One Heart Movie Review

AR Rahman’s One Heart is a highly fulfilling display of a worthy concert flush mounted with sweet moments from his 25 year journey. The concert film gives you a great opportunity to get close to the stage as Rahman and his team perform 15 of his evergreen songs, ending up as a different experience on the whole.

Starting off with a stunning Dil Se Re, the film traverses between both Hindi and Tamil music, with the addition of a very special Chinese track which is used as a stopgap song. Rahman takes this chance to introduce his trusted team members to one and all, share some interesting moments from his world tour, his early days with the band and the story of how it all came together. The to and fro between the music and the life chronicles are neatly knit together as a package, without being swayed to one end.

Out of all the songs performed in the film, the ones that stand out are surely the ‘Dil Se Re’ at the beginning, Jonita Gandhi’s ‘Chinna Chinna Aasai’ mixed with ‘Dil Hai Chota Sa’, ‘Naane Varugiren’, ‘Naadan Parindey’ and ‘Munbe Vaa’.

The idea of providing a variant of all the songs instead of singing their stock versions is surely a breakthrough, for it allows the audience to listen to how the olden golds sound with updated, state-of-the-art instruments. Rahman also some time to introduce the story about Curie – the musical invention that allows the artiste to create music without any physical instrument. These minor-but-important additions truly add a new color to the film, which would just have been another standard documentary.

Despite the blurs in the camerawork and the occasional beat misses, One Heart is a solid takeaway for any fan of the man. Simple, compact and neatly presented without any brags, it becomes a good example of what is called a ‘concert film’. With its comfortable runtime of just 86 minutes, this is a shot worth taking.

One Heart Movie Review Rating: 3.5/5