Navarasa – Adbhutha review

Project Agni is the name of the short film made as part of the Navarasa Anthology season 1, depicting Adbhutha (Wonderment). Of the 9 stories, this one is the best fitment to the theme alongside Bhibatsa (Payasam - directed by Vasanth sai). True to its rasa, the story has sensational reveal and leaves you awestruck with the twist at the end. And the other noteworthy part being, true to OTT cult-ure, this deals with hard core sci-fi thriller genre and sticks to its gun when it comes to detailing and explaining. In fact 90% of the dialogues in the supposedly tamil story are in American English. For a change was wondering if the episode will have subtitles in tamil for the English dialogues!! That was the sore point which didn’t stick for it felt like a bad caricature of an American sci-fi in tanglish. That apart, the concept and execution where simply brilliant. It does share common inspiration with “Dark” web series in Netflix that deals with similar topic – where in people go back and forth in time. Influencing events of their future, present and past because of their known and unknown actions while in transit. The story begins with Arvind swami (on a role that almost sounds tailor made for him) calling up his ISRO friend (Prasanna) to discuss about a solution he has formulated. He makes him come all the way from Bangalore to Chennai to visit him in person. He slowly delves into the topic, warming him up to the reason why he was made to travel, by quoting about 2012 doomsday and how the prediction could’ve been true and happened already. He gives justifications about subconscious and conscious mind and all of a sudden there are 2 pairs of Arvind and Prasanna. Then he goes on to explain about power of sub conscious and how the lives that we are leading could very well be the result of a very large complex computer program like Matrix. He also reveals shockingly about how some unknown actions of him, while experimenting his theory, had resulted in wiping out the existence of his wife and daughter from his life. He also explains about how his assistant helped him and why he chased him away. He finally concludes that this solution is a potential weapon on the hands of wrong people and urges his friend to take it away with him. After Prasanna leaves with the box containing the solution, Arvind takes out his gun to shoot himself when he hears the door bell ring. He is shocked to see Prasanna standing on his door step along with his girlfriend who are surprised to see the look on Arvind’s place. He slowly realizes what has happened and the end credits roll up. Right from the character naming, everything is fancy in this story. Arvind is named Vishnu, Prasanna is Krishna while the assistant is Kalki. Each character does the role as named appropriate. For all those who crib about lack of sci-fi stories in tamil, this is right up there. And you really do are wonder struck at the end. Kudos to the director on such plush making and on the novel story line.