A mall is attacked by terrorists, there is a power shutdown and Apoorva, a 19-year-old girl, and Rajashekhar, a 61-year-old man, are stuck in an elevator in the mall.
‘Is this punishment or imprisonment?’ Apoorva asks Rajashekhar a few hours later. The audience found themselves chuckling at this dialogue for they shared Apoorva’s sentiments of being punished and imprisoned as they watched Ravichandran’s latest film, Apoorva.
For the first 20 minutes of the film, nothing happens. Ravichandran as Rajashekhar is still telling us that he has a story to tell us. He keeps repeating ‘Apoorva, I love you’.
We have no idea who Rajashekar or Apoorva is at this point and the screen is filled with random theories about life. ‘Life is a Sin-ema, I dare you to watch it’ floats on the screen. This is followed by ‘Life is a fact’ and then the letter ‘f’disappears and ‘Life is an act’ remains. Unfortunately, this continues until the end of the film. ‘Life is censored, unsensored’, ‘Life is a shameless journey and love is an aimless journey’ are among some of the other gems that adorn the screen.
But where is the story and can it begin already?
Apoorva is supposed to be a love story between an older man and a younger woman, in this case 61 and 19 respectively (the filmmaker even goes to the extent of calling it ‘a 1961 love story’). The premise of this supposed story is not new at all for we have seen it in films such as Ram Gopal Varma’s Nishabd and Anant Balani’s Joggers Park . So, when it finally began, one was curious to see how Ravichandran would tell or as he mentions in the opening credits, ‘design’ this story.
But there isn’t a story at all. The film is simply this: a chance encounter in the lift, they exchange a few questions and answers about life, death, its meaning and objectives and a few hours later, Apoorva professes her love for Rajashekhar and he reciprocates.
Has she fallen in love because she is possibly on the brink of death (read: terrorist attack), asks Rajashekhar. Apoorva’s ‘logic’ is that if she is going to die anyway, then why not fall in love, as if it is something that can be enacted at will.
However, she forgets all of this when they are rescued eventually a few hours later. As Rajashekar revels in his new-found love interest, Apoorva introduces him to her boyfriend Akshay. She tells Akshay that Rajashekar is her uncle. What a heartbroken Rajashekhar does after this revelation forms the rest of the film.
Apoorva , under the guise of being a ‘different’ film, doesn’t manage to engage its audience. Apart from the fact that the ‘love story’ itself is unconvincing, the barrage of sermons on life on black screen inserts/intertitles every two seconds are aggravating. Repeated shots of the close-up of eyes, hair flying followed by more close-ups and hair flying don’t make things better, either.
The debutante Apoorva can barely act. Sudeep and Ravishankar appear in cameos as the terrorists and barely have a role.
In the end, the screen tells us that the film was directed by the ‘mind’. But do all of mind’s ramblings need to be made into a film is what one is left wondering.
Apoorva (Kannada)
Director: Ravichandran
Cast: Ravichandran, Apoorva, Sudeep, Ravishankar, Vijay Raghavendra
