Review : An Engrossing ‘Mountainous’ Love Story : ‘Sumeru’!
Love has special place in everyone’s heart. Though there are different categories of love, the lovers’ love has been capitalised by the film makers most of the time. In spite of innumerable films being made on the same emotion it’s novelty has not eroded because this emotion is experienced differently by each person. Obviously there will be more films on this universal emotion, Love, and a new hindi movie which is a ‘mountainous’ love story, Sumeru, which is laced with Punjabi accent adding extra punch to it makes an engrossing watch. Produced under the banner, ‘Padmasiddhi Films’ the film narrates a pure love story in the purest atmosphere in the snow clad mountains.
Savi Malhotra (Sanskriti Bhatt) is engaged to be married who comes to Uttarakhand to look out for a spot for a destination wedding in Harsil. Though her fiancée is not very keen about the place, she still ventures out. Actually she’s fed up of monotonous and unexciting lifestyle and wants to break free from it. After garnering courage she ventures out in the mountain clad jungles of Uttarakhand leaving her fiancée behind and unaware. While walking through the dense forest she is scared of a wild animal’s groaning and starts running singing a song as her mother had taught her that it’s the best thing when one is scared. There’s a guy, Bhavar Pratap Singh (Avinash Dhyani) who is on the way to a mountain called Sumeru for his personal reasons. He spots Savi walking the jungle singing a song, feels that she’s a Ghost. But after heated exchanges between them Savi asks for help and both start walking together. In the process they start discovering about each other and keep exploring the dance forest. Bhavar is in search of his father’s remains as the latter had died in the avalanche in the area while Savi has run away from the mediocrity of her life and wanted to find ‘herself’ in the process. In turn both lend emotional support to each other in the chilly mountains and start liking each without anyone expressing it. What happens next is delicately and beautifully expressed in the film ‘Sumeru’.
Sumeru is written by Avinash Tyagi who has produced and directed it too. Moreover he has played the lead part in which he offers convincing acting. The storyline is thin but it’s very well put across with the help of well written screenplay. The story is told in a straight forward way which makes it engrossing despite a few weak points. Cinema is a visual medium and most of the scenes should be showcased with minimum dialogues. But ‘Sumeru’ at times becomes verbose and the director should have incorporated visuals while stating the lead character’s’ back stories. As the film rests on two characters it sometimes becomes monotonous. But mind you, it never becomes boring as the innocence in acting makes the narrative engrossing.
The film has captured the exasperating beauty of the snow clad mountains through the lens of cinematographer Harish Nagi. Sunjoy Bose’s music is good and all the songs all well written which are credited to Rishi Raj Bhatt, Arun Kumar, Vinay Joshi, Rishika Mishra, Vijay Bhatt and Nishant Mishra. They enhances the mood of the film thus helping the narration. Both the lead actors Avinash Tyagi and Sanskriti Bhatt carries the film on their shoulders very responsibly. Both of them give scintillating performances which is the highlight of the film.
All in all ‘Sumeru’ is en engrossing watch which showcases simple and beautiful ‘mountainous’ love story.
Rating : ***