Eradondla Mooru
Kannada (U/A), Director: Kumar Datt
Cast: Chandan Kumar, Shwetha Pandit, Shobitha
Bold and banal. Daring and different. Interesting, yet inhibitive. Debutant director Kumar Datt’s Eradondla Mooru is a heart-warming experiment bringing newness to narration.
However, one feels let down by Datt not willing to push the envelope to make his romance saga delectable and subtle. Further, what’s irksome is Datt takes recourse to crony and crass dialogues to drive home his homily.
Datt’s Eradondla Mooru is about Prem’s unflagging love for Preethi. She is already betrothed to a foreigner. Told in a non-linear fashion, Eradondla Mooru is not everybody’s idea of entertainment.
Stitching into his narrative, Datt brings in triangular element through Sneha, a playwright, bent on dissuading Prem from pursuing Preethi, her friend. Preethi, incidentally is Prem’s neighbour. Blind (a fact Prem is unaware of) and is a music teacher. The entire drama takes the form of road trip to Sagar en route to which Sneha makes out a case as to why Prem should forget Preethi.
Eradondla Mooru is also a play Sneha is penning with the help of her mentor Poornachandra Tejaswi.
While for the ordinary, uninitiated audience, the film may be inhibiting to understand and appreciate, Eradondla Mooru makes for interesting watch. Apart from Datt’s bold direction, cinematographer Naveen Kumar’s picturesque photography, A M Neel’s music score which boasts of a Sufi number by Khailash Kher and classical one by Sangeetha Katti, makes Eradondla Mooru pleasurable, but a tough watch. While Datt may have not got his cinematic arithmetic right (as claimed by the film’s tagline – Lekka full Pakka), still Eradondla Mooru should be visited and its inherent pitpalls glossed over, and its integrity to tread a different trail, appreciated.