Continued from Part 1

Part - II

When the age of age-old heroes was ruling the roost dictating box office returns, Vamsi picked up the case of the proverbial ornate piece of the Telugu film - the heroine, and built strong situations around her allowing her to pursue the possibilities that tested her mettle through intelligence, patience and perseverance, than showing her the easy way out of the tough and troubled times through the regular song and dance routines, or weep and wallow techiniques. manchu pallakee, sitaara, praeminchu pellaaDu, anweshaNa, Aalaapana, Lawyer suhaasini - these movies bear testament to the fact that the female character, the focal point in all of the above, was only provided with the right tools to pull herself out of the tough situations she finds herself in, stand on her feet and brave the world, than allowing the character to lean against the stronger shoulder of the hero and depend on him to chart out the course of her life.

It is interesting to note that though the single note of a world built around revolving around the female character is played in all those aforementioned movies, it is the application of this milieu to different genres that is unique to Vamsi's ability to apply similar situations to varied circumstances. While Manchu Pallaki, a straight drama, deals with a woman trying to mend the ways of 4 wayward youths and showing them a world that they never knew existed before, Preminchu Pellaadu, a comedy piece, deals with a woman trying to the mend the relationships between 2 families and showing them the better colors of world through love and caring. While Anweshana, a suspense thriller, toys with the life and the ambitions of a wide-eyed girl venturing into troubled waters, Aalaapana, a musical set piece, finds a damsel in distress finding solace at the feet of art and dance.

Adapting his own work "mahallO kOkila" to the silver screen, sitaara brought out Vamsi's best as a story teller, script-writer, visionary beyond his years, and an ear that even surpassed his vision. sitaara, and maharshi to a certain extent, are his only introspective movies that revolve around the plight of the central characters while viewing the entire world through its lens in an almost first person narrative, and understand what they have to undergo to find themselves at peace with the world around. Symbolisms galore, sitaara had Vamsi exactly pin pointing the mindset of a girl, held captive in her own house (and in her own mind) by rules and regulations, trials and tribulations, screaming out for a voice of understanding and reaching out for a hand of compassion. sitaara is torn between her own fear masquerading as loyalty towards her family and her own inability to break free from the clutches of traditionalism, when fate gives her a chance in the form of Raju, a street performer.

The images of a lark held captive in a "bangaaru panjaram" before the arrival of Raju into sitaara's life and its gradual transformation from being a reticent one to one which speaks her mind freely and sings her heart out merrily, brought out in such vivid fashion in the song "ku ku koo, kOkila raave, raaNee vaasamu neeku endukO, rekka vippukO chukka landukO (lyric: Veturi)", demonstrates in ample measure Vamsi's vision of extending a metaphor to literal terms and depicting a literal situation in symbolic terms. In one heart rending scene when Sarath Babu comes to know about his loss in a court case, on which their (his and his sister sitaara's) entire lives depended on, Vamsi takes the dialogue out of the scene to convey sarath babu's mindset and instead relies on imagery - Sarath Babu lighting up his cigarette standing underneath a birdcage, the voices in his head drowing down his weak voice of reason, sitaara looking at her brother anxiously, sarath baabu extending his arm slowly and burning the wings of the birds in the cage up above, the violins screeching simultaneously in tandem in the background, sitaara muffling her scream in shock and disgust - to drive home the point in less words and more images.

Parallel this story and imagery to a similar one set in reverse - a free bird, with neither care or concern walks into a well laid trap willingly (and unknowingly at the same time) and by the time it realizes of the danger, it has already set in motion a series of dangerous incidents out of which there is no escape. Collaborating with Yandamuri Veerendranadh, Vamsi's anveshaNa remained one of the best suspense thrillers ever made in Telugu. sitaara and anveshaNa had this similar thread of damsel in distress, metaphorized in picking up the life of the birds, sweet but short lived, free but always on the look out for the imminent danger, spreading joy all around while hiding their inner turbulence all the time. If sitaara plays out as an introspective piece, anveshaNa opens up the playing ground in a broad way by throwing in enough portions of edge of seat suspense, and nail biting thrilling situations into the mix.

Similar to Yandamuri's abhilaasha, the suspense in anveshaNa is written into the framework of the script and when the final moment of revelation occurs, and the motivations and the machinations of the killer are revealed, the audience is caught with total surprise when they retro-fit the pieces of the puzzle and find all the loose ends tightened up and gaping holes covered up. Vamsi revisits sitaara's imagery of birds in captive and takes it a step further with anveshaNa. Just like the score of Bernard Hermann for the movie Psycho, which comprised of entirely stringed instruments, Vamsi's interpretation of mood swings of the lead character (essayed by Bhanupriya) completely revolves around the flaps of the wings, the songs of gay abandon (or the shreiks of anguished cries), the freedom of their spirits (or the fetters of the traps) of the birds. With manchu pallaki, sitaaraa, praeminchu pellaaDu and anveshaNa (and to some extent, aalaapana and Lawyer suhaasini), Vamsi covered full spectrum from female emancipation to female empowerement adding visuals to his structure and adding aurals to his visuals.

(Cont'd in Part 3)

P.S. Guess who collaborated on the script with Vamsi on Lawyer Suhasini?

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