LIFE: A JOURNEY WITH A SERIES OF HALTS

To paraphrase John Lennon, “life happens while you are busy making plans”. That seems to be the underlying message of “ಮುಂದಿನ ನಿಲ್ದಾಣ” ('Mundina Nildana', meaning: “Next Station”), a 2019 Kannada romantic drama that critics waxed eloquent about!

The protagonists, Partha (Praveen Tej), Meera (Radhika Chetan) and Ahana (Ananya Kashyap) have diverse interests, distinct personalities, different aspirations and disparate professions too. Partha gets into a relationship with self-assured Meera, who is on the lookout for a soul-mate. She wants to settle down in blissful matrimony. Partha though is uninterested in marital commitment. Ahana is a free-spirited and fun-loving medical student; Partha finds her attractive too

Each of the three main characters is on a journey to explore, discover and enjoy life. Their paths converge in bizarre ways... and, then diverge too in equally strange ways. But, at the intersection, each one influences the life of the other in some amorphous, convoluted way. Despite being spahgetti-like with the coincidental criss-crossing, the narrative captures lucidly the perspectives of all three. Each meeting turns out to be just another point in the continuum of their lives. 

Oh...there is no hackneyed, run-of-the-mill climax for this one! 

Director Vinay Bharadwaj has packed quite a punch in his debut flick. He strikes a delicate balance with the dramatization of cinematic content– he's kept his creative juices and emotive expression of his cast on a fairly tight leash. The bumpy ride of life in the story is made to look like a fairy tale; but it ends on a philosophical note. Slow and deliberate, the script and screenplay back him to the hilt.

All three lead actors have given good performances. Wish the wardrobe choices of the female leads had been more muted; and, not so in your face with glam and style– less is the new more! Veteran HG Dattatreya is, as usual, refreshingly good in his cameo.

The technical work of the unit is commendable. The background score is soft, sensitive and in sync with the mood on screen. The cinematography of Abhimanyu Sadanandan is OUTSTANDING– the camera is like a brush that he uses to capture breath-taking beauty on his canvas of celluloid!

The film surely merits a watch.

My rating: 8.0 on 10!