Sasikiran Narayana’s Saheba Subramanyam (2014) Movie Review

The film opens with a flashback with two little boys Subbu and his friend standing at the Bheemili Beach. Subbu sees a Musilm girl, who he finds to be very attractive. He prays to God to get her as his wife in the future. Scene shifts to the present where Subbu (Dileep Kumar), who hails from a middle class Hindu Nair family, is in police lock up. He has been nabbed for intruding the property of a rich and influential Muslim industrialist called Khader. Realizing that he went there to meet Ayesha (Priyal Gor), the politician’s niece with whom he’s madly in love, Sub-inspector Kirshna Manohar (Rao Ramesh) and his men request him to tell his love story.

 Debutant Dileep Kumar is middling and does whatever justice can be done to the dreadful lines given to him. He needs to work on his histrionics’ before he signs his next project. You actually feel badly for than director seeing his acting skills in the film. While Televison artist Priyal Gor is certainly not the angel to stick around, she has a certain sonsie appeal. Her costumes were outright beautiful. Her performance is obviously not the best, but the lady’s skills are improving gradually. Its not good enough if you have individual with all right performances. A couple has to have chemistry. Now screen chemistry is an abstract term. But we think it can be described as a failure when you understand the feel between Boy and Girl, but you don’t feel it. You can see they are trying to be romantic bit it doesn’t strike a chord. Again I think the actors cannot be held entirely responsible here. Yet again

Rao Ramesh is fine but he s only there in the first half and in few parts of second, taking a long leaves inbetween. Raghavendra, hero’s friend is the best performed among the league actors in the film. He gets the major lines and those scenes works in parts. Cameo’s by Senior Naresh and Naagineedu are okay. Actors Kondavalasa, Giri and Polu Srikanth had given a promising performance in a short role.

Saheba Subrahmanyam is a remake of Malayalam hit Thattatthin Marayathu. The storyline of the film is okay about Subbu aka. Subrahmanyam a Hindu, who is in love with Ayesha a Muslim girl and how the society plays a big role in their destiny in the backdrop of Bheemili. Though the plot being a banal repetition of the inter-religious romance and associated issues. What worked in Malayalam were the fresh narration, lead pair chemistry and nativity. That what misses here and the script by young director herself fails. Many dialogues that were supposed to be romantic seemed to be mellow and dramatic. No denial that there was a good deal of scope for the director to generate the feel in this romantic entertainer. But the writing is severely at fault for the lack of emotions as the story progresses. Also the characters are not baked well enough. Dileep character is the sketchiest. While, he is shown as an innocent and risk taker, which didn’t fit too well. Same with Priyal Gor, you don’t understand her or her motives.

The best parts about the movie are Cinematography and Music by Shaan Rahman. The film would have been an utterly boring stuff had there not been the cinematography (by Sai Prakash Ummadisingu) and the songs. The frame, pace, and the lighting through out the movie is awesome. And there nothing much to be said about the songs as they already topped the charts in both the industries, but still the bgm also needs a special mentioning. Dialogues in the film by Bobby – Kittu are straight transitions and they fail to bring the much needed feel in the film. Editing (by Praveen Pudi) of the film is okay. The production values of Indo English Productions are good.

Malayalam version of Saheba Subrahmanyam was beautifully shot film which was cleverly managed to hold inside much aggressive communal thoughts which were more or less goes against the minority community in the name of True Love. However, as pointed earlier, the remake lacks the soul of the original. To sum the things up, let’s just say it more like watching a one sided match, which doesn’t hold interest for anyone.

Survi Review: 2/5