Siva Nirvana’s Ninnu Kori (2017) Movie Review

Movie Review: Ninnu Kori
Star Cast: Nani, Nivetha Thomas, Aadhi, Prudhvi, Sudhershan, Murali Sharma and Vidyulekkha
Music Composed by Gopi Sundar
Cinematography by Karthik Ghattamaneni
Directed by Shiva Nirvana

Censor Certificate: U & Runtime: 136.26 Minutes

Ninnu Kori is one such preachy love story that tries to talk about maturity and depths of love. But the movie fails to have a proper beginning or ending. Before talking about how the movie is in detail, I would like to dwell into the important aspects of film-making. If you go into the past, EVV in a loud tone, K.Vishwanath, Mani Ratnam with delightful undertones said the same thing about Love Before Marriage and After Marriage.

Here, Pallavi (Nivetha) tries to sync into the melody of Uma (Naveen Babu Ghanta) but as the tune remains a hum due to her own decision she has to end up singing full song including Pallavi and Charanalu with Arun (Aadhi). As the humm lies wasted she and Arun try to help it to reach another song.

The story of the movie deals with a man losing his job due to his past depression. But the movie needed to have an emotional ride that will also help us look at our relationships and reflect on our choices. When Mani Ratnam said there is love after marriage, we connected with the journey of the girl who had to cope up with fish out of the water situation literally and metaphorically as well. When K. Viswanath talked about Love and how good or bad it is for a woman who is already in love to marry another person. Then another version of this sort of love story has been said not once but four times by EVV making Kanyadanam, Tali and two more. If you remember Karthik’s Abhinandana, there the characters run on a grey line and we tend to understand how human they are. But here one feels Arun is an god particle, but not a human. Such an old story by a debutante with Naveen Babu Ghanta is something that we won’t expect from the actor. But when he endorses someone as a talent we got accustomed to find him or her promising. But Shiva fails to even create an ambience that we can enjoy.

In the entire situation, Pallavi and Arun characters needed to have a journey but the movie fails to give them a good enough journey. Well any character in a love story, needs to travel from start to end serving a purpose, that is, proving their love or sacrificing their love in a generic fashion. But here the progression is forced. Out of three strong characters we need at least two characters to have a satisfying journey realising some thing. Rather than that film doesn’t have any free flow helping Pallavi or Uma to realise their mistakes. Even Arun fails to impress us because of his monotonic characterisation. Uma should have been asking questions like Karthik from Abhinandana. But he doesn’t. Pallavi should be at cross roads to accept marriage over her love like Revathi from Mouna Ragam. No hint at that. Shiva all of a sudden tries to make every character realise love for someone, and the depths of it by a convoluted pre-climax. Trust in any relationship is must and how deep it is needed to have a lot more organic discussion than the way the film ended. Like this there are many opportunities that Shiva miss to creating a Uma-centric film.

One might be thinking it is all old school and this film might be new age. Emotions do not have an age and handling them should be different from earlier films to mesmerise an audience member. The movie falls into the traps of making a saleable film out of the point it had but the commercial elements like a fight and a song specially created did not effect, but definitely the story and screenplay have been commercialised to follow the saleable hero than concentrating on his journey to attain the ultimate goal, “Strength to get over his unrequited love“. (Strength and will power to accept life as it is over desires.) A “Could have been, should have been” thoughts hurt you for life but getting over them is not as easy like depicted in the movie (realising someone is good for each other and he should walk out from their lives). There should have been more concern about being a failure forever. None of those have been touched upon and we are left feeling no emotion in the end.

Naveen Babu Ghanta has been an actor to look forward to in his initial days and now, somehow he has been struck in the zone of being one dimensional actor. He should realise that his performances are becoming repetitive. He might be thinking that these films will help build a reputation as a box office hero but slowly he is creating an impression that Nani can only perform in certain roles and will be comfortable only in certain template movies. If he doesn’t break this norm, he will be jinxing his own well built career. Nivetha Thomas is the next Nithya Menon for our Telugu movies and the actress shows her prowess once again. Aadhi is underutilised in the movie.

Karthik Ghattamaneni impresses with his camera and gives an overall tone to the movie, but he and the upcoming directors should be able to learn camera language from the audience point of view as well. There is a difference between “a great shot” and a “meaningful one”. A meaningful shot is something like last shot of Nani, and the great one is a drone flying over a mountain, while an actor is trying to think about his last love. In the first case, we feel the emotion, in the second case we just enjoy the shot. Kona Venkat and his screenplays are getting too repetitive. Gopi Sundar proves his mettle in BGM and songs, once again.

The movie is nothing but an extension of Abhinandana which fails to understand the deep rooted complex emotions that the “old movie” understood well enough. Here the movie just goes like a flat line and even it tries to drag on the fun jokes and satires further till they irritate us. On the whole the movie is another film in Nani’s career that will remain another template movie of a star that could have been better.