Bala Koteswara Rao (Ashish Gandhi) is a lungi-clad drunk who lives in the village of Chintalapudi. He falls in love with Parvati (Ashima Narwal) the minute he sees her. She seems to reciprocate his love but who is she and how come he has never seen her in the village before?
Natakam Review: Natakam is a film that is hard to like, seeing as how it takes forever to establish the reason why the story has any of the elements it does. Koti, the protagonist of this tale, grows up without a mother with just his equally drunk father for company. When in a cringe-worthy scene, it's revealed that he has a step-mother and a half-sister; it takes him a while to warm up to them. He even behaves brutishly with both women at first and sees no point in his sister even finishing her degree. But of course, he soon sees the error of his ways and begins loving his stepmom like his own.
It however takes him absolutely no time to fall in love with a random stranger he happens to see walking by, named Parvati. Why Parvati too reciprocates his love immediately and seems more than willing to be a part of his life is a mystery that's solved at the end. But does Natakam make you care enough about Koti and Parvati to be surprised or distraught when the 'twist' of the tale comes through? It does not. What it does do instead is string together seemingly random sequences to form a film riddled with plot holes.
Koti seems to suffer from a massive god complex and be the saviour of everyone in the village despite his brutish nature, and it's a point that's driven home time and again throughout the film. When a few girls from the village don't return home from college, it doesn't occur to anyone to call the police or form a search party. They just wait around for them to return home. But of course, Koti is around to save the day, if only for his darling Parvati. The fact that his sister too travels to college and might not have returned home is something he doesn't seem to give a damn about.
On the other side of the tale is a track involving a Dandupalyam style gang who pillage people before killing them and the seemingly inefficient police trying to catch a hold of the gang. The manner in which the police zero down on the fact that the gang has fifteen members is so laugh-worthy; it would be funny if it weren't meant to be taken in a serious vein. What's also laugh-worthy is how long the film takes at making a point but makes it incredibly easy for Koti to kill all 15 of these 'deadly' killers in one go. A court scene involving the protagonist is another one that seems to exist to make a mockery of the judicial system.
With two stories like that in hand weaved into one, one would expect the film to get interesting at some point, moving beyond the superficial drama. But it does not, not even when a supernatural element is brought in. What the film also fails at is merging both its tracks seamlessly, leaving jagged holes open instead. Ashish Gandhi does his best to emote through his scraggly hair and beard, but his character Koti is a difficult one to connect with. Ashima just seems to exist to act as a catalyst to Koti's tale and does a fair enough job of playing the langa-voni clad damsel-in-distress. If only the duo had a better film to act in!
Natakam Review: Natakam is a film that is hard to like, seeing as how it takes forever to establish the reason why the story has any of the elements it does. Koti, the protagonist of this tale, grows up without a mother with just his equally drunk father for company. When in a cringe-worthy scene, it's revealed that he has a step-mother and a half-sister; it takes him a while to warm up to them. He even behaves brutishly with both women at first and sees no point in his sister even finishing her degree. But of course, he soon sees the error of his ways and begins loving his stepmom like his own.
It however takes him absolutely no time to fall in love with a random stranger he happens to see walking by, named Parvati. Why Parvati too reciprocates his love immediately and seems more than willing to be a part of his life is a mystery that's solved at the end. But does Natakam make you care enough about Koti and Parvati to be surprised or distraught when the 'twist' of the tale comes through? It does not. What it does do instead is string together seemingly random sequences to form a film riddled with plot holes.
Koti seems to suffer from a massive god complex and be the saviour of everyone in the village despite his brutish nature, and it's a point that's driven home time and again throughout the film. When a few girls from the village don't return home from college, it doesn't occur to anyone to call the police or form a search party. They just wait around for them to return home. But of course, Koti is around to save the day, if only for his darling Parvati. The fact that his sister too travels to college and might not have returned home is something he doesn't seem to give a damn about.
On the other side of the tale is a track involving a Dandupalyam style gang who pillage people before killing them and the seemingly inefficient police trying to catch a hold of the gang. The manner in which the police zero down on the fact that the gang has fifteen members is so laugh-worthy; it would be funny if it weren't meant to be taken in a serious vein. What's also laugh-worthy is how long the film takes at making a point but makes it incredibly easy for Koti to kill all 15 of these 'deadly' killers in one go. A court scene involving the protagonist is another one that seems to exist to make a mockery of the judicial system.
With two stories like that in hand weaved into one, one would expect the film to get interesting at some point, moving beyond the superficial drama. But it does not, not even when a supernatural element is brought in. What the film also fails at is merging both its tracks seamlessly, leaving jagged holes open instead. Ashish Gandhi does his best to emote through his scraggly hair and beard, but his character Koti is a difficult one to connect with. Ashima just seems to exist to act as a catalyst to Koti's tale and does a fair enough job of playing the langa-voni clad damsel-in-distress. If only the duo had a better film to act in!
