The fine supporting cast includes Naresh (as the local osteopath and Mahesh’s friend, philosopher, guide) and Roopa Koduvayur (a standout as Mahesh’s love interest). In his case, a lot of the humour is underplayed, except for a bit that actually involves a banana peel. I died when he narrated an absurd story about a prostitute and a pimp. His friend looks around to see what’s so wonderful, and his eyes fall on a barbershop where a man is getting his underarms shaved.
At one point, Mahesh’s father gazes dreamily into nothing and sighs that it’s a wonderful world. You don’t need cartoon music to make this irony apparent. It sounds like a line from a Sanskrit shloka in praise of the fearsome half-lion/half-human god Narasimha. The very title gives you a sense of the sensibility at work. The tone is very broad, but also very funny. The music keeps reminding you to laugh harder.īut yes, I laughed a lot.
( C/o Kancharapalem, in many ways, was practically a “Malayalam movie.”) The only real complaints I had were that the second half seemed draggy (which, I admit, could be a result of seeing this story for the nth time), and that the music was too intrusive. So it’s all the more gratifying that Venkatesh Maha sticks to the tonality of both Maheshinte Prathikaaram and his first film. It’s a tougher sell in Telugu cinema, where masala traditions are far more entrenched than in Tamil cinema. This premise was a tough sell in Tamil cinema, where masala traditions are far more entrenched than in Malayalam cinema. The hero is left nursing his wounded pride and the realisation that life goes on. But in Maheshinte Prathikaaram, the “villain” simply vanishes. In a typical masala movie, the second half would simmer with the prospect of the final showdown between good and evil. Mahesh is the gentlest of men, and yet, owing to the culture of masculinity in patriarchal societies, it doesn’t take much to leave even someone like him baying for blood. And, in the process, the film strikes a blow at the heart of the hero-centric masala movie. The great joke of Maheshinte Prathikaaram (Mahesh’s Revenge) is how it completely subverts our expectations of Mahesh obtaining his revenge. Which Telugu-film hero, after all, has failed to do what he set out to do?īut Mahesh was first a Malayalam-film hero.
As this occurs around the interval block, we are primed for a testosterone-fuelled second half. Like in the original, we get the chain reaction of events that happen not to the protagonist but to the people around him (this includes a great gag set around the national anthem), and eventually, Mahesh is beaten up by a hothead. (It’s such a small place.) Mahesh’s days are the same numbing routine of “smile… chin up… shoulder down…” But at one point, through no fault of his, he gets embroiled in a street-fight. It follows Mahesh, a photographer who owns a small studio where he takes pictures of people who either can’t tell a good picture from a bad one or don’t have a choice. The way all this is handled made me recall the original film, and yet not miss it. And the couple gets a lovely moment of closure. That’s what Swathi (Hari Chandana) does, but the writing makes her seem practical rather than a vamp. He’s so sweet, so warm, so overall- nice, you wonder how any girl could leave him for another man. Satyadev Kancharana plays Mahesh like the love child of a teddy bear and a cup of condensed milk. This naturalness extends to the performances. The actors come in glorious shades of brown: no one’s glammed up with makeup. Uma Maheswara Ugra Roopasya is located in Araku Valley, a hill station in Visakhapatnam district that’s home to tribal communities and Telugu-Christians - and not one face seems out of place. You see this sincerity in the setting, the casting. Venkatesh Maha, the writer-director who made C/o Kancharapalem, fares much better with this material. The film was shot like a blingy commercial, and Priyadarshan’s stagey, nineties’-style direction felt positively archaic when compared to Dileesh Pothan’s lived-in textures. There were laughs, sure, but you also winced if you’d seen the original. He turned a subtle dramedy into one more suited to his loud, slapsticky strengths. Given that a lot of Malayalam cinema would practically pass for “art cinema” in the bigger, brasher neighbouring industries that speak Tamil and Telugu, how does one tackle Dilee sh Pothan’s Maheshinte Prathikaaram (2016)? Two years after the Fahadh Faasil starrer came out, Priyadarshan gave us an answer with his Tamil remake, Nimir.
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