AWE

Awe – Complex storytelling guided with light-hearted notes.

  

Release - 2018

Starring - Kajal Agarwal, Nithya Menen, Regina Cassandra, Eesha Rebba, Srinivas Avasarala,                       Priyadarshi, Murali Sharma and others.

Director: Prashanth Varma

Featured song: Theme Of Awe (From "Awe")

Producers: Nani, Prashanti Tipirneni

Languages: Telugu, Hindi 

Available on - Netflix.

Awe, in a nutshell, is about the discrete storylines, their premise and backdrop and how these storylines form a connect to shine on some of the social, public problems we humans face in the society. Anything more than this becomes a major spoiler. The characters in these storylines and their character arcs which get influenced by very strange and out of the blue factors are what, that makes this movie a fresh and new endeavour.

                                                                                             Awe is a rare feat in Indian cinema with the way the story is dealt with and conveyed through the character. The encouragement given for this movie by the movie industry and the production house Wall Poster Cinemas gives some positive sign and respect for the industry. The movie has its writing hit on the right notes The writing has this quirky way of posing their characters in a novel and cartoonish way, thereby creating a very fun colourful space. This posing gives the feel of showing the basic caricatures of human traits like jealousy, love, fear etc. It uses this portrayal for doing away with the cliches and as an ironic premise to convey the deep, dark truths of humans. The story also covers broadly, the entire spectrum of genres. Be it comedy, romance, thriller, drama etc. and it perfectly strikes a balance between all of them, by doing justice to each genre, by filling it with fully graphed characters and a healthy premise for the audience to get their eyes on. Mostly, all the genres farewell and are entertaining. The director has successfully taken this story from papers to the screen without any much deviations and confusions in the plot. Thereby, sticks to the script and gives a satisfactory result. The screenplay plays a vital role as this movie majorly plays on the twists and the gripping narrative, the twists and turns of the story are placed at the right time and in right amounts.
    The movie has some clean cinematography and editing. The production and set design is a big plus, as they create a palette of colours which abstractly act as a background to justify the character and plot nature. The movie has some good casting, as some prominent and also upcoming actors have been roped in for the movie to play a versatile and ensemble role, challenging at times. This makes the roles pretty impressive and interesting to watch as they greatly pull off them. The fact that these prominent people have come forward to play as leads for this small movie, to make it possible, is a thing to be proud of. The music and background score is good. Especially the theme song is very well written and very tactfully opens upon the gritty, inhuman prejudices being faced
                                                  The movie has some patches though, it feels a bit dragging and repetitive due to some comedy episodes prolonging more than required, there is also a predictable nature for the storylines, as the audience will get used to the pattern in which each storyline is proceeding and can roughly guess the forthcoming. The dialogues are plain and have some subtlety, but could've been more expressive and open, as the aspects movie deals with are some very strong messages. 
    All in all, the real hero of the movie is writing, which makes the movie very new and intriguing in terms of delivering its points in a very entertaining manner  and it is on this factor that other aspects have banked upon well and creatively used it, to create an apt space for the movie to run.