Krishnavataram Is A Glorified Music Video Disguised as A Film
Honestly speaking, I wanted to root for this film. It looked beautiful, the music was soulful, and the actors were serving with their face cards (especially the women, I swear to god they deserved better written roles as their debut or route to fame). It had everything on its side when the trailer dropped—we were just disappointed when the first looks of a big-budget film dropped; it was the antithesis of that—bright, colourful, playing on familiar emotional ground, and a rare exploration of a Satyabhama-centric narrative.
Now, I'm aware that Krishnavataram Part 1: The Heart (Hridayam) (2026) is an adaptation of Satyabhama (2025) written by Ram Maori. I'm not going to comment on the book, as I've not read it. However, whatever opinion I form is based on the movie, my understanding of movies, and, most importantly, my understanding of the epic.
The review will include major spoilers, as it's a rant review. You've been warned; now proceed with caution.
The actresses and music. That's it, that was the only good in this "film". The actresses, despite inconsistent styling (I'll get into it later) were beautiful onscreen. And a special mention for Nivaashiyani Krishnan: she was ethereal as Rukmini and perhaps one of the prettiest women I have seen onscreen.
Also, another good thing, ig, I've found my new crushes (yeah, not the men, I was busy looking at the girls with heart eyes).
This is going to be a long one, so buckle up.
The age-inappropriate casting:
I can't stress this enough. This is a huge problem because it detracts from the film's immersion. I swear to god, it did bug me, the Vrindavan sequences especially. Siddharth Gupta didn't even look like a teen, forget about a preteen or early teenager, the character would most probably be like. I think they wanted to go for Radha and Krishna being in their late teens (inaccurate, but whatever), and the visual difference between Radha (played by Sushmitha Bhat) and Krishna (played by Siddharth Gupta) was very visible; Sushmitha was convincing with some of her expressions and her styling that made her look like a teenager who was in her late teens, the naivety was visible, where as the same can't be said about Siddharth, it was too visible that he was an adult cosplaying a teenager and the styling too didn't do much. It was annoying to say the least, and also very distracting.
The Inaccurate and Inconsistent Styling Choices:
No, I'm not talking about just the "women did not wear blouses in that era". That's simply the start. It's the inconsistency that bugged me about the women in Dwaraka: you have Satyabhama (played by Sanskruti Jayana) dressed in flowy, dreamy lehengas, but then you have other women like Revati, Subhadra, and even Satyabhama's aunt dressed like they were extras in Bahubali. Like, the South Indian in me couldn't ignore the half-sarees and styling that I would find in a quintessential South Indian wedding; not that it's not beautiful or the women looked bad in them, it just did not make sense to have that kind of inconsistency.
I could have forgiven the anachronisms in the styling had there been consistency and an actual visual story behind it, which you don't get in the film. And just to reiterate, this is the same director who's behind shows like Siya Ke Ram and Devon Ke Dev Mahadev, and both of those shows too had anachronistic styling choices for women (blouses, net sarees, and the typical 2010s fashion choices were visible), yet there was consistency, and a story that was being unravelled visually. The costumes the actors wore revealed much about the characters without much being said. Cinema is a visual medium, and visuals and clothes do more than aesthetics in a film; they're an important part of character development, and tell the audience something that is absorbed subconsciously, let us sit with it because I don't want to just see pretty women, I want to see characters when I'm watching a film.
Also, can we learn to style men better in mythic fiction? What was that? Except for Siddharth, everyone else's styling was hard to remember, and all of them come from similar economic backgrounds within the story. We need to do better.
The weird placement of the music:
Don't get me wrong, the album of this film on its own is beautiful. The vocals really transport you to another world; in fact, I'm writing this review as I listen to the album (it's diabolical, as I don't have the nicest things to say beyond this). But the audience is treated like they are dumb and cannot grasp the complexities of the characters and their decisions unless you explain them through song and dance. It gets even weirder when you realise that it doesn't do much for the film, it neither reveals character nor moves the plot forward; instead, what it does is halt a non-existent plot. It takes away the very soul that was poured into making those very songs. It really irritated me that the songs were beautiful and soulful, but then they felt empty in the way they were used in the film.
Inconsistent Characterisations and Rushed Screenplay:
First off, there was barely a plot, and second, the inconsistency with which both Krishna and Satyabhama were characterised really bothered me. Now, I understand that the film wanted to focus on a specific aspect of Krishna's life, i.e., his love life, but that doesn't excuse the choppy characterisation of the main characters. Krishna is presented as an antaryami at the start, which, to be fair, was fine, but then there's this sequence where Krishna is reminded about dharma, duty and all of it like he needed guidance; now, this would have worked out if we had a younger actor playing this role and we would have visually associated, okay, he was young and needed that push. But since it's Siddharth himself, it's hard to buy that (cinema is a visual medium, people).
The same goes for Satybhama: throughout the film, you strip her of her divinity. Show her like a naive teenager, that spectrum of being in possessive love and slowly learning to accept all (you tried, but failed miserably; will get to it in a while). But then, when Naraka Vadha arrives, she's suddenly Bhudevi, displays her divinity, and once that's over, she goes back to sulking, being jealous, and being possessive for no reason. Hear me out: if you're diverging from the tale, please do it wholeheartedly, not like this. I will still have my complaints, but whatever. She had some of the weirdest dialogues, starting from how she talks about winning Krishna's love; that's just not Satyabhama, but whatever, I guess. But the nail in the coffin was when she called herself Haripriya and told Rukmini that she was only Yadulakshmi; it reduced both of them simultaneously, because that's both of them–they are both Haripriya and Yadulakshmi; it's not a singular title or who Krishna loved the most. Polygamous marriages may not be the ideal, but we are talking about a period when it took place for multiple reasons, including building alliances. It requires nuance in portrayals given we are talking about the past, and that is something I wish the makers had paid attention to.
The disproportionate attention to Radha is tiring. Credit where credit's due, despite casting inaccuracies, Sushmitha Bhat brought Radha's innocence and liveliness to life. That period in Vrindavan is associated with childhood and adolescent innocence, and she truly embodied that. There were a few issues with the delivery of the dialogue, but the expressions and essence were there. You spend about 40-50 minutes on her only to then reduce her to the unrequited love that could never be pursued later. The Radha-Krishna story as known in popular culture is beautiful, and is childhood companions and lovers who had to separate because life happened, it's sad, but then that's also a reality, we sometimes do leave parts of our childhood behind when we enter adulthood. It was a painfully beautiful story, we don't have to keep bringing her up in a way that she's the only great love of Krishna; yes she's one of the important women in Krishna's life, but so were Rukmini, Jambavati, and Satyabhama, each of them are important and had both a personal and plot contribution, so to reduce them to only revolving around Krishna in a way that strips off their individuality is concerning and serves no real purpose.
Satrajit's (Satyabhama's father) portrayal was also concerning. There was a condescending attitude from him towards Krishna from the start. It's inaccurate, but I thought, okay, maybe this is being used as a plot device to bring drama when Satyabhama and Krishna marry (spoiler: it doesn't). But no, he's obsessed, he despises and then has a beef with Krishna, it could have been a good subplot, but it doesn't delve enough to get you invested. He disowns Satyabhama, which was weird because canonical tales tell us that Satyabhama was probably the heir to the Syamantaka Mani, again, the potential of a good subplot was lost.
Honestly speaking, they shouldn't have rushed it like this. Everything felt like patchwork and stitching together of random scenes with no head or tail. It was a tiring watch not only because we don't tap enough into the characters, but also because we are treated like we are dumb with songs explaining the scenes before it, and then the scenes that stand on their own are rushed, taking away the immersion or me enjoying the film.
It was a tiring watch. I felt empty after watching it, tired even. I'm not going to rate it, but I wouldn't recommend it if you are particular about portrayals of characters from our epics. I do have a few comments specific to the portrayal of women in this film, but it's going to get long here, so I will probably make a separate post on it when I get time.
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