Nodi Swamy Ivanu Irode Heege: Rishi’s comedy about heartbreak and depression doesn’t pack a punch

2.5/5

Story: When Vinutha (Apoorva Bharadwaj) dumps her ‘Teddy Bear’ Sai Kumar (Rishi) because her folks won’t agree to their match, she promises that he will always have her heart. Sai, whose world revolved around Vinu, his ‘Baby Doll’, this is too much to take, and becomes clinically depressed, to the extent that he needs medical intervention and pills to stop him from hallucinating about her and get enough rest. But when Sai begins to think that he’s better off dead, but can’t bring himself to commit suicide, he decides to seek help to end his life.

Review: When Nodi Swamy Ivanu Irode Heege leading man Rishi spoke about the film and its subject that dwells upon heartbreak, depression and suicidal tendencies within the realms of a dark comedy, the first question that popped to my mind was – how do you marry depression and a dark comedy with sensitivity and sensibility? It’s easier said than done, so, obviously, the team of Nodi Swamy Ivanu Irode Heege fails miserably at striking some balance there. There is sensitivity, but sensibility, well...

Director Islahuddin NS, no doubt, had an idea – to present a story about depression and suicide, seeking help and finding value in life, which ought to be appreciated. This wasn’t a tale like Love Mocktail, where a depressed man’s refusal to take medication and follow hallucinations of his dead wife was actually lapped up by audiences.

Here, Sai does seek medical help, and first chooses to flush his pills down the toilet so that he can have moments with his ‘Baby Doll’, even if she is only part of a daydream/hallucination, to later actively taking them to block her out and concentrate on writing notes to all his ‘near-and-dear-ones’ before he dies. He is so depressed he sees no reason in living without his ‘Baby Doll’, yet does not have the will to go through with his suicide attempts. He’d rather pay and have someone else pull the trigger on him. How and why Sai changes his mind after meeting his supari killer Gaja forms the rest of the narrative.

The question then is, why is it that Kannada filmmakers think that their audiences cannot handle hard-hitting subjects, which then needs to be sugar-coated and softened with comedy? Why do they think so little of their audiences? No doubt, people look for entertainment in cinema, but everything doesn’t have to be rosy. They would have, probably, been more receptive to a relatively darker treatment of the subject of depression, a risk Isla could have taken given that his film was coming directly to OTT.

Verdict: Isla and Rishi present Sai’s world quite effectively – the voices in his heads, the visions he sees, etc. But wrapping that in a quirky comedy doesn’t have the desired effect. Nodi Swamy… wouldn’t rank high on a recommendation meter, but since there are no other Kannada releases this week, maybe you could still go ahead and stream this one.