Inspired the Best. Review on Morning Raga

If Mexican film director ''Amores perros'' ''Love's A Bitch'' film inspired Maniratnam to give

''Yuva'', Mahesh dattani went onto direct ''Morning Raga''.

A bridge, an accident and the affected trio are the inspiration borrowed by Mahesh Dattani.

An Indian English film ''Morning Raga'' opens by unfolding the friendship of Swarnalatha a carnatic singer who has aspiration to sing in a city concert and her violinist Vaishnavi.

Swarnalatha takes vaishnavi to the city for a concert by convincing her. While crossing her village through the bridge, there happens a accident and she loses her friend and her own son.

The movie flips to Twenty years later in Hyderabad to show an lad called Abinay who wants to make remembering music. He quits his jingles business and returns to village to get refreshed. There he meets another city girl Priyanka who has come to find her father memoirs who died in an accident in that village. They become friends and she helps him to set a music group in the city. They get a stage to perform and their music was not appreciated. So they decided to do something different.

At this time he gets his mother's violin from swarnalatha. He hit on a new idea of

performing fusion music with Swarnalatha as a leading singer. So he returns to the village and found Swarnalatha is guilty of her friends death and never crossed the bridge in that 20 years. So a first step they tries the fusion music at her village and convice her to travel out of the village.

When she crosses for the first time the bridge after 20 years, she coudln't handle it and runs halfway. Abinay lose his second chance to make it big. Swarnaltha wants to help Abinay, so she suggests Priyanka to learn carnatic music and perform for her. They accept and priyanka learns carnatic music.

Abinay and Priyanka group gets another chance to perform, and when they return from village to city, Priyanka drives her car with Swarnalatha on the bridge furiously fast. Then she asks Swarnalatha not to feel guilty about the accident, as her father was the one who caused the accident by drunken driving the car.

The big day comes and when Priyanka is about to perform, Swarnalatha comes to the city.

Priyanka convince that it's Swarnlatha's dream to sing in city and she has to perform now.

With that song dedicated to her son Abinay, she performs and the troupe becomes a big hit.

End of story.

In that running time of One and Half hour, the movie doesn't get into the finest details of Swarnalatha's mastership over the music or the friendship between the Singer and the violinist. The movie intentionally left those finest details to the audience to guess and chose a simple narrative form. Not sure whether this is a drawback or not as the movie doesn't create any impact of the characterization in the audience mind.

We don't feel the movie is dry, as there was script oriented light moments to laugh. Baals, Mrs. Kapoor and a milkman character were such characters.

Shabna Azmi as Swarnaltha has performed well. Playing an Carnatic singer is not easy task. The director puts a close up shot over that faster numbers. Her lip sync is perfect. Shabna has really done her home work well. Still I sensed she couldn't hide her alter ego that she is doing such a film. So Shabna Azmi stands first on the screen than Swarnalatha. I feel Shobana must have done this movie better.

Perizad as Priyanka was more perfect than Shabna with her lip syncs over carnatic music. This good looking girl has done a marvellous job.

Well versed, popular Sudha Ragunathan and divine voice of Bombay Jayasree are the jewels of this movie. By lending their voices to this wonderful movie, they helped the Carnatic music to be understood by the common audience and connect as well.

An awesome movie worth to watch.