Karma: Movie Review

Cast: Sesh Adivi, Sher Ali, Jade Tailor, Bhanu Yanamandra, Rashmi Rustagi, Ria Cheruvu, Vijay Madabhushi, Sruthi Tiwari, etc.

Cinematography: James Laxton
Digital Intermediate: Amit Shetti
Aerial Cinematography: Tom Miller
Action Consultant: Sean Shah
Stunts: Cheyenne Hambey Background Score: Pete Wonder, Justin R. Darban
Music: Pete Wonder, Leland Thunes
Lyrics: Kavi 'Real'
Choreography: Desi Dreamz, Tatwa Dance Company
Art: Bhavani Adivi, Bhanu Yanamandra
Editing: Arjun Sastry, Harsh Singh
Producers: Bhavani Adivi, Sher Ali, Harsh Singh
Script, Screenplay, and Direction: Sesh Adivi
Date of Theatrical Release: November 26, 2010

Summary:
An off-beat, supernatural thriller set in the United States, with the story woven around the Hindu mythology.

What's it all about?
Padma (Jade Tailor) is an Indian American kid whose dad is killed right in front of the temple, by the temple's priest himself when the former questions the latter about misusing temple donations for drug peddling. Padma's mother (Bhanu Yanamandra) leaves the place, along with Padma, to settle in a remote city of Shamrock. While in her twenties, Padma loses her mother too. Her friend Raj (Sher Ali) expresses his love towards her but she doesn't reciprocate his feelings. Still, he remains a friend that she can turn to in an hour of need. Dev (Sesh Adivi) and Sumati (Rashmi Rustagi) come to visit Padma, as Sumati is a very close friend of Padma's mother. How did they know that Padma's mother passed away despite the fact that Padma lives in isolation and no one relayed the news in India? That's only the first question of surprise to Padma. Dev simply says he just "knows" certain things before they happen. Padma is strangely drawn towards Dev, and as Dev and Padma get closer, Padma learns more and more... Why did Dev come? Does he really have supernatural powers of some kind? Can Raj win over Padma?

Performances
Cast:
Sesh Adivi has a good screen presence and a deeply expressive face that suits the character well. His emotional performance is occasionally overboard, but he has ease in his acting and his diction is good. Jade Tailor (voice dubbed by Lakshmi Katyayani), being an American by birth, does not seem totally out of place in the role of an Indian-American. Her performance too goes overboard in a couple of emotional scenes but she gave a controlled performance for most part. It's a commendable effort for a non-Indian artiste to walk and talk like an Indian, and Jade does it all very well. Sher Ali gets an important role, which he performs with ease. His expressions are good; he vaguely resembles Prabhas in some scenes. Ria Cheruvu as Padma at an age of five has a short role that she does with ease. Bhanu Yanamandra, a classical dancer by profession, has an expressive face and a lively smile. Rashmi Rustagi was adequate in the short role she had. All artistes are new to the Telugu screen but the inexperience is by far limited due to individual efforts by each artiste and possibly also due to the production/direction team. Americans appeared in some roles too but none major.

Technical Departments:
The story is said to have been inspired by a personal experience of the male lead/writer-director, Sesh Adivi. While his near-death car accident in 2007 may have stirred the thoughts about the plot, the film is not really about the accident or the experience itself - it's just a trigger of thoughts, apparently. The film's story stems out of Hindu mythology (which incidentally resembles a part of the Revelations in the Bible, too), and philosophy. While such an attempt should be commended, the actual details seem to be rushed into the story's climax and the rest of the film has a relaxed pace until it gets to the climax. While appreciating the writer-director for coming up with an offbeat theme of this sort, one cannot but have several questions about logic and justification. Not presenting any direct spoilers, for instance, why is Dev's purpose of life centered so much on Padma? Shouldn't the climax action sequences be much large-scale according to the theme? - these are some questions that definitely come into the mind of the audience. A justification to the film's title as well as the theme also suffered due to a screenplay that centers around the characters of Dev and Padma alone. (When a film is a supernatural thriller, how much does karma really come into play?)

There are a lot of commendable aspects with this film, nonetheless! First and foremost comes the cinematography (with a Red One system, using it the second time for an entire film in Telugu - after Kamal-Venkatesh's Eenadu) - beautiful locales were chosen and the cinematography really brings them out appreciably; it seems like there are too many closeup shots but good lighting scheme and color grading make the film pleasant to watch. The production team's complete faith in the project is reflected in the fact that this film is the first Telugu film to be shot completely in the USA and even have its songs recorded outside India. Yet, there's no compromise in Telugu. If not for the moviemakers' passion, one cannot expect a totally chaste Telugu dialogues (at a level that's definitely not seen in Telugu films of today) in such a film! This film is also the first in Telugu to have "naturally translated" English subtitles all through the film; a few scenes had English dialogues, but only one such scene had Telugu subtitles. Still, the care taken is apparent in showing even numbers in both English and Telugu! Such a purely Telugu dialogue might make some feel artificial but that's only an indication of how much we corrupted our own language in daily life with liberal usage of English. The background score and the songs ( lyrics included) were all done by non-Indians, probably for the first time in a Telugu film, but thanks to all the care taken, the audience get a novel feeling but not feel foreign about the music. The art department should be commended for its contribution to the good feel of the film. Editing could have been crispier; a tighter screenplay with good editing could have unveiled the theme much better.

Bottom Line:
Karma, which is clearly an off-beat film in its cast, crew, making style, and theme, could disappoint a regular commercial audience. Even for an off-beat audience, it may feel like a plot that's not completely developed. However, if off-beat films made with decent performances and good technical crew is something you can take, watch it anyway and you might even like the boldness and sincerity of the team.