Quite a few filmmakers have shown remarkable boldness in attempting to change the face of Kannada cinema this year and have met with a measure of success. All genres vied for the top slot barely but barely made any impression.
Now comes Preeti Yeke...(PYBM), the last release of the year and perhaps, the most awaited one as well. After a long hiatus, director Prem returns to ask an audience that tasted Mungaaru Male for starters, why does love exist in this world? The timing is perhaps a big plus-point for the director, who also plays the lead.
The film achieves much of what it intended — it preaches the message of love, its contradictions, its predictability and most importantly, mankind’s faith in itself, born out of that very love. That the director takes almost two-and-half hours to do so is noteworthy for other reasons. More on that later. PYBM is Prem’s experiment, whose success depends upon the subject’s intellectual, perceptual levels and emotional understanding as well!
The director must be congratulated for taking a risk in adopting a ‘fresh’ approach in displaying his craft, nudging one to recall the adage, ‘method in madness’ time and again. But the threat of madness derailing the entire story is ever present. Despite painstaking effort in weaving a done-to-death storyline together, the director seems to have been overwhelmed by the occasion and has  let the film slip a few times. But Prem is lucky. To have found a producer who has retained faith in him, to have had a near-perfect cast and to have had a committed technical crew to back him up. Actor Prem has nothing much to do, but Namrata, as Sandhya, is one of the good things about this film. Though hampered by the script to maintain a certain expression for the most part of the film, this girl is perfectly cast as an innocent village belle. But the same cannot be said of Rohini, whose body language lets her character down badly. Sharan gets another chance to act sensibly. Mention must also be made of V Anand’s dialogues, which bring out the director’s intentions beautifully. Seenu’s camera lends meaning to the word magic. The songs when collated with the visuals also cast a spell, though the Mallika Sherawat item number as well as the last song could have been edited.
The director has spent considerable energy, thinking out and using every trick in the trade; a small portion of spending the same energy on a coherent script would have been the icing on a cake. With all the flaws to go, PYBM still provides food for thought.