CAST: Suriya, Vijay Sethupathi, Siddharth, Revathi, Parvathy Thiruvothu, Prayaga Martin, Arvind Swami, Prasanna, Poorna, Delhi Ganesh, Rohini, Gautham Vasudev Menon, Yogi Babu, Remya Nambeesan, Aditi Balan, Bobby Simha, Riythvika, Sree Raam, Atharvaa, Manikuttan, Nedumudi Venu, Anjali, Kishore

DIRECTED BY: Priyadarshan, Karthik Subbaraj, Vasanth, Arvind Swami, Bejoy Nambiar, Karthick Naren, Gautham Vasudev Menon, Sarjun KM, and Rathindran R. Prasad

“Navarasa” is “nine emotions” in Tamil, and the series Navarasa examines one emotion per episode. As the intro mentions, the project was to help bring together the Tamil film community, primarily located in the southern part of India, during the pandemic. The series was conceived and produced by Mani Ratnam and Jayendra Panchapakesan, but a different director constructs each episode.

The aspirations of each episode of the anthology Navarasa are made clear at the start of each episode. A primer for all of us who club everything coming out of India as “Bollywood” is how different the entire narrative of the productions of the Tamil film industry is.

The cinematography is A-plus, and the acting is excellent. It’s the stories that need a bit of depth and context. 

For Instance, the story about Laughter, which should’ve been comedic, did not have much of a plot if you consider that failing four times in school is not comic con material.