Athadu: Trivikram's Full Potential

Sorry for not having images in this. Technical issues. Yea even tiny bloggers have those. They suck real bad. Just watch the movie instead of the pictures.

The re-release culture has arrived to Telugu cinema. Pokiri and Jalsa have been released again for Mahesh Babu's and Pawan Kalyan's birthdays. Prabhas' Billa and Chatrapathi are on their way. Amidst all this, one movie that doesn't get it's full due is Trivikram's Athadu. Now, I want to watch that in theatres.

Athadu is a 2005 genre blending (not bending) flick starting Mahesh Babu, Trisha, Prakash Raj, Nassar and many other actors. The reason I say genre blending, is because, it does everything. And all that is done to near perfection. I watched it for the first time when I was very young. My sister kept talking about it, and I didn't understand what it was about. I do have a flash of a memory where Mahesh kneels down to Nassar but that's about it. Curious, I watched it during the lockdown. It could've been the best movie watching experience during that period. It really works, even 17 years later. 

It has 3 tracks in the film. One, the Pardhu and family track. Two, the Nandhu track. Three, the Prakash Raj investigation track. I cant decide which one I like more. So let me just rave about all three of them one by one. 

The simplest of the three, and the most commercial, is the Pardhu and family track. When Nandhu comes to tell the family about Pardhu's death, they mistake him for Pardhu, not having seen their kin since he was a child. Nandhu sees the joy on their faces, and can't get himself to tell that Pardhu had died. Upon seeing the grandfather, he can't even bring himself to tell that he wasn't Pardhu either. So, he lies. Abaddham aadadu, mosam cheyyaledhu. 

All the scenes in the village are really wholesome, most of them being comedy ones. There's not much to write about these ones, because it's OG Trivikram style comedy. They make me laugh every single time. Brahmanandam, Trisha, Giribabu, D. Subramanyam, Brahmaji, Hema, and Giridhar have a lot of fun with the stuff given to them. The love track is a little bit problematic in some parts, I'll give it a leeway because of the time it came in. My favourite parts from this family track are the scenes with Nassar and Sunil. The Nassar scenes work very well.

But I need to talk about how great the scenes with Sunil are. Ramana (Sunil) is introduced as a comedic character, and is in the strongest scene of the film, not as a comedian. A scene you need to know before I talk about the strongest one is the one in which Sunil tells a man about why Pardhu ran away. At the end of the narration, the location changes to a temple, where it's just Sunil telling Nandhu. It transitions from a comedic to a serious scene very well. Kudos to the editing. Anyways, in the end, Sunil tells Nandhu about how the temple priest's son died due to an unsafe prank played by Pardhu (which was why Pardhu got scared and ran away). He also tells Nandhu how the priest's daughter is suffering from a heart issue, and that they need a lot of money for the surgery. That night, Nandhu and Ramana go to the priest's house, posing as travellers who were hungry. Ramana reminds him that this isn't a small help, it's a heart operation, Nandhu affirms that he knows what he's doing. Ramana then rhetorically asks, Mee intlo chettlaki dabbulu kasthunnaya?  (Is money growing on the trees at home?) Nandhu then replies, Veella intlo kasthe saripodha? ( Isn't it enough if it grows on theirs?) He then proceeds to throw a big wad of money in the middle of their garden.

The strongest scene I was talking about is the one where Ramana and Nandhu are sitting by the lake.  Ramana comes running to Nandhu at the lake and tells him that Lord Rama and Hanuman visited the priest's house last night. He jokes about how he's become Hanuman and Nandhu's become Rama. They talk for a while and Nandhu says that he isn't a good guy. Ramana jokes that he isn't Pardhu, which leads to Nandhu confessing. He tells him how he's accused of killing a politician when he didn't even pull the trigger, and how the police is after him. Ramana listens to him and asks him why he told him so much for a simple question and that what if he tells all this to someone, to which Nandhu replies something which still blows my mind every time I watch the movie. He replies, Nuvvu adigavu ani nenu cheppaledhu Ramana, nenu nammanu kabatti cheppanu. Endhuku nammanu ante...Hanumanthudikanna nammakamainodu Ramudiki inkevaru unnaru cheppu. (I didn't tell you because you asked, I told you because I trust you. Why I trust you is because there is no one more trustworthy than Hanuman for Lord Rama.) Just outstanding writing. Well I've talked too much about this. Now let me praise the Nandhu track.

The Nandhu-hitman track is a very stylishly made one. Mahesh Babu wears black jackets, and is cool and calm. Out of the very few dialogues, there are great ones. Sayaji Shinde has a few "politician does campaigning" dialogues and they are a fun satire on the politicians now. This track lays the groundwork for the rest of the movie brilliantly. During the course of this part of the story, there are undertexts which appear in green, giving the location and time, which makes it feel like a thriller. One of them says, Raathiri...Time...Watch pancheyatledhu' (Night...Time...The watch isn't working). Special mention to the song 'Adaraku' which is a slick intro song. Kota Srinivasa Rao gave a phenomenal performance.

My favorite part of the film now! The Prakash Raj investigation track. Prakash Raj is effortless as the witty and smart CBI officer. He has a fun scene with K. Vishwanath. This track builds the suspense. Alfred Hitchcock says: 'If there are a few people at a table with a time bomb underneath, and if you don't tell the audience about the bomb, it'll give them 15 seconds of surprise and shock when it goes off. But if the audience knows, it'll give them 15 minutes of suspense.' The same principle is used by Trivikram here. We know that Pardhu is Nandhu, we also know that Prakash Raj is looking for him, but the characters in the film don't know either. Now, imagine if Prakash Raj was introduced as a random CBI officer in the pre interval scene. It would've not had the tension, and that is why I feel sad that Trivikram is making such mediocre content despite having immense talent. My second favorite shot of the moving comes right after the interval, after Nandhu is interrogated. He talks Prakash Raj into giving the visiting card layered with a powder to take a finger impression. He then blows it with a swagger only Mahesh Babu has.

Athadu shines because these three tracks complement each other and they let each other make their own mark. Trivikram writes it so. You can see the similarities between this and Khaleja, his second best, also a Mahesh movie. Remember the Rama-Hanuman comparison? They are compared to Gods because they helped. The God in them came out in the form of their help. In Khaleja, the whole film builds up to the point where Mahesh realizes that you are God to the person you helped. In Khaleja, Mahesh has a issue, he runs away, but comes back and resolves the issue. Similarly in Athadu, Mahesh has to find out who killed the politician and evade the police at the same time. He runs away at first, which kills a person. Later, after telling Pardhu's family the truth, he goes back and solves his problems, and returns to a peaceful life. 

Technically too, this film was ahead of it's time. There are two shots I want to talk about. One is in the beginning, where the camera zooms out from Sayaji Shinde on the stage far away to Nandhu sitting in the under construction building waiting to strike. The other is in the climax, during the church faceoff. Nandhu is in the air and the police have surrounded him. The frame freezes, goes around Nandhu 180 degrees and then plays. These two shots must've costed them a lot of money. Mani Sharma composed a great score. The fights by Peter Heins are very modernized, they were the stuff you wouldn't see in a 2005 film. The editing feels jarring in maybe 1 or 2 places but really helps in maintaining the flow of the film. The cinematography shines, especially in the action scenes. The screenplay is Trivikram's best (There's a Chekhov's gun in a commercial Telugu movie!) So is the direction.

I would like to finish by saying that if Athadu and Khaleja were box office successes, we would've been seeing a much different Trivikram now. We wouldn't have been seeing him do cheap tricks for making money. We would've seen him grow as a filmmaker and make great ones like Athadu. 

Nijam cheppakapovadam abaddham. Aa abaddhanni nijam cheyalanukovadam mosam. Abaddham aadanu, mosam cheyyaledhu.

Ee vayasulo naaku kavalsinavi nijalu kavu, gnyapakalu...