Solo Movie Review: An experimentation which may only cater a section of the audience
Dulquer Salmaan starrer Solo, written and directed by popular director Bejoy Nambiar, has been finally hit the big screens. Bejoy who had directed movies in Hindi and Tamil till now is making his debut here in Malayalam with this bilingual movie named Solo. Solo has been made both in Tamil and Malayalam languages and it is an anthology movie as well. This flick tells us 4 different stories and Dulquer Salmaan plays the lead in all those 4 stories. This movie has been bankrolled by Abbam Movies and Bejoy Nambiar’s Get Away films together.
The 4 stories in this movie revolve around four elements of nature. Wind, fire, water, and earth are those elements around which the 4 stories have been set. Dulquar plays 4 different characters which represent the nature of these elements and it also represents the 4 different moods of Lord Shiva. He plays the characters named Shekhar, Trilok, Shiva and Rudra representing water, wind, fire, and earth. All these four stories deal with love, revenge, rage etc that happens in the life of the lead characters played by Dulquer Salmaan.
First of all, we have to say that it is an experimental kind of movie and Bejoy Nambiar had presented it in a novel manner. He tells the story of Shekhar first, then comes Trilok, Shiva, and Rudra. The story of Shekhar begins in an interesting manner and it will satisfy the fans of Dulquer Salmaan. But when it moved forward, it lost its pace and that had pulled down the film from its smooth flow which it got at the start. Then came the story of Trilok, which is the best among the 4 stories. It had great punch, a tight screenplay and some interesting twists in the tale as well. With these two stories, the first half concluded and it ended on a high note as the story of Trilok was accepted by the audience with applause.
But the second half was indeed a let -down. The third story was the story of Shiva. Even though it was intense and a well shot one, the complexity of the plot or the depth in its plot confused the audience and there was a total lag in this portion as Dulquer Salmaan had no dialogue at all in this story. The last one was the story of Rudra, which was indeed a complete flop show. The climax portion was ridiculous and the screenplay was shabby here. Even the dialogues were quite artificial. Director failed to explain the connection between these stories to the common people and that itself tested the patience of the viewers.
The performance of Dulquer Salmaan was the high point in this movie and he had delivered a terrific performance as Shekhar, Trilok, Shiva, and Rudra. His body language has been different for each of those characters and he really showed his versatility as an actor here. Female lead roles were played by Dhansika, Aarthi Venkatesh, Sruthi Hariharan and Neha Sharma. Only Dhansika got something to do in it and other did not have any scope in it and they did not have much screen space as well. The film had got a sterling star cast. Soubin Shahir, Sathish, Sidharth Menon, John Vijay, Anson Paul, Renji Panicker, Ann Augustine, Manoj K Jayan, Dinesh Prabhakar, Prakash Belawadi, Dino Morea, Nassar, Suhasini etc were in this movie and even though they did not have much screen space in it, they played their characters very well.
DOP has been brilliant and the visuals have been given by Sejal Sha, Madhu Neelakandan, and Gireesh Gangadharan. Music was tuned by Prashant Pillai, Soorej S Kuruppu along with some other popular music bands. Songs were good and background scoring also has done decently. Sreekar Prasad was the editor and he too did a fine job even though the narration of the stories were in a slow pace.
In total, Solo is a one-time watchable cinematic experience for those who love experimental movies. If you go without the burden of expectations, which the big names associated with this movie give you, then it may not disappoint you.
