Banaras is generating immense interest among movie lovers with unique teasers and trailers. Kannada film Banaras is capturing the imagination of all and is releasing in Telugu,Hindi, Malayalam and other languages to entertain viewers. The film directed by Jayatheertha is releasing on November 4. The film's OTT partner is yet to be finalised and will be done after the film's theatrical run.Let us find out what Banaras offered to viewers.
Banaras story is about a young couple's misunderstandings and how they fall in love in the backdrop of time travel and the time loop concept. Siddharth (Zaid Khan) goes in search of Dhani (Sonal Monteiro) to Banaras. He is desperate to meet her to rectify a mistake. In the process, he experiences strange incidents related to time travel and time loop. What mistake did Siddharth is out to rectify and how he landed in time travel and how he tackles the time loop and what is the connection to it to Siddarth's father Ajay (Devraj), Dhani's uncle Narayan Sastry (Achyuth Kumar) and photographer cum auto driver Shambo (Sujay Shastry) should be found on the screen.
Banaras story penned by Jayatheertha is an interesting one. Jayatheertha wove a romantic story and laced it up with interesting twists and turns and included intense emotions and to the top of it, tried to take viewers by surprise with time travel and the time loop concept. Jayatheertha starts the narration in an interesting manner touching the time travel plot and then quickly turns it into a romantic entertainer with youthful elements. While he scored good points elevating the emotional angle and romantic side in the story, he completely ignored the time travel making people wonder what he is really up to. Only during the interval, he brings back the time travel concept setting the stage for the interesting second half.
Though the second half travels in an interesting manner, the way he has given more importance to time travel and then changes it into a time loop, instead of time travel disappoints everyone. The time loop scenes involving the lead pair look repetitive and dragged to the core testing the patience of the viewers. Finally, the film ends in a plain manner after the pre-climax twist. For all the high drama involved in the film, when the twist is revealed, viewers will be put down completely with disappointment writ on their faces. Jayatheertha's story is interesting and the plot is exciting but his screenplay and direction have their highs and lows. His screenplay takes off to new heights and suddenly it comes down with a thud.
Zaid Khan on his debut performed his role quite effectively. He showed youthful exuberance and at the same time, showed intense feelings of repenting after realizing his mistake and going fallout to rectify it. He came up with good expressions and emotions making a good impact on screen. His dialogue delivery and screen presence are good. A little bit of fine-tuning will help Zaid Khan to reach the next level.
Sonal Monteiro looked good, appealing, and attractive. She looked innocent in the beginning and then at later showed the pain experienced after being targeted by a silly act of another person. She showed good emotions and the chemistry between Zaid and Sonal is impressive. Both of them with their performances elevated the scenes. All the songs are well-shot in a beautiful manner.
Sujay Shastry as the photographer and auto driver showed impressive emotions and his dialogue moves all emotionally. Others like Devraj, Achyuth Kumar and Swapna Raj performed according to the roles.
Ajaneesh Lokanath's music is melodious, impactful, and beautiful. He elevated the scenes with his background score. The cinematography of Advaitha Gurumurthy showed the beauty of Banaras on screen in a beautiful way. Editing of KM. Prakash could have been more crispy. Production values are good.
Premise
Zaid Khan, Sonal Monterio
Cinematography
BGM, Songs
Editing
Loopholes
Repetitive scenes
Altogether, Banaras for all the effort fails to take off to another level once the twists are revealed. Zaid Khan must be complimented by selecting a unique film on debut. Jayatheertha came up with a unique love story against the backdrop of time travel. While everything excites and starts also increases the interest levels, confusing narration at times, over the use of technical jargon in the beginning goes over the thinking of the people. The romantic angle comes as a solace for them but for those who are interested in time travel will get extremely disappointed. The narration goes at a steady pace and the interval bang increases interest levels. But the director overdoes the time travel and time loop angle in the second half as if to balance it for not having covered extensively in the first half and this results in many drags and repetitive scenes. But the emotional dialogues and scenes make up for it.Altogether, Banaras for all the effort fails to take off to another level once the twists are revealed. Considering all these elements, Cinejosh goes with a 1.5 rating for Banaras.