Solo (2017)

Director: Bejoy Nambiar
Writer: Bejoy Nambiar, Dhanya Suresh
DOP: Girish Gangadharan, Madhu Neelakandan, Sejal Shah
Cast: Dulquer Salman, Sai Dhansika, Neha Sharma, Anson Paul
Language: Malayalam, Tamil

Solo is an anthology film of four shorts all directed by Bejoy Nambiar and all staring Dulquer Salman. Four of the characters he plays are named after four names of Lord Shiva and each story starts off with a very cool graphic portrait of Shiva representing four of the five elements- water, air, fire and earth.  All four stories span over four years and thus incorporating the fifth element- time.

'Kerala Cafe', which came during the early part of Malayalam new wave, was an anthology film which earned rave reviews but wasn't a success at the box office. 'Anju Sundarikal' was another one that came out and both these had different directors doing each of the shorts. They've not been a success at box office and like most anthologies, some of the stories work very well and some are a miss. Since each shorts are smaller in length, it can tide over the ones which don't work. Each shorts in Solo are in excess of forty minutes and that puts a great amount of risk if any of the stories don't work out for its audience.

Coming to the individual stories, I thought the first two were quite alright without being impressive (Shekhar, Trilok) while the third one (Shiva) surprisingly enough was the crappiest while it had the best teaser and background score. At this point,I was quite underwhelmed by the whole experience but the last one, Rudra, redeemed it for me as it doesn't take itself too seriously unlike the other three. A common thread running through each story are the minor twists. First two are very guessable as enough hints are given while the third short is so bad that I wasn't even bothering about it. The last one had the most audacious one which has garnered such a backlash from audience to the point that the makers have tweaked it to remove the twist altogether. Glad that I saw it first day itself before the sissy bunch had its say. It is not like something like that have never been tried before in Malayalam cinema. Jaagratha comes to mind.

I'm not well-versed with the tenets of Hindu religion to catch nuances that could be possibly there. The four stories are about love, revenge, death and fuck knows what, in that order. As far as I know, Shiva was the local God here before the Aryans came here with their Vedic shindig. There was this Vishnu Vs Shiva conflict among the followers before Shiva was also coopted to the Vedic story. Anyway, the film had a very savarna Brahmanic slant to things when you consider the three weddings in it and also the fight scene. Don't know if it is a conscious decision from the director or to do with the fact that he is sort of an outsider to Malayalam despite being a Malayalee.

Overall it is a decent enough watch with the expected level of technical excellence and solid background score. First weekend collection should be enough for it to break even and that is quite something for such an experimental undertaking.

Rating: 3/5 (On the basis of original Rudra climax)