If the alternative Telugu cinema ever had a fin de siecle, it has to be 2016. This year saw a spate of smaller films ruling the roost, while the bombastic mainstream ones fell by the wayside.
Here are the movies that no one expected to do big: Nenu Sailaja, Bhale Manchi Roju, Express Raja, Krishna Gaadi Veera Prema Gaadha, Kshanam. And now the proverbial cherry on the topping is Tarun Bhascker's directorial debut Pellichoopulu.
During the past few months, Telugu cinema has been exhaling some noxious gases in the form of movies with big actors that are absolute duds. At such a time, like a fresh breeze of Vancouver air, Bhascker came out with this love story about a couple getting together over the course of setting up a food truck. With a winsome lead couple, Vijay Deverakonda and Ritu Varma, Bhascker weaves a compelling yarn of opposites attracting each other: Vijay, a good-for-nothing engineering student aspiring to be a chef, and Ritu, who wants to make enough dough to fund her MBA in Australia.
Shot like an indie American movie, Bhascker starts the movie frenetically and never lets the pace slacken. With a lovely narrative device of a jammed door, he gets the couple talking and as they share their romantic past, the movie's first half oozes with off kilter humour. As the protagonist's partner-in-crime of a friend, Priyadarshi lights up the screen every time he opens his mouth and speaks Telugu with Telangana twang.
Nagesh Banell's cinematography has just the right kind of grandiosity and Vivek Sagar's simultaneously foot-tapping and melodious soundtrack lend this 'small' movie the heft of a big-budget film. As the crabby and concerned father of the protagonist, Kedar Shankara is superb. The movie's biggest two strengths are: Bhascker's slacker comic dialogues and Vijay's amazing persona of a Hyderabadi engineering student. It is pitch perfect, down to the infectiously insouciant accent.
The whole episode of the lead couple getting together to set up a food truck reminded me of the famous Calvin Trillin quote, "Marriage, as I have often remarked, is not merely sharing one's fettuccine, but sharing the burden of finding the fettuccine restaurant in the first place". Since he's human, Bhascker stumbles now and then. The whole climax is a drag and his penchant to tie up everything like cute bow ties has been a turn off. Those minor quibbles aside, this movie, which has had a delayed release across the country (with English subtitles, thankfully), deserves to be etched in national consciousness.
I pray to the Dear Lord that Bhascker's unique talent is an eternal spring and he doesn't stumble like others before him have after showing such immense promise.
Any discussion of alternative Telugu cinema is incomplete without waxing eloquent about Chandra Sekhar Yeleti's Aithe, which released in 2003. Here's a landmark movie in an industry at a time when alternative cinema was all about titanicloads of titilation. The bright rays of the refractory brilliance of this movie about four desperate guys pulling an unthinkable heist still shine hard.
Yeleti's new movie Manamantha released recently and it's a doozy for most parts. Shot in a non-linear way that would make early Alejandro González Iñárritu proud, the nerveshredding movie tells four tales: of a store manager, a housewife, an engineering student and a 14-year-old girl.
The Malayalam movie Drishyam started off a trend of "family thrillers" in South Indian cinema, something that Manamantha takes ahead. Both the movies have Mohanlal playing a Mohanlal role: a lower middle-income man striving hard to give his kids a better life, one he never had. Gauthami, as his perfect foil of a wife, is back after a long time and revels in it. Viswant, as the middle-aged couple's son, is functional, but it's the young Raina Rao who gives the movie its torque. Yeleti delivers his social commentary through this girl who dreams of making the world a better place.
Sadly, Yeleti's message was recently felt lost on two fans of Pawan Kalyan and Junior NTR. In Karnataka's Kolar district, in a heated argument over the supremacy of their heroes, Akshay Kumar stabbed one Vinod Royal. In such grisly times, one wonders if Telugu cinema even deserves a Pellichoopulu or a Yeleti.
jagannath.jamma@bsmail.in
