Sri Muni’s Lanka (2017) Movie Review

Starcast: Raasi, Sai Ronak, Ena Saha, Satyam Rajesh, Supreeth, Shiju, Satya Akkala and Sudhershan
Music Composed by Saicharan Pakala
Cinematography by V Ravikumar
Directed by Sri Muni (Aka. S S Nivas)

A small subset of the thriller genre has been receiving a lot of critical praise recently and it’s made up of psychological disorders. 2015’s Nenokkadine, a man suffering from integrated disorder and in search for his parents, is probably the most famous of the recent bunch.

Lanka by Sri Muni (Husband of actress Raasi) is 2017’s entrant to this subset after Ashok’s Chitrangadha. A single mother Rebecca Williams (Raasi), plagued by the violent suicide of her husband and brutal murder of kids. Slowly, she develops a skill to control and undergo schizophrenia with Telepathy, in which she can imagine and stay with her kids. (DARK Right!) At this time, ‘National Award’ Winning actress Swathi (Ena Saha) enters into her life as a girl, who needs affection and process to get over Monophobic fears. As she starts understanding Swathi with her Telepathic powers, she starts understanding the past trembling of Swathi due to a trafficker, Sharath (Sijju).

The story of the movie had an interesting concept of Telepathy. The theory that talks about brain power and the wonders you can do with that. The major issue here is the concept does not support the simplistic narration. You need to be as creative as possible with the sequences and let them sync into the audience with each scenes building to the next level of complexity. But the narration tries to induce as much high concept-ive elements that doesn’t completely make enough practical sense but theoretically they’re brilliant and feasible too. Can you believe that without trying to talk you can communicate your thought to another person? That’s what Telepathy suggests and boldly predicts that it is best way of communicating once grief and emotions. Such unique and high concept needs lot more understanding.

Director Sri Muni being a writer addresses complex problems like Monophobia and brings out perfect sync between lonely persons fearful dreams and actuality. After this he even tries to use mythology by creating characters that follow a path as well. What if Rama committed suicide instead of Seetha that their happy life has been disrupted? What if Seetha who in forced Vanaprastha lives with her kids, has to create an image of them like how Rama did before finally meeting Lava Kusa? These are thoughts that the director tries to imbibe in the narration. In Ramayana, Hanuman is the helper and Lakshman becomes the prodigal son of Rama. Similarly in this movie, young short filmmaker becomes Hanuman and actress Swathi becomes prodigal daughter of modern Seetha, Rebecca. Well, one tend to not look at the story in that way as the execution falters with heavy cleavage shots. Had director brought in the narrator in him to the forefront and skipped the unnecessary elements, he seriously could have delivered a memorable film for the concepts he touched.

When it comes to technical support director failed assemble right crew for the movie. He brought in Sri Charan Pakala for music and Ravi Kumar for Camera. Both did not rise up to his expectations and he had to face the brunt. Raasi does a good job bringing all her experience into play. But she is deprived of the pleasure to enjoy the fruits of her hard work as the script fails her. Ena Saha does ok in few scenes and in others she appears to be a doll. Sai Ronak and others doesn’t even do a job worth mentioning …

When we talk about a film that promises you a new concept but delivers none in the form of execution it makes you cringe about the lack of respect towards the idea and audience. In a mythological undertone the director definitely used Lanka as the title and tried to justify it by metaphorically suggesting today Rama can only be found in a Seetha and Ravanna is going after 100’s of women, in this case precisely 12 Seetha‘s and one Vaidehi comes to burn down his deserted lanka and knock out his asbestos Ashoka Vanam. But we miss the emotional core that drives this Vaidehi to rescue them. That’s where writing falters and writer descends his high concepts to a ridiculous low that we laugh at his amateurishness and feel for his idea for dying such a premature death. All-in-all director needed to maintain a consistency in his story telling but failed miserably. Just for his thought process that was able to conceive and convince with such an out of box thought you can watch this movie.

Survi Review : 2/5