Krishnavataram Part 1 : The Heart

Krishnavataram Part 1: The Heart Movie Review Rating:

Star Cast: Siddharth Gupta, Sanskruti Jayana, Sushmitha Bhatt, Nivaashiyni Krishnan, Karthik Jayaram

Director: Hardik Gajjar

What’s Good: Innovative and honest storytelling

What’s Bad: The low buzz just might be counterproductive

Loo Break: You will not want any

Watch or Not?: Watch it lovingly!

Language: Hindi

Available On: Theatrical release

Runtime: 149 Minutes

User Rating:

The film explores how Lord Krishna (Siddharth Gupta) loved with a pure heart and was loved ditto by Radha, Rukmini (who had never even seen him), and Bhama (who was madly in love with him). Krishna and Radha cannot unite in matrimony because of the conflict between love and duty when the former is reminded of the reason he was born as a human being. He is here to protect dharma first. The greater cause of his existence is ever more vital than worldly pleasures, and so, he takes leave of Radha (Sushmitha Bhatt) by telling her that their love will always be immortal, and that her name will ever precede his (as Radhakrishna) and that before leaving this mortal body, he will play the flute for her.

Krishna is invited to the Draupadi Swayamvar and foretells to the princess (Smrithi Srikanth) that in the future, he will be blamed along with her as being the reason for the epic war to come between Good and Evil—what we know as the Mahabharat. At the Swayamvar, Rukmini, the woman who has been in love with his name and his deeds, sees him for the first time. Back home in Dwarka, Bhama (Nivaashiyni Krishnan) has always been madly besotted by him, though Krishna’s sister and Bhama’s confidante, Subhadra (Akshara Shivkumar) has warned her that he has eyes only for Radha.

When Krishna returns to Dwarka with Rukmini as his wife, Bhama is heartbroken. Krishna’s life soon takes many turns. And Bhama redeems his reputation when her father, Shatrajit (Kartikh Jayaram), falsely accuses Krishna of stealing a precious gem, and she exposes him. Thanks to this deed, she is renamed Satyabhama, and now, for a charming reason best seen on screen, Rukmini insists that Satyabhama also wed Krishna. Bhama now wants him exclusively for herself but is unaware that she is the incarnation of Bhoomi, mother to the demon Narkasur, whom she alone can kill, and soon realizes that her husband belongs to all, not her alone.

The film opens with a dying Krishna playing the flute for one last time for his beloved Radha after being hit by an arrow by mistake when a hunter wanted to kill a deer. Even more fascinatingly, we get to watch a long-haired ascetic (Jackie Shroff) narrating the Krishna Leela to a group of youngsters in current times, and one young man has a problem believing some aspects of it. So what happens?

Krishnavataram Part 1: The Heart Movie Review: Script Analysis

The film adapts Raam Mori’s book on Lord Krishna and is the first part of a trilogy. With a fabulous script like this, co-written by Hardik Gajjar (also the director) and Prakash Kapadia (co-writer of the brilliant Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior), we get a wondrous little gift (in terms of its production costs, cast, and team) along the lines of last year’s animation blockbuster, Mahavatar Narsimha. The screenplay structure and dialogues are superb and quite understated, stressing Krishna’s ever-unshakeable placidity and purity of heart.

As any good film must be, the writing is given complete attention and predominance, and the lines where Krishna chides Bhama when she asks him why he handed over their wedding gift to Rukmini, or the later lines when she realizes her limitations, or when he forgives her errant father, to mention just three examples, are especially fantastic in the uniformly well-written caliber.

The sequences are mounted so well that one feels the hypnotic charm of a great drama unfolding and also enfolding you in its grip. Taking a leaf out of the best cinema in such a genre, we see a lovingly written epistle on romance, sacrifice, surrender, moral obligations, duty, and humanity. And the end twist, superbly conceived and written, is just the perfect culmination of the fact that Krishna and his incarnations will never cease to touch us.

Krishnavataram Part 1: The Heart Movie Review: Star Performance

The film is strobe-lit with sparkling new talent and their scintillating performances. Siddharth Gupta is the perfect Krishna, as much a prankster as an idealist in duty. His fluid switching from indulgent to assertive and back is a wondrous watch. Siddharth’s interpretation of Krishna is the best I have seen since Nitish Bharadwaj held India spellbound in B.R. Chopra’s Mahabharat.

Sushmitha Bhatt is superb as Radha, her eyes and her intonations so bewitching that we cannot blame anyone for falling in love with her. Of the three girls, she is easily and effortlessly the best. Nivaashiyni Krishnan as Rukmini is bewitching in her simplicity but remains quite in the background. Occupying center stage is Satyabhama in a fresh story angle we had never known much about before. And Sanskruti Jayana gives it her all, her eyes a treasury of stubbornness mixed with grace and a tinge of melancholia.

Karthik Jayaram as Shatrajit is outstanding, and in briefer but striking roles, Amanjyot Singh as Balram, Akshara Shivkumar as Draupadi, and Smrithi Srikanth as Subhadra also impress. In cameos, Jackie Shroff and Sudesh Berry as the sage and the actor who plays Bhama’s aunt are effective.