20th June 2005

Telugu audiences have a big heart and they have demonstrated this aspect by consistently appreciating the movies dubbed from Tamil into Telugu. Some of the dubbed movies from Tamil into Telugu enjoyed the same success as the original films. Movies made by Mani Rathnam like “Mouna Raagam”, “Agni Nakshathram”, “Roja”, “Naayakudu”, “Mumbai”, enjoyed the same success as they enjoyed in Tamil language. Dubbed movies of Rajinikanth like “Basha”, Muthu”, Narasimha” and the recently released movie “Chandramukhi” also were very well received by Telugu audience.

Almost all the movies made by Shankar, who is considered as one of the top most directors in India were received very well in Telugu. Shankar’s filmography includes Gentleman (Gentleman in Tamil and Hindi), Premikudu (Kadhalan), Bharatheeyudu (Indian), Jeans (Jeans), Oke Okkadu (Mudhalvan and Nayak in Hindi), Boys (Boys) and the recently released film Aparichithudu (Anniyan). His first film Gentleman dealt with donations in educational institutions, Bharatheeyudu dealt with corruption in the Buearecaracy, Oke okkadu dealt with the inefficiencies in administration by a CM and Aparichithudu dealt with the lethargy, lack of empathy on fellow human beings and the people shying away from social responsibility that is deterring India from realizing its complete potential. All these films have been commercial mass films with a powerful story wrapped in good entertainment package. Whatever harm his prior release Boys did to Shankar’s reputation, his latest film Aparichithudu would repair that damage.

Right from the release of his first film, Shankar has seen success and has maintained this success till his recently released film..unlike Vikram who has been in the industry for a long time before the film Sethu came his way. That Vikram is a gifted actor portraying terrific performances in his films can be gauged by looking at his films released in last 4 to 5 years. His films include Sethu (Seshu in Telugu portrayed by Dr.Rajasekhar), Kaasi (Seenu Vaasanthi Lakshmi portrayed by RP Patnayak), Dhil (Sriram in Telugu with Udhay Kiran), Gemini (Gemini in Telugu with Venkatesh), Dhool (Veedey in Telugu with Ravi Teja), Saami (Lakshmi Narasimha with Balakrishna), Pithamagan (dubbed as Siva puthrudu). The commercial fate of the Telugu versions was no way comparable to the original and most of these remakes except for maybe couple of movies like Lakshmi Narasimha and Veedey were flops. Probably these results show the heavy contribution made by Vikram in the success of these movies in the original version. This talented actor even won a national award for his role in Pithamagan.

Aparichithudu is a very interesting film where the Telugu audience gets to see the splendid histrionics essayed by Vikram. This film took around one and half years to make. While Vikram was busy shooting for this movie, other top hero in Tamil “Vijay” had two big hits - Gilli and Thirupachi. Aparichithudu is a film that will make his fans very happy and make him a strong contender for the top position (of course after Rajinikanth). This film is bound to bring him closer to Telugu audience and like Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan all the future movies of Vikram might be dubbed to Telugu. It is also good to hear that Vikram has agreed to do a direct Telugu movie with one of the top most director of Telugu and that this film is planned to be released in August 2006. We can hope that this film will bring this actor even closer to the Telugu Audience.

The variations shown by Vikram in portraying the character of Ramu, Remo and Aparichithudu and the manner in which he transcends from the character of Aparichithudu to Ramu during the interrogation scene is drawing good applause from the audience and are sure to stand out as highlights of the movie. One more scene that I immensely enjoyed was the fight sequence where the master and students of the Martial Arts school try to protect the Heroine Sada from being killed by Aparichithudu. Shankar’s genius as a director gets reflected in manner in which this scene was envisioned. Though some shots look like the ones we saw in Matrix Reloaded, I felt that in any way does not belittle the excellent way these scenes were choreographed by Peter Haynes.

Through this film, Shankar also proved that even without A.R Rehman, he can deliver a hit and Harris Jayaraj does not let his director down. Picturization of each song is done in different manner. In this movie every time a song comes, you feel that this song is better than the previous songs in the film.

Shankar conveyed the message that he wanted to convey in Aparichithudu in a very interesting and powerful manner by clubbing multiple personality Disorder (Split personality) and Garuda Puranam. I heard that Garuda Puranam has got some very powerful concepts related to Hinduism and this puranam is read only when there has been a death in a family. So the character of Ramu first gets exposed to this Garuda puranam through his Grand mother when his sister dies. By choosing Multiple Personality Disorder Shankar has also played it very safe by justifying the characterization of the role(s) played by Vikram. Whatever the character of “Aparichithudu” does, Ramu is not even aware of. Logically in the scene in which Ramu requests the car owner who purchased a new car to take the injured person to hospital and the car owner refuses…Probably the bigger culprits are those people who did not even bother to stop. At least this person stopped the car to find out what happened..So the people who did not even stop the car probably needed to be punished more. But for Ramu..who is really mentally imbalanced..the culprit was the person who stopped the car but refused to carry the injured person. Aparichithudu punishes this person in the only way that he knew how such a person has to be punished..by resorting to what has been written in Garuda Puranam.

For the rich production values that this film has..it would be a disgrace for anyone to watch this movie in a pirated CD. At the end of first half of the movie, you get a feeling that it is a normal movie. However at the end of the movie, you feel that you have watched a terrific movie.

Sriram Thota
[email protected]

Also read Sriram's other articles
Smoking is injurious to films
Athanokkade Bhadra
Chandramukhi - neither Basha not Baba