'EENADU'-THE TELUGU MOVIE

This is a remake of the Hindi movie-A Wednesday. The Telugu movie has been directed by Chakri Toleti. Kamal Haasan and Venkatesh play the lead roles in a movie which has music rendered by Sruti Haasan. The Telugu version of the bilingual movie (also in Tamil) does not have any songs.

This seems to be the movie version of a complaint-The terrorists kill innocents but when they are nabbed, they survive owing to procrastinated trials and are also let scot free. The common man (Kamal) has a gameplan to retaliate against this phenomenal 'injustice'. He tells the S.P (Venkatesh) that he has planted several bombe which are ready to explode and in return, has the terrorists released only to have them killed in a cell phone bomb kept ready for them inside a jeep. One of them is killed by the Inspector. 

 The plot is thought provoking but the narration does not depict any struggle. There is only a run of the mill operation carried out by the S.P which does sound contrived on occasion. The real struggle should have been on the side of Kamal being the common man. This paradox has robbed the life out of the very concept. The director’s first movie moves without a dull moment inside a story whose line itself perhaps required a change in this direction. The Police organization comes up realistically but not without lapses. The S.I of Lakdi Ka Pul Police Station comes to meet the S.P and as he leaves, salutes clumsily to him in mufty (without a cap on his head). The stars on the S.P’s uniform have been ignored. The inspector who goes for the new building under construction goes all alone, without even a sniffer dog which is the usual practice.

The Telugu film industry is losing on creativity while trying to catch up with the realism business renting the Industry’s air and trying to strike a balance with novelty in the subject. It’s good to go in terms of the common man. Nevertheless, the visual medium requires a thought to be spared towards the combination of shots, the ‘cycle’ involved in the story, the in depth analysis etc. This is the age of technological finesse and the judicious mixture of creative expression with the nuances of technology is what is missing dearly. Movies of the realism genre usually come with the ‘Deep Focus’ editing and close up sequence cuts. A balance is not achieved in this movie between the two. For instance, after a conversation (on the mobile in this instance), if the character is allowed the time to pause differently for a thought, the viewer would follow him interestingly. The time has not been actually spared in this regard. One is reminded of the movie-The Day of the Jackal…the anti hero actually prepares meticulously to assassinate the President. His preparation and intelligent handling force the viewer to encourage him though he is a professional killer. He fails with a miss but carries away the sympathy owing to his hard work and of course the actor’s portrayal as well.

If one looks at ‘Eenadu’, the opportunity is all the more striking since the character depicted here is a common man with a deeply hurt background preparing for an ‘ intelligent’ turn around. If taken on the similar lines while the Police get into the picture in between, it would have been Kamal’s day! His struggle to reach the climax and a brief visual of the  cruel incident just ‘reported’ by him would have brought the viewer closer to the common man and made it ‘possible’ for the two-the common man and the common viewer to offer the celluloid solution to a jinxed up terrorism menace. The laptop and some wires connected to it perhaps fail to capture the viewer’s imagination!

                                                  ~~~***~~~

' Short Kut The con is on'- a review of the film by Vedantam Sripatisarma

 This movie produced by Anil Kapur, directed by Neeraj Vora and Roshan Andrews caught me thinking for a while. Well...not because there has been some talk about whether this was a comedy or an ordinary one or a message oriented stuff, so on and so forth. It is true that the real homework seems to have gone to the winds if you talk about the conceptual clarity.The movie resembled in parts to the bollywood ambience which was proposed to be attacked at some places in the movie. Nevertheless, for it actually attempted but failed to succeed, the movie cannot be written off straight away!

As stated in the movie, the successful eccentric is termed as a talented person while an unsuccessful, yet, talented one will be known only as an eccentric. Quite right, but what the movie should have attempted is something which should have taken off as a strong undercurrent of the irony about the milieu within which all creative fields thrive. The movie deserts the theme somewhere while it was made.

A talented writer who has been working as an assistant director for several years waiting for a break to make his own movie as a full time director finally decides to sit on his story and arrive at the climax so that he can now approach the producers and launch himself into the big game. The conman enters, hijacks the script and turns into a big star. A big time heroine leaves her family and also the tinsel world only to join her lover-the writer. The writer is back to square one and as he does some catering work to sustain his family, there is a tiff and she leaves him. The writer finds a producer in the landlord of the place where he lives and supporters and partners amongst the people living there. This is after he had agreed to do the movie with an old time producer while compromising with the hero-the conman! But the producer ( the old time producer) dies in an accident and as a commitment, the film is produced with the help of the new producer while the conman contrives to leave the movie's climax undone. How the writer turned director manages to get the climax shot and succeeds in the end is what the movie is all about. The writer's wife returns to him while he is thinking about how to complete the movie and finally the game is over!

Well. The subject chosen has strong issues to deal. Firstly, a tinsel star is fed up with the camera and wants to have a peaceful familly life. This didn't get established. It is true that her brother, parents etc. are shown prodding her to do more and more of the kind of movies which brought them money but had no time for her real welfare. The turbulence in her mind didn't take off on the screen. The writer's real passion for creative expression didn't come off in real terms so that the admixture of skill, creativity, life's demands and triumph of truth could have been nurtured somewhere along the way. The return of the wife was treated as a great strength to him (he only mentions that he would now finish the film ) but her contribution is simply not there!

Finally, the writer is supposed to make a statement-to the mavericks who go about as experts in the field. This is the sort of statement which ought to tell them that real talent would never go unsung. A short cut is only a short cut . Again, though success has smiled on him, he still remains an eccentric... that is where his real life still is!

But this opportunity to make it into something extraordinary has been allowed to simply melt away.

Akshay Khanna does well in parts but what is missing is the child like innocence and emotional expression all writers are known for.

Arshad Wasi as the conman sells only one idea with his acting-that the director changed his mind like many characters of the movie-from attempting a comedy to trying something else only mid way. The actor couldn't come to terms with the role and what was required to be done.

Amrita Rao seems to be disgusted with her clothes once too often. Bollywood is such a socialiser that the industry doesn't differentiate between inner and outer garments, I am sorry to say this.

Music has some fast beat.

The irony is that all those related to film industry are awfully aware of its idiosyncrasies. But little is done to cure it. Life goes on. A good writer still has to go to a producer and tell him that this was not his story. This was something he borrowed from a Russian or a German theme and got it adapted. It is only then that he gets someone to hear his 'story'.

This is a movie which can be seen for having an analysis of how and why good themes fall apart.

~~~***~~~

The Telugu version of this review can be seen by clicking www.srikaaram.wordpress.com under the section 'srichitram'.

Do share your views with us about this movie if you have seen it.