Language: Kannada
Director: Pawan Kumar
Writer: Pawan Kumar
Cast : Sathish Neenasam, Sruthi Hariharan, Achyuth Kumar
Genre: Drama, Thriller, Romance, Sci-Fi.
IMDb: Lucia (2013)
Streaming on MXPlayer and Jio Cinema with Subtitles.
India’s best films are often missed out by the common man. The magical films are always hidden away from the common man’s reach. This is one such work. Pure Cinematic brilliance with a generous serving of intelligence.
Movies like this I believe, seriously improve your taste in movies and will pull you slightly back from the big-budget mass movies which are formulaic with a lot of stereotypes and probably have nothing new to say and end very predictably. Movies like this represent people like real people and not black and white reel characters. Once you watch mind-blowing movies like this, you will crave for more quality films like these. This film is a red-pill of sorts (go watch MATRIX (1999) if you didn’t get this). There is no going back after this.
Everyone has dreams, the common man has dreams, the middle class have dreams, the business class have dreams, superstars have dreams. We are often dissatisfied with our realities, and come alive in our dreams and live out our fantasies there. This Nolanesque movie with a non-linear plot also deals with dreams like the movies Paprika (2006), Open Your Eyes(1997) / Vanilla Sky (2001) and Inception (2010).
Pawan Kumar, the director and writer of the movie is a visionary and probably started a new-type of Kananda movie- a movement. One specific detail I loved about the movie is the female lead is shown very realistically and in a grey shade rather than the usual Indian movies showing heroines as Goddesses, who can do no wrong and save the hero from himself and his destructive tendencies. The characters and situations all feel real than reel and far from the perfect heroes and characters you see in commercial cinema. There is more reality in the dream sequences of this film than the main sequences of normal films. Noir lovers will just love this movie. There are elements in this movie strategically placed so that even the regular commerical movie lovers will even love this flick.
An usher/torch-shiner at a local Kannada theatre, suffering from insomnia and his strange experiences wandering at night gets him to a weird place/situation blurring the line between fantasy and reality. The Theatre owners’ love and dedication to maintain the Theatre took me back to Cinemo Paradiso(1988) straight away.
Watch the film to know more. I ain’t spoiling this surreal experience.
Whatever you do, you don’t want to miss this underrated regional film.
Verdict: 7/7 Stars.
Bloody Brilliant.
Trivia:
The entire film has been shot in digital format on Canon 5D and GoPro.
When Pawan Kumar decided to try the Crowd Funding route, he set a duration of 100 days in which he hoped to raise 51 Lakh INR. The amount was raised in just 27 days. This 51 Lakh film went to make 3.6 Cr in Box Office.
Lucia was among the films shortlisted by the FFI to become India’s submission for Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for the year 2013
Production Story
In December 2011 Pawan Kumar announced on the Web that his next project, after the success of his directorial debut film Lifeu Ishtene, was going to be Lucia. For the next two months, he met quite a few producers and top actors and found it difficult to fund his film. That led Pawan Kumar to write a post titled Making Enemies on his blog. Three days after it was published, the response was so overwhelming that he decided to pitch the idea of inviting people to produce the film and Pawan Kumar initiated Project Lucia. Lucia is notable for its use of crowdfunding. It was funded by 110 investors who contributed to the project through a Facebook page and a blog run by director-actor Pawan Kumar. It was the first Kannada movie to bypass the traditional film financing model. Lucia was made at a budget of ₹0.50 crore . Kannada language television channel Udaya TV bought the satellite rights of the film for ₹0.95 crore
Are you dreaming, did you just read this review? Or was it all a dream?
Wake Up! WAKE UP!
If you haven’t watched this movie, what are you waiting for? Go watch it and keep the discussion flowing in the comment box below.
Movies like this deserve to be discussed.
