We’ve just entered the second week of June and nearly ninety films have hit the theatres, most very fleetingly. Peruse the list and a majority of the titles seem unheard of. It was around September of 2015 when this figure was reached and this shows that film production has not slowed down irrespective of the fact that the success-failure ratio remains as lopsided as ever. By the way, the new definition of ‘hit’ is a film that recovers its cost. The most testing time spent in a theatre was enduring Ravichandran’s ‘Apoorva’. He made his directorial debut three decades ago and it has been a steady descent since, quality wise. ‘Apoorva’ is hopefully the nadir. ‘Premaloka’, inspired by ‘Grease 2’ was definitely refreshing aided largely by Hamsalekha’s hummable tunes. Mani Ratnam, whose brother distributed the Tamil version, loved the first half and told me Ravi was a talent to lookout for. That’s how Balu Mahendra described Mani to me. While Mani blossomed, Ravi wilted, succumbing to self indulgence. Any film that fails to integrate form with content will fail. A majority of Ravi’s hits are remakes. His fans loved him for importing heroines from other languages and revelling in shooting risqué numbers. Age has obviously not mellowed him. ‘Apoorva’ is about a middle-aged man donning a weird wig, seemingly battling male menopause, behaving like a juvenile experiencing his first infatuation. It’s a series of monotonous, painful close-ups with the pair indulging in an insipid conversation . The huge movie hall felt more claustrophobic than the elevator the lead pair was trapped in. The film lacks love, laughter and anything to do with normal life. You can immediately make out that Ravi did not have a script. Shot, scrapped and reshot nearly entirely, in a set erected on the terrace of his residence the film - what you have is more the random ruminations of a troubled mind. Bottles of paint keep toppling and paper in various hues fly around. Thankfully, he’s grown over the flock of birds flitting around I guess, more because of restrictions rather than choice.
On the first day, in a half empty hall, people stretched uneasily, buried their heads in their palms, mumbled and started trickling towards the exit. The rest, like me awaited a miracle that never happened. Ravi, disappointed at the lack of support from the industry called and admonished a famous director who worked as his understudy. “You guys come to me only when you want me to perform the ‘muhurtha’ of your films,” Ravi apparently said. A director, famous for his lyrics that sound more like a conversation, promptly penned and got a letter published praising Ravi and his contribution to Kannada cinema. Another director I know who hasn’t watched the film did the same. Sudeep pitched in too. A man who fails to recognise that he’s made a mistake can never correct himself. While remaking the taut Malayalam medical thriller ‘Traffic’, Ravi unnecessarily added songs and the hero breaks into one even as a heart is being transported for transplant. That he’s being referred to as a legend is an insult to names like Putanna Kanagal, Raj Kumar and his own father, N. Veeraswamy who produced some classics before succumbing to his son’s whims.
For cinematic detox, after ‘Thithi’ and ‘U-Turn’, there’s ‘Godhi Banna Sadharna Maikattu’ free of chills, thrills and frills directed by a remarkably self-assured debutante, Hemanth Rao. He makes you laugh, cry and think. In recent times it’s for this film that I’ve been approached most frequently to help secure tickets. Families are flocking to the theatres. Anant Nag’s performance is not surprising. It adds value and helps enhance a film with an unwavering plot and remarkably well-etched characters enacted by gifted performers. Hemanth proves that if the writing is good then technique is just a tool. There’s still hope for Kannada cinema.
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