When the film begins, it seems as if Bharath (Ajit Patre) is Tanu’s (Harshika Poonacha) stalker. He follows her everywhere, waits for her at the bus stop, beats up goons who tease her and even catches hold of her and kisses her randomly. However, a few minutes later, Tanu tells us that Bharath and she have been ‘lovers’ for five years! Who are these two? When did they meet? How did they fall in love? And why is this movie called Beat ? No one really knows, even at the end of the film.
Then we learn that this is a story of two obsessive lovers. Tanu’s parents arrange her wedding with someone else. She fights with her family but her father does not relent. Stricken by sorrow, when she falls ill, her doctor says that she is suffering from a condition called ‘visual hallucination’, the only treatment for which is to get her married to Bharath. The two lovers are married eventually, but that is not the end of their troubles.
It seems as if the filmmaker wrote the story as he began shooting. Sequences are added and characters are developed almost as an afterthought. This becomes particularly evident towards the end, when a character we thought was incidental to the plot dominates the screen, screams her woes out and turns hysterical.
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If the existing levels of melodrama were not enough, the filmmaker turns it up a few hundred notches during this climax. There are disturbing scenes of the hero beating a woman too to add to the pain of the audience.
Ghanashyam tries really hard to keep up the theme of obsessive love but with an on-the-spot, half-baked script, the film barely holds its different elements together, let alone entertains its audience. The performances of the actors too are exaggerated and hysterical making the audience laugh during grave and sorrowful scenes.
Many of the tropes used in the film are predictable and clichéd: obsessive, young love, opposition from parents, a mental illness apparently induced by separation, an evil, scheming female friend, a love triangle and so on.
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It is a film that gathers as many elements as it can along the way but also loses sense of where it began, what it wants to say and where it should go.
And why is this film called Beat anyway?
Beat (Kannada)
Director: Ghanashyam
Cast: Ajit Patre, Harshika Poonacha