Prologue:
This review is solely my personal opinion and kindly don’t judge this article as harshly as you judge critics ratings. I watched Vedam in USA a couple of days after the release as I was travelling, tried to reach Krish immediately but he seems to be too busy attending calls only from girls at this moment…ha!

I believe Telugu cinema has been going through the most disintegrating and confusing state for more than a decade now. It all started from the moment we indulged in making non-monolithic cinema, which gradually lowered the very expectations about ‘cinema’ among the common movie lovers. We’ve alienated ourselves from storytelling and resorted to re-hashing films from other successful films. Guess what, ever since that detour, the financial success of Telugu film have reached it’s all time low from the days where even flop films were making profits to the day where even hit films incur financial losses. I believe it’s simply due to the lowered standard of cinema under the cheap excuse called ‘commercialization’ by all the current generation filmmakers collectively. Any girl will be turned off when you talk explicitly about sex and that’s how explicit commercialization lowers the standard of films among public. We’ve just been too lazy to think for the audience and instead chose to follow them rather than lead them. The only way we can taste more financial success is by continually serving what the viewer had been missing in theaters and eventually bring back the lost confidence about good films from the golden era.

Human beings always long for a nice story as much as they long for food. Vedam is one such movie that serves a beautiful story and raises the confidence about the very essence of cinema, in fact one of those films that help bring back the lost golden days of Telugu cinema, days where a movie is not divided into first half/second half, into multiple un-organic tracks such as comedy, family, love, sentiment etc.etc. The value of films like Vedam cannot be simply measured by box-office numbers, but it’s more long-term and comprehensive in many aspects.

Story-Screenplay-Direction:
The beauty of Vedam is that it has the day-t0-day struggle of a common man who wants see his tomorrow to be better than today as the core story element. All the four stories are beautiful etched with this ‘kadha vasthuvu’ and Krish had very successfully and sincerely followed the act structure without distraction. Thus, Vedam is a ‘one piece cinema’ without a bang at the interval but a pause to take a leak, have a snack and get back to the story.

When it comes to screenplay, it’s very hard to establish, develop and conclude four different stories towards one common goal. Krish has done an excellant job at it throughout. I felt the first act and the beginning of second act could have been a little more pacy and cheesy - extending on that point-Manoj’s track could have been a bit more energetic since the rest of the tracks are more ironical due to the limitations of their situations. As the movie progresses, the whole play is beautifully linked up towards the pinnacle. For me, the defining moment of the entire film is when Raju brings the money back and sees Ramulu’s reaction… with a bgm line stuck in my head like a silver bullet ‘mallee puttanee, naalo manishinee’, a classic moment!

Krish had fulfilled half of his directorial job in the very choice of story, disciplined treatment and a clear screenplay. He did a phenomenal job in extracting artist’s performances to their best - that’s how a director’s caliber is judged mostly. He is very successful in maintaining the speed and the length of the movie barring my previous complaint about the beginning, but hey no hard feelings, it’s a beautiful film after all!

Artists Performance
Oh, what can I say about the artists? Bunny, Manoj, Anushka, Sharanya and last but not the least Nagayya…. the one great testament to any artist’s performance is simply by asking yourself ‘did you see a star or did you see a character?’, I’m damn sure what every one would answer ‘just the characters from the get go’!. Bunny, Manoj and Anushka are some of the most versatile acting stars in Tollywood and each one of them is a gold mine to dig for any director, any day. Kudos to the path breaking choice they’ve made and I call them leaders and not followers. They should be extremely proud of their work in Vedam.

Music and Technical Departments:
I respect Keeravani gaaru as the Ilayaraja of Telugu industry especially for his great work in background music. There are movies where he had raised the value of the film to greater planes simply with his sensible music. Though I thought the choice of music in a couple of scenes for Vedam got a bit too far into the melodramatic scale, he lived up to his standards on the whole and contributed some great lines as a lyricist as well.

For a second film, Gnana Sekhar’s cinematography is excellent though I would have liked to see a little more mix of tele-shots in the overall composition. It could have been a deliberate choice of treatment from the creative team. Gnan had great control over lighting and abstract handling of the camera.

Editing of the film was top-notch and Sravan is someone to look out among those great editor stars in the very near future.

Krish’s dialogues are very beautiful and sensible. He should carry this department under his belt through all his films. Art work by Rajeev Nair is excellent, very consistent and complimenting to the tone of the film.

Final Take
Telugu cinema was never affected by un-intelligent filmmakers and un-intelligent films, but we got affected by intelligent filmmakers-who are naturally capable of making intelligent films-yet chose to make un-intelligent films un-convincingly to themselves. Krish is a sensible and intelligent filmmaker and he will make sensible and intelligent films.

It’s a tribute to my colleagues and friends who made Vedam possible, the Prasthanam just started, let’s keep aspiring to make great cinema and enjoy the discipline of making genre based films. Congratulations and Kudos to the producers who fathered this beautiful child called Vedam.

The day we judge a movie as one piece will be the day we can say the importance of cinema is back at its best in our lives. Take Vedam for my word and don’t miss it.