Language: Telugu
*Spoilers ahead*
Maha Samudram. The title of the film evokes a sense of vastness and mystery. And when you spilt it into half, you get the two things that are at the core of the film.
The Samudram part is simple enough. Vizag is surrounded by the Bay of Bengal, and the film uses it to set its premise. The port is where the drugs are smuggled back and forth, and everyone wants a piece of the deal. The ocean is where you can toss a dead body much like a banana peel after getting what you need from it. The prefix is the catch here.
In Maha, Aditi Rao Hydari is given a character that does more than cry or die, and she delivers. She is like the sea as well, or so we are encouraged to think. Someone who looks as serene, and someone whose character is just as disastrously abundant in the matters of love. When she decides to love someone, she does not stop to see whether the other person is worthy or willing. A great source of conflict, but the film does not use it well.
For a film that is supposedly about people and their hidden depths, it is tonally abrasive and loud. The BGM and the sound design corroborates that — even a crow that is supposed to be outside calls out as loudly as if it is sitting on your shoulder. Adding to that, the gaze is voyeuristic and ever so slightly misogynist. Shots catering to the predominantly male audience are commonplace, never mind the inappropriateness. But what is supposed to be a tribute to Ramba, the yesteryear star, has cut-outs of her that are conveniently curated for a camera to graze over. When a woman who is not a part of the film is not left alone, you have to take it as your cue to give up.
But you except nothing less from the filmmaker of Rx 100. Although, as compensation, you also expect technique. For all that I did not like about Ajay’s debut, it was impressively made. The writing too allowed the characters to be more than one thing. You never know whose side you are supposed to take. I am not saying he does not try in this film. On the contrary, there are many potential conceits that can result in a film that is far more superior, but those subplots, or sub-thoughts, rather are quickly abandoned.
Take Smitha’s (Anu Emmanuel is good enough) character, for example. If given the chance to be fully formed, she could have added great drama in the second half of the film in relation to Maha, but she is relegated to the corners. In one of the songs —Chaitan’s delicate melodious are marvellous distractions from the testosterone drip the rest of the film is — we see her reading, or pretending to read, Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, which has vague similarities with the film in question. That is the most interesting thing she is allowed to do in the whole film.
Some of it has to do with Arjun (Sharwanand). As soon as the film begins, he is established as the moral core of the film. Everyone is after him, and he is carrying everyone’s burdens. The viewer has no choice but to pick his side and stay there. And no one plays the brawny pawn better than Sharwanand. He is moody and morally rigid, while also being warm and easily suggestible. Even if this contradiction in his behaviour is not backed by good writing, the actor’s earnestness works its way to your heart, and makes you feel for him.
Vijay (Siddharth), the opportunist friend, is the Yang to Arjun’s Yin. He does not have a moral compass of his own, which works well because neither does the film. His character is the most interesting aspect in a film that is written in broad strokes, but it is not fleshed enough to do anything more than the bare minimum necessary for plot progression. Despite that, Siddharth’s innate softness stops the viewer from boxing the character as one thing or the other.
Not just them, the film is generally well-cast. Jagapathi Babu perfectly plays a seemingly nice man with his own agenda, who is literally named Chunchu, a rat. Saranya Ponvannan gets to play a different kind of mother, and she is fun even if she is barely there. Ramachandra Raju, who plays Dhanunjay, is also great as this man who can intimidate from inside a photo frame. Rao Ramesh is great as usual, but he is the only character that sticks out with overt gestures and hazy motives. I mean, he lies to a character, turns back, and laughs visibly.
Raj Thota’s camera shows us a different kind of Vizag that is often dark and insidious, and the skilful production design helps with creating and sustaining this world. Praveen’s editing, too, is crisp, and turns a scene as antiquated as the one that takes place in the railway station into an interesting moment.
I am well aware that the filmmaker has a sensibility that is not readily enjoyable for someone like me, and I accepted that before I went to watch his second film. Which is why I am only mentioning now that Chunchu, who is at least 55 years old, keeps calling women he sleeps with as 'aunties.' How old are these women, man? I understand that there is a language and grammar in display that is decisively coarse. Fine. But what else?
What begins as a film about two friends turns into an underworld saga, but when it tries to get back to where it began, it loses its way. Notwithstanding the complexity it promises, the only intricacy in display is the distance the film and its dialogue are willing to go to find a thin thread of connection between the characters and the sea, so someone can say a ‘dramatic’ dialogue. Speaking of which, people who have spent their every waking minute in close proximity to the sea cultivate a nonchalance about it. You can have your characters say as many heavy/expository dialogues as you want with ‘Vizag’ in it. It is not going to change the fact that the film is getting boring, whiff after salty whiff.
Maha Samudram is available in cinemas.
Rating: **1/2
Sankeertana Varma is an engineer who took a few years to realize that bringing two lovely things, movies and writing, together is as great as it sounds. Mainly writes about Telugu cinema.
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