this in a film industry that is too scared of experimenting and too posessive of its worn out templates is something that deserves a remarkable applause. This film falls in the rare category of films that actually believe and love its plot.

At times the film tries to leap to become a classic. Nagarjuna-Sriya's accident scene, where the car dashes against a tree and the white flowers slowly fall into the pond, the party scene where Sreya enters in an old sari, the scene where Chaitanya confesses to Samantha, are where the film takes bigger leaps.

The cinematography is top notch, the music that strikes the right tone with the melodrama of the film, the performances, subtle, the screenplay gripping, the shots aesthetic and the ending is sweet.

The film has its own flaws. The episode where Nagarjuna gets rid of Naga Chaitanya's love interest who comes between his father and mother, doesn't sync with the emotional maturity of the film. Because the characters are all firm believers of love, it is indigestible to see that Chaitanya's character forgets his lover with whom he chose to spend his life with, just for a simple and small reason.

That is where the film took its liberties but no, it mars the "sincere" color of the film. That being said, this film is a must watch for all Akkineni fans, Telugu film lovers, because it is the last film of Akkineni. Though his character is limited to a short time, he managed to pump his charm and love-ability into those moments.

Watch it for the people who made it with love, passion and sincerity. Watch it for Nageswara Rao. Watch it for Nagarjuna.

Watch it for Akhil.

1:NENOKKADINE REVIEW

We all have illusions. We all think and deduce, act and remember, and our memories form an integral part of our intellectual being. We so deeply depend on them that our entire understanding of our own life depends on what we remember and what we see. Our mind fills the gap left by what we cannot see, remember and understand with its own illusuons.  The protagonist in 1:Nenokkadine also has illusions. But his ones are visual. Rather than filling the gaps, they play with his actual senses.  Gowtham, a rock star has a rare psychological disorder where he cant differentiate between reality and illusion. His mind constructs whatever is missing from his life and tries to convince his conscious with stories comfortable for his logic to believe. And he falls for the trick. There lies the story. When he is told that he is being conned by his own mind, part of him agrees but something inside him whispers that his life is defined more by what his crippled memory says is true, than by what the psychological records prove.

A few minutes into the film, Gowtham murders a man and surrenders himself to the police. When the police search the spot for the dead body, they realise that not only themselves but Gowtham also is fooled by his mind. Gowtham assumes that someone killed his parents and is haunted by the fear that they are coming for him as well. The moment he discovers  he has this problem, he faces the bewildering challenge of differentiating truth from illusion. And Sukumar wants the audience to run along with Gowtham, in his shoes. Everytime the hero hangs between reality and illusion, it is a test for the audience also. Nenokkadine is not so much a thriller as it is a mystery. 

The first half of the film takes its own time to establish the plot. Usually psychological thrillers begin with a bang. Like a mysterious murder, and then the clues, questions and doubts start playing. This film right after the bang gives out its biggest revelation that Gowtham is seeing things from his mind, the question of whether his past is true or not still lingers. The rest of the film is all about his travel to his past, his identity, hurdled by his disorder. Sukumar in his greed to engage the mind of audience althrough the film, resorted to fool them sometimes if necessary. But thats what a psychological thriller is about. You are watching it more often from the point of Gowtham than from a third person. Thats why in the first fight you can clearly see Kelly Dorjee holding a gun rather than some mysterious man entering like a shadow. Then you get to know that he is just an imagination. The whole film follows this scheme. You have to think while running with the hero, follow all the scenes and investigate on your own, if you dont want to get lost in the confusion. For that you got to look at the other characters present in the location and observe. Perhaps the telugu audience have a problem with that. People beside me in the theatre began joking about whats true and whats not as they couldnt follow.  

Mahesh's performance is the highlight of the film. He showed all the emotions as precisely as a Mathematics gold medalist answers (a+b)2=?

Nenokkadine, as a story doesnt worry much about the so called commercial elements that the telugu audience popularly crave for. But the execution does.  A straight psycho-thriller story, devoid of any comedy tracks, grand entrance scenes, and powerful dialogues, written for a star hero whose fan following is on a phenomenal raise lately, is enough a sentence to sound the dare the makers have exhibited. Perhaps this has troubled the director a bit. So he inserted songs at unnecessary places and dampened his own pace. 

Another problem with the film is its length. I would have felt happy if the same film had ended a half an hour earlier. The purpose a thriller is to thrill. Any drop in the pace would betray the lack of any other entertaining elements. If the takeoff is slow, the flight should be racy. But both cannot be lagging. 

Will audience love this film? Most probably not.

Is this a bad film? No

Would I recommend this? 

If you are a fan of entertainment, skip it. If you are a fan of cinema, watch once.

P.S:- My heart skipped a few beats when Kriti Sanon asked "Am I hot?"

Yes she is.

5 DAYS ALONE

As you simplify your life the laws of the universe will be simpler, solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness - See more at: http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/how-does-one-live-simply-according-thoreau-388568#sthash.VyLaD3ck.dpuf

As you simplify your life the laws of the universe will be simpler, solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness - See more at: http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/how-does-one-live-simply-according-thoreau-388568#sthash.VyLaD3ck.dpuf

As you simplify your life the laws of the universe will be simpler, solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness - See more at: http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/how-does-one-live-simply-according-thoreau-388568#sthash.VyLaD3ck.dpuf

As you simplify yourself, the laws of the universe will become simpler-Henry David Thoreau

Having spent the whole year in front of the computer in the office, I sensed that my soul or a certain filament sprung from its consciousness which used to be so full of life and activity, is now on its death bed. Regions of my inner world that I used to explore so often, have turned barren and life less. But it's not before I found the medicine did I recognize that I have a disease. I took an annual break from the office and traveled to my hometown Amalapuram, just to see my family. And there, after being forced to cut off from my role as a member of the society temporarily (AIRCEL 3G service is not there in my village. So I have to spend a lot of time without browsing internet in my I phone), did it occurred to my senses that a part of myself which I left back there in my hometown  has become a stranger to myself. As I walked through the garden where I used to sit and write my poems and songs, where I used to sit and ponder over the mysteries and meaning of life, where I used to have my morning coffee brooding over thoughts that teased me, I felt like a soldier who has returned from war and saw his son grown up but his son being not very eager to come and hug him.  That "me" which I so loved and disliked to depart from, ceased to be me.

What defines a man? Is it what he is when he is alone? Or how he behaves with society?
I tried to remind myself what I am when I am alone. Having been cut off from the internet and the city where I have spent a year wading through the rubbish the stupids of the world spoke, where I helplessly had to nod my head to lines these morons recite so excitingly, where I am robbed of my time even to chuckle at how stubbornly dumb the people of today's world are, I plunged into solitude like an athletic swimmer eager for his medal.

 As I flipped through each page of my mind, the society around me faded away and reality has extended her arms calling me to her embrace. Its then that my ears could hear the sounds the frogs are making and my eyes are opened to watch the leisureness with which the cats are walking around.

 There is an astonishing calm, a surprising soothing power and a pungent unorthodoxy in the stimuli that the wilderness of nature provide to a man attentive enough to hear what she has to say. Do we ever feel our consciousness more intensely when we are acting as a member of society than when we identify ourselves at the feet of nature, paying attention to what she is revealing? What can the sound a coconut flower makes falling to the ground has to do with who you are?  How can you know that without bending over, picking it up and marvel at the little wonder it represents? A filament of the universal consciousness, falling back to the ground having had its time. Does death sound like a tragedy to you then?

The garden lizard chasing an insect and eating it mercilessly, has to say what nature expects you to understand. That you should zoom out, far away into the stars, so that you can see the wide horizon over which all this makes sense. Or that this might be one of the illusions you are tempted to believe to be true, in your futile attempts trying to draw a circle on the ground to fit this earth. Why should we get drawn away by the interpretations when nature has its own crude and its own way of expression? Are you and me just filaments of the collective consciousness that popped up into reality to witness itself? Why should we call the Fire or the Sun as Gods when they are just a part of him? Why build temples to what you cannot see when you can get the divine revelation on the lap of the mother nature? Why would you chase God when he talks to you through a mustard seed sprouting out of the ground?

To plant yourself among men and to count yourself to be nothing more than a constituent of this world is to do yourself the greatest harm.

When man runs into society, into things that influence him, into things that make it look obvious to adapt, into things that turn his sight from his soul to outside happenings, first the petals of his soul are torn off. When he sacrifices his drive to the norms of the society, when his reality becomes the collective or dominant opinion of the society, when his will is not a bud that protrudes from his inside but rather a colored pot that follows the design of his fellows, it is too hard to imagine even a slice of his soul alive enough to hold one last breath. He is himself no more. He no longer knows what he wants, he no longer carries the question. He can no longer look into light. He runs from shadow to shadow.

It is important for us to return to our inner wilderness, our original weirdness, our natural drives. Not that we should be monsters in the society, but that we shouldn't be machines in the world. Is it a wonder that you are no longer interested in yourself? No. because you are running away from yourself. You are squeezing the very neck of your calling. You are torn off by your own greed. You are annihilated by your own vain attempts at imitating others. You assasinated yourself.

Return to yourself. And its possible only through solitude.

Having refreshed myself, I am ready for another year of fight in this world, this time without running away from myself. I mastered the art of embracing myself. Why would I need a friend?