Six months of 2016 have whizzed past us, leaving a fresh bunch of good, tolerable and mundane films. Box office success is only one yardstick to judge a film. Long after a film has had its run in cinema halls, it leaves behind moments that bring a smile. It could be a dialogue, a scene or a sequence crucial to the plot point that’s worthy of a conversation. This year, we’ve had many such moments.
Ramya Krishna had the audience in splits when she encapsulated how she brought up her son to be studious and not look at women, in Soggade Chinni Nayana . A tiny camera hidden in a painting was enough to bring down Jagapathi Babu’s fiefdom in Nanakku Prematho . Malavika Nair and Naga Shourya unpacking wedding gifts on their first night to discover a range of items, including steel vessels, was a fun way of drawing attention to the money that’s spent on buying gifts, in Kalyana Vaibhogame . If the repartee between Nani, Satyam Rajesh and Mehreen in Krishna Gaadi Veera Prema Gaadha was fun, the three-year-old child actress Naina stating she is ‘ chinnari pelli koothuru ’ to mask her true identity to Nani was a riot. Then, there are a couple of lines mouthed by Nani, as Jai, in Kodaikanal that make the audience think he is sinister in Gentleman . Last week’s Oka Manasu also has noteworthy dialogues and scenes that hark back to old-world romance.
A look at a few distinct moments:
Zest for life
The first half of Oopiri stays fairly faithful to its French original, The Intouchables . You can replay the scenes of the French film in your head, even though the emotions are played up to suit an Indian context. Much later, director Vamsi Paidipally makes the story his own with the events that unfold in Paris. Vikramaditya (Nagarjuna), now paralysed neck down and confined to a wheelchair, has lost his appetite for adventure and the zest for life. Even his favourite destination, Paris, doesn’t lift his spirits. He cannot crane up his neck, enough to get a complete view of the Eiffel Tower.
The car race sequence later that night gives him more than an unexpected adrenaline rush. As he guides Karthi to steer the vehicle, the experience of his sporty past comes to good use. They win the race and drive ahead, and the Eiffel Tower shines across the bridge. “We wanted a scene that would visually convey how someone who had become disinterested with everything regains his confidence. Since we are in Paris, Eiffel Tower was the obvious choice to show the moment of triumph,” says Vamsi Paidipally. The crew shot the car chase over eight nights. “When we did the recce, it was winter. The city would get dark by 4 or 5 pm. But when we went to shoot, it was summer. It would get dark only by 10pm and the sun would be up by 4 a.m. That posed a challenge,” he adds.
The big reveal
The crux of director Ravikanth Perepu’s Kshanam is a search for a three-year-old girl, supposedly kidnapped. A sudden turn of events makes Adivi Sesh wonder if there is a little girl at all. Like Sesh, the audience too wonders if he should be staking his all for the quest. If the woman whom he loved is now married to someone else, why does she reach out to him in a crisis? The big reveal in the climax has the answers. His quest has a meaning after all, as Sesh stands in front of a girl whom he discovers is his daughter (months after the film’s release, we guess revealing this spoiler shouldn’t be a crime).
Familial truths
Broadly speaking, Nenu Sailaja is just a regular romance. Boy meets girl, they fall in love and all is well until she pulls back for personal reasons. Haven’t such plots been done to death? Yet, what made this film work is the director narrating simple things effectively. Like, for instance, when the hero’s sister explains to her parents the difference between their family and that of the heroine. The hero and his sister have grown up in a household where they can share all their thoughts to their parents. This channel of communication is sorely missing in the heroine’s family, which explains the unnecessary heartburn.
The watch mechanic
In Vikram Kumar’s science fiction 24 , Suriya exclaims proudly that he’s a watch mechanic, and all events big or small are common for him. In fact, he says ‘I’m a watch mechanic’ 16 times. (Yes, we counted). The last time he says this is at a crucial junction, when he learns the truth about the man who’s masquerading as his father. The church scene where the young Suriya tears the mask off Athreya and declares that being a watch mechanic, he has already tested his time travel device and foresaw the wickedness that’s bound to unleash, is a cracker of a scene.
Lines to ponder over
A.. Aa , like many of Trivikram Srinivas’s films, is peppered with noteworthy lines. The film may not have broken new ground in storytelling, but made up for it with dialogues marked by wit, especially the ones mouthed by Rao Ramesh. Sample these lines:
* “Road widening lo sagam kottesina building la aipoyindhi naa bathuku. Vundataniki paniki raadhu, vadalataniki manasu raadhu.”
* “Satruvulu ekkado vundarra, idhigo mana chuttu ila kothullu, chellella roopam lo thiruguthu vuntaru.”
Fighting it right
In what would have been passed as ‘another fighting sequence’ in most commercial grossers, director Anil Ravipudi made all the difference in Supreme . A pre-climactic sequence in the film featured a fight by a series of differently-abled men, who come together to save a boy, Rajan, trapped by a baddie in an alien land. Physical impairment is never shown as an issue here n this stretch, where the men form groups to tackle the goons. Equally substantiated by logic, the scene brought forth the spirit that the differently-abled ought to possess.
All about execution
One of the rare occasions where RGV’s film made more noise than his tweets, Killing Veerappan was special in the way it ended. Veerappan and his gang are trapped in a secret operation, and the ambulance that takes them along is stopped midway. A series of shootings and a handful of bullets end their lives at once. What makes this sequence is its execution. The scene is dealt with in a celebratory tone, where the shooting resembles a Deepavali night full of crackers and not a gory action sequence. The leader of the operation played by Shiv Rajkumar sips a coffee in satisfaction witnessing the scene, adding his style to the outcome.
Belief over logic
The way director Sasi infuses the underplayed supernatural element in convincing the viewer of his story, is one of the biggest reasons behind the success of Bicchagadu . The sequences that make a billionaire turn a beggar for 48 days, in a bid to save his ailing mother, are contemporary and yet cinematic when necessary. While the darker sides of a beggar’s life are a passé in earlier films, there’s wonderful underdog bonhomie among beggars in Bicchagadu that makes you root for the lead character. The move that pays off in curing his mother is substantially driven by emotion and belief. Belief takes over practicality and how!
