Nodi Swamy Ivanu Irode Heege is a Kannada dark comedy-drama film released on Zee5. It is written & directed by Islahuddin NS and produced By Amrej Suryavanshi. The film has a runtime of about 1 hour and 48 minutes and follows the story of Sai Kumar whose life is engulfed in depression after a devastating break-up.
The cast of the film includes Rishi, Dhanya Balakrishna, Greeshma Sridhar, Apoorva S Bharadwaj, Bhavani Prakash, Nagabhushana, Mahadev Prasad, Chandru Mahadev, Avinash Daniel, Sripriya, Venkatnag Sobers, Harita Shah, Tejus Venkatesh, Rakesh Channakeshava and others.
The official Zee5 synopsis of the film reads:
A heartbroken Sai Kumar struggles with depression and develops suicidal tendencies. When he discovers a euthanasia offering website, the lines between sanity, morality, and legality begin to blur.
-Nodi Swamy Ivanu Irode Heege Review Does Not Contain Any Spoilers-
Story Of a Man Wanting to Die
The film starts off with a couple breaking up because the girl’s parents are not accepting of their relationship. We learn their names, Sai & Vinutha, who call each other ‘Teddy Bear’ and ‘Baby Doll’ endearingly. They mutually break up by promising that they will never live a happy life without each other. (alas!)
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But 5 years go by since their break-up and the girl is supposedly married to someone else whereas, Sai is engulfed in depression because of it and hasn’t been able to move on from it. He prefers to live in his memories and imagination that he isn’t able to distinguish fantasy from reality, which affects the quality of his life.
He even takes psychiatric counselling but flushes down all the medication instead of taking them. However, there’s no effect of his personal turmoil on his professional life. He works in an ad agency and is the most wanted guy by his clients due to his creative concepts. But things go out of hand when the voices inside his head take over completely.
He decides to kill himself and tries everything from lying on the rail tracks to drinking phenyl and jumping in front of vehicles in traffic but he is too afraid to kill himself and even the person he paid to kill just ran away with the money, leaving him a gun. Until he finds a website that claims to kill anyone who has the urge to kill themselves.
It seems like Sai has finally found a way to leave this world of misery but will his plan succeed after so many failures? As the clock ticks closer to his death, things start to go wrong one after another. He gets embroiled in matters that take him away from his death more & more. So will the death reaper knock on his door or will skip it for another day?
My Take: Stream It or Skip It?
Nodi Swamy Ivanu Irode Heege on Zee5 comes under the category of rare films with a fresh concept that works. The film is a hilarious take on the subject matter of depression and everything else that comes with it. It tries to give a message and in some also show, what a person going through it might feel.
The maker did a good job of building up the world of Sai and what he is feeling. The portrayal of his inner voice and reality is brought out in a colourful manner. While reality is filled with dull colours, his daydreams are full of strong colours. But if you have sharp eyes then you would notice that once the killer is in his house and he is making the last meal for himself, the objects are filled with pink colour.
Before this, we haven’t seen anything colourful in Sai’s house but suddenly he has a pink cooker, vase, and cushion and the killer is also wearing pink. Now if you search about it, the colour of opposites and universal love of oneself. It could signify that Sai is having second thoughts about dying.
Another thing to note is Frida Kahlo’s portrait earring, worn by the killer. The portraits actually deal with themes such as identity, the human body and death. A subtle hint to the killers conflicting identity and the conversation of death that is going on. Although the film has many good elements, the ending feels rushed and breaks all the build-up in the last few minutes.
The film is a definite watch if you are looking for something new to watch, in an overview it is a film that we needed if you neglect the ending bit. By the middle of the film when nothing was going Sai’s way, I found myself wishing for him to die already. Which I don’t think sounds right and is something the viewers might find themselves conflicting with or maybe not.
Nodi Swamy Ivanu Irode Heege is streaming on Zee5.