Sai and Shujath talk Cinema

If I were to list one movie as my favorite, this one would be it. This movie was released when I was 10 and this was the first movie that made me think about cinema. For the first time I understood what the purpose of a director was. For the first time I was really aware of things like shots, cinematography, editing, screenplay, background music and so on. I realised movies were not about stories. My love affair with cinema had started.

Coming to the movie, there is so much that one can talk about. First and foremost is Ram Gopal Varma (my favorite director) who wrote and directed the movie. His inventiveness, vision and direction is visible in almost every frame in the movie. The bank robbery and the following chase at the start of the movie makes you realise that this is a director’s movie and that this director is different and way ahead of most others in terms of creativity, imagination and technique. The performances by Sridevi and Paresh Rawal were unforgettable. The soundtrack as well as the background score by Keeravani still sounds fresh today. The humor in the film is unlike the slapstick that was prevalent in Telugu films at the time (and even today to a large extent). Situations like Satya and Chandu introducing themselves and shaking hands after being on the run for a while, Satya and Chandu crossing over from one balcony to the other, Satya scolding Chandu while Nayar is waiting to know where his money is and many more show what humor is all about. The characters ranging from Satya to the “kindinti Uncle” were all realistic. Satya’s conversations with her mother on the phone, the auto driver, with her colleague in the office, with Chandu in the jungle when she gets scared and many more are remarkable and seem straight from life. There is so much to discuss about this movie that I could do a feature length commentary, but I will stop for now.

It has been written sometimes that this film was loosely-based on “Romancing the Stone” or “Bird on a Wire”. However, this film has no resemblance to those movies except that it belongs to the same genre along with many other movies.