Brutally honest and blisteringly real, Bhairavam is a court of loyalty, greed, and divine justice in the landscape of rural Andhra Pradesh. The complexities in childhood friendship of Gajapathi, Varada and Seenu, who experience trials through political manipulations, land rivalries, and betrayal nature of man, are well-depicted on the movie screen. The story swings between hard-boiled realism and mythology, and the juxtaposition yields a very strong tension that encompasses viewers in a world where God plays his role and humankind is not perfect. The moral tensions and the emotional burden of their hardships create a very introspective feeling on how righteousness and sacrifice is right.
The movie has terrific performances, where Seenu portrays a quality of undying faithfulness and religious fervor, whereas Gajapathi and Varada prove to be persuasive in the use of forceful momentum of greed and betrayal. This direction is harmonious and intense in its dramatic high-stakes moments as well as the stillness where the themes of morality and faith are powerfully brought out. Pictorially, the film-making does not depend on the mountains and the dusty expanses but shoots congenially the earthy environment and religious atmosphere with the help of the score which swings between the sad harmonies and rhythmic explosions. Production design vividly creates Devipuram and its traditions, and special effects are quite limited but efficient, particularly in case of divine possession scenes which increase the undertones of supernatural elements in the movie.
I was helped the most by the fact that the film deliberated on the dual form of loyalty that it involves sometimes salvation, sometimes destruction and how the divine justice is, most of the time, represented in human beings. I emerged thoughtful about questions of morality and the price of righteousness after the climax that achieved the successful combination of the divine and tragic descent. Although **Bhairavam** has certain pacing problems and a lot of political plot points, it is an impactful emotionally charged ride that leaves the viewer thinking about the already thin line between good and evil, faith and corruption.
