Summary
Thunintha Pin: Veera puts two very different men in close proximity, where their personalities and ideologies come into conflict.
This review of Navarasa season 1, episode 8 for the short film Thunintha Pin: Veera contains spoilers. We discuss the ending.
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Sarjun Km’s Thunintha Pin: Veera, the eighth short story in Navarasa Season 1, has a deceptively simple setup. It finds a new police official, Vetri (Atharvaa), transporting a badly wounded rebel leader back to police headquarters. There have been many films and television shows that employed a similar premise; two very different people trapped in close proximity, forced to examine their conflicting personalities and ideologies. Everything from 16 Blocks to Green Book has worked this way, and Thunintha Pin: Veera isn’t all that different, some cultural specificity notwithstanding.
But Veera translates to “courage”, and that theme is never far from the surface. Courage comes in many forms; the courage of taking on a new, dangerous position, of upholding systems you believe in, or in rebelling against the established order. These are equally courageous acts, and the short film argues that courage in and of itself is to be commended, almost regardless of the purpose it serves. If I were pushed, though, I’d say it sides more with the rebel leader; flashbacks showing him ministering to his people, teaching and guiding them, make him slightly more rounded than Vetri, who from his radio callsign of Alpha 1 to his parroting of police doctrine, remains an avatar of faceless officialdom all throughout.
Navarasa season 1, episode 8, Thunintha Pin: Veera ending explained
This short film actually begins at the end, or close to it, with Vetri holding his charge at gunpoint only to be told, almost laughingly, that his hands are trembling and his inexperience is showing. Throughout the brisk runtime, Vetri is forced to reveal more than he would like to the rebel leader, and while he isn’t necessarily swayed by his rhetoric, he does keep falling for his tricks, allowing him multiple opportunities to escape. That brief moment that opens the film is one of them.
After being delivered to police headquarters and feigning unconsciousness, the rebel is able to slip inside and pilfer a load of medical supplies. He almost makes it out, but he’s confronted by Vetri in the scene that opened the film. Despite only one second of courage being needed, Vetri can’t summon it, and in closing his eyes to take the shot, he gives the rebel yet another opportunity to escape. He jacks a jeep and makes off into the woods, with Vetri in hot pursuit. Finally steeling himself, Vetri racks the slide of his gun and gives chase, having presumably found his courage, if not necessarily his quarry.
