The good and bad of Navarasa!

Bharath Vijayakumar

Taken as a whole, Navarasa turns out to be a disappointing fare, as you might probably feel 'exhausted' more than anything else if you catch all the films in one go. But if you do watch them in isolation, you probably get a better picture of the merits and demerits of each one. Even then, the ones that don't work surely outnumber those that work. The major issue with Navarasa is that the primary idea to create nine films with each one showcasing one emotion (or with each one based on one emotion) hasn't borne fruit. This is simply because with the exception of Payasam, if you watch any of the remaining films without an idea of their titles, you would find it difficult to map each one to the correct emotion that the makers had based their films on. It is not as though the remaining films do not evoke any kind of emotion but the core theme (or emotion) doesn't shine through very clearly.

Vasanth's Payasam is the best of the lot and works as a whole. Arvind Swamy's Roudhram comes second. Karthik Subbaraj's Peace and Rathindran's Inmai may not work entirely but are interesting. Karthik Naren's Project Agni should be the crowd favorite as it is a thriller. Edhiri is technically well made but the emotions hardly work. Summer of 92 doesn't evoke laughter that it ought to have while Thunintha Pin is all over the place. Guitar Kambi Mele Nindru might connect with a few but for most or at least for me it turned out to be an unintentional comedy (The Tamil subtitles contribute greatly to the fun).

For a project of this scale, the quality of hard coded Tamil subtitles is extremely disappointing. You simply cannot ignore this fact in Project Agni and Guitar Kambi Mele Nindru, two segments that predominantly have English conversations. It might be laughable but it only shows the kind of importance that has been given to a language, the speakers of which are the primary audience for this film. I am not talking about the usage of English conversations but only about the quality of Tamil subtitles.

In Guitar Kambi Mele Nindru,

Surya is singing for the audience at an event and they sing along. He says , "Let's do the 'Oh' Now" and the subtitles read "Ippo oru 'O' seyyalam". In another scene Surya says "Come on" as a retort and the subtitles read "Vaa". In another instance Pragaya says "Yes!!!" as a sign of being excited and the subtitles read "Aama".

In Project Agni,

Prasanna tells Arvind Swamy to "Go On" as in to continue whatever he was explaining. The Tamil subtitle for this reads as "Mele Po".

If you know English, these subtitles are irritating and if you do not know English, these subtitles are misleading. Why even bother doing it then?