Think Nene Raju Nene Mantri (NRNM), director Teja’s comeback film and the first thing to hit the mind is the easy narration and how simply he explained the nuances of politics, the hunger for power and juxtaposed it with commercial elements.
A candid chat with the director reveals how much he struggled with the script for over two years, tuning and fine-tuning it enough before presenting it to producer D. Suresh Babu. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Of the three films that hit the screens this Friday — director Boyapati Srinu’s Jaya Janaki Nayaka , actor Nitin’s Lie and Teja’s Nene Raju Nene Mantri — the third is easily drawing full houses. Across the two Telugu-speaking States, industry figures point out that NRNM was grossing an average of ₹ 5 crore a day by way of ticket collections and this certainly is no mean achievement.
Interestingly, the hero Rana Daggubati is understood to have signed up for Teja’s film ahead of his stupendous success, S.S. Rajamouli’s Bahubali , but it so happened that Teja’s film took a mite more than planned, to be canned and released. But the happy-go-lucky guy that the director is, he is not overly concerned about it.
Coming to the speciality elements of the film, Teja brushes it off, saying there is nothing really special about his characters. Rana is portrayed as a normal human being with all the usual facets of life that any other man has. Of course, here, he has a wife in Kajal Agarwal, with Catherine Tresa playing the role of the ‘other woman’ in his life.
“I have incorporated all the shades of life that a person undergoes in normal life and thankfully, it paid off,” he says, with a hint of modesty. The Tamil and Malayalam versions are to be released in a few days, after actor Ajith’s Vivekam releases. One thing that certainly needs to be mentioned is the enormous levels of confidence that director Teja has maintained all these years. The best of his films include Chitram in the year 2000, Nuvvu Nenu (2001) and Jayam (2002). And the long wait of 15 years has paid off.
