Awe

When emotions personify

At a taut runtime of 1 hour 55 minutes, the film takes the viewer through a mind-boggling experience that’s fairly new for Indian cinema

Debutant director Prasanth Varma is on record stating that 'AWE' is not an anthology movie. But it's one. An anthology movie by stealth. In 99 out of 100 movies, the revelation about a key character made in the climax of 'AWE' would be made at the interval, a bit later, or a bit earlier. The revelation would then be followed by a meaty drama. In 'AWE', the audience is expected to pine for everything that the film allegedly offers in retrospect

Most of the film is set in closed spaces. Karthik Ghattamaneni has done some exceptional work with the cinematography. This is a film rich in visual cues and the camera constantly makes us question what we’re watching. The unpredictability is exciting, not just in the story but how it is told. This isn’t an anthology film and it’s not easy at all to give the viewer the impression of having met each of the numerous characters but Prashant pulls it off (quite like the rabbit pulling the man out of the hat visual he shows us at the beginning) with a great screenplay.

Awe might look inspired from Hollywood films in some parts but it’s very much its own film. Above all, this is one heck of a daring effort for a debut director – in the theatre I watched it in, the confused employees thought the screen was malfunctioning because of the black-outs in the latter half of the film and turned the lights on to figure out what the problem was. It only added to the loopy experience of watching Awe though.