Vedam (2010)

In 2 months time, Allu Arjun gave one of the worst movies and one of the best movies of this decade in Tollywood.

Vedam has 5 independent stories in it which are taking place parallelly, and the characters of all the stories converge at the big climax. In my limited memory, I can't remember such a movie being made prior in Tollywood. This could be a risky subject but director Krish (Gamyam fame) pulled it off with great aplomb. I won't brief about the 5 stories but they are very different from each other and there is believability to each one of them although in various degrees.

If an award for the best performance by an ensemble cast in Tollywood is introduced next year, Vedam would be the leading contender. Nobody in the movie messed up there roles. Allu Arjun is an excellent fit in the role of Cable Raju. His performance & emotions at the end where he has a change of heart is the best that he had done until now. After the movie Arundhati, Anushka has become a clear crowd favourite. The whistles and shouts during her introduction scene were only matched by the entrance of Arjun. Anushka has nailed the role of Saroja going from funny to angry to angst with ease. She definitely is one of the best actresses in Tollywood right now. This is my first Manchu Manoj movie. He was an apt choice to play the music loving wannabe rock-star Vivek. Manoj is not only a better actor than his brother Vishnu but he is also choosing his scripts wisely. He created a good first impression on me. I haven't seen Manoj Bajpai fail as an actor and the same goes here. He gives good performance as the victimised Muslim Raheemuddin Qureishi. Nagayya as a poor weaver and Saranya as his daughter-in-law gave some honest & sincere performances as the exploited rural people who wants to educate the boy in their family.

1940 lo Oka Gramam (2009)

In an interview, Narasimha Nandi, the director of this movie gave the following statement. “I held 30 shows for distributors but no one seemed interested in buying the film". After watching the film, I can easily see why this happened. I will bet my laptop that each one of those distributors were sleeping soundly by the end of the movie.

1940 lo Oka Gramam has won 3 Nandi awards & a national award for the best regional (Telugu) language film. As the title says, the film is about the superstitions & class discrimination by the upper caste Brahmins in a village in the year 1940. This film is adopted from the book Ghosha by Gurazada Appa Rao.

The film starts with an intense scene where a man from a lower caste is castrated because of his love with an upper caste woman. So I know (atleast thought) that this is going to be an intense thought provoking film. But by the end of the first 30 minutes, I understood that this is going to be one of the most agonizing & torturous experiences that I will have. Dheekshitulu is a 65-70 year old brahmin widower with no children. He sees the beautiful 16 year old Susheela & goes to her parents to ask her hand. Though her mother is angry with this proposal, Dheekshitulu says that he will give them a lot of kanyasulkam to which they finally agree. 

(To my friends in other countries who don't know about kanyasulkam, kanyasulkam roughly means brideprice whereby sometimes an old brahmin would buy an young bride by giving the bride's parents money as an exchange for the bride. This was prevalent in some areas of South India prior to the 1940s. Thankfully, like smallpox, this practice was completely eradicated only to be overtaken by a more horrendous practice called dowry system which, like AIDS, is unfortunately yet to be eradicated.)

Varudu (2010)

Verdict:  4/10

Fine. Where should I start?

You came across an interesting plot point - "What if during an arranged marriage the bride & the groom decide to not see each other until the last moment of tying the knot". You don't know what to do next with this point. So you go in every direction north, south, east & west, search for all the available movie cliches. You put all those into a movie assuming that audience are going to watch anyway since your hero is a top star & finally what will you get. Presto! you have the worst movie of Allu Arjun's career "Varudu".

In a recent interview, Allu Arjun said, “Gunasekhar narrated me the story in 2 minutes and I liked 4 scenes narrated in that 2-minute narration". After watching Varudu, I was left wondering what those 4 amazing brilliant wonderful scenes were.