By Yashwanth Aluru
The main pillars of present day Telugu Cinema are "Director" and "Star". It means, stars should bear a responsiblity towards a change in the film-making in the industry. But there are some stars who doesn't change. One such star is Energetic Star “Ram”. With this star’s recent film “Shivam” directed by debutant “Sreenivasa Reddy” well known production house “Sravanthi Movies” who produced acclaimed films like “Nayakudu”, “Nuvve Kavali”, “Nuvvu Naku Nachchav” , “Yuvasena” completed 30 years. Rashi Khanna is the female lead.
Plot:
Shiva (Ram) leads his life by helping the lovers who are afraid of their parents, in getting married which in turn creates a lot of enemies for him. One day he comes across Tanuja (Rashi Khanna) with whom he falls in love. The rest story is about how Shiva wins Tanuja’s love and how he encounters his enemies.
Narration:
This plot has two directors, one being Sreenivasa Reddy behind the screen and the other being audience before the screen. Everything doesn’t go out of audience’s imagination. Thus Shivam gives a privilege to audience to direct a movie in his life.
Good things first. The film starts with beautiful slow motion shots. I liked the shot where there are colours on the top beneath which Shiva is shown running. Cinematographer “Rasool Ellore” should be given the whole credit here in this shot. Comedy scenes were good at places. One such in the first half was the scene where Shiva says a fictional flashback to "Shakalaka" Shankar, "Chalaki" Chanti and "Tagubothu" Ramesh. Shankar’s performance in this scene was hilarious. Besides this, performances of “Fish” Venkat and Saptagiri provided ample entertainment. Thus, story, screenplay and star failed to entertain while these comedians succeeded.
All the songs’ visuals were good. I liked the songs “I Love You Too” and “Andamaina Lokam” (shot in Norway) on screen. The aerial shots of the latter showed Rasool’s amazing capability once again.
Coming to the other side, there is no sweet romantic scene between the lead pair. As audience is the second director, he could easily guess that there will come a song if the lead pair comes in a single frame. A fight sequence follows the scene where protagonist and antagonists come under a single shot. Besides this there is an additional drawback for Shivam i.e., runtime. The film ran for 168 minutes with no interesting element in its story nor in its narration. Moreover the director tried to establish Shiva’s character in the pre-climax wasting all the previous runtime, with a silly point. Shiva portrayed as a selfish guy suddenly starts preaching a philosophy at the end, which was not digestive.
Thus, Shivam ends after 168 minutes though there were many chances to end, in the second half.
Coming to the music by Devi Sri Prasad, no song was attractive in audio perspective. I couldn't figure out what’s the need to shoot “Gunde Aagi Pothaande” song in a foreign location.
When talked about performances, Ram got a regular role as his previous films and no need to discuss about how he played it. It appeared Rashi Khanna has got a notable character but director failed to establish it strongly. Abhimanyu Singh did complete justice to his character. Despite senior comedians like Brahmanandam, Jaya Prakash Reddy and Krishna Bhagwan, youngsters like Srinivasa Reddy, “Shakalaka” Shankar, “Fish” Venkat and Saptagiri came up with entertaining performances. Famous singer Mano (Nagoor Babu) appeared as Rashi Khanna’s father in this film. Posani was boring as Ram's father.
Eminences:
Lowlands:
A Telugu version of this review can be found here.
The main pillars of present day Telugu Cinema are "Director" and "Star". It means, stars should bear a responsiblity towards a change in the film-making in the industry. But there are some stars who doesn't change. One such star is Energetic Star “Ram”. With this star’s recent film “Shivam” directed by debutant “Sreenivasa Reddy” well known production house “Sravanthi Movies” who produced acclaimed films like “Nayakudu”, “Nuvve Kavali”, “Nuvvu Naku Nachchav” , “Yuvasena” completed 30 years. Rashi Khanna is the female lead.
Plot:
Shiva (Ram) leads his life by helping the lovers who are afraid of their parents, in getting married which in turn creates a lot of enemies for him. One day he comes across Tanuja (Rashi Khanna) with whom he falls in love. The rest story is about how Shiva wins Tanuja’s love and how he encounters his enemies.
Narration:
This plot has two directors, one being Sreenivasa Reddy behind the screen and the other being audience before the screen. Everything doesn’t go out of audience’s imagination. Thus Shivam gives a privilege to audience to direct a movie in his life.
Good things first. The film starts with beautiful slow motion shots. I liked the shot where there are colours on the top beneath which Shiva is shown running. Cinematographer “Rasool Ellore” should be given the whole credit here in this shot. Comedy scenes were good at places. One such in the first half was the scene where Shiva says a fictional flashback to "Shakalaka" Shankar, "Chalaki" Chanti and "Tagubothu" Ramesh. Shankar’s performance in this scene was hilarious. Besides this, performances of “Fish” Venkat and Saptagiri provided ample entertainment. Thus, story, screenplay and star failed to entertain while these comedians succeeded.
All the songs’ visuals were good. I liked the songs “I Love You Too” and “Andamaina Lokam” (shot in Norway) on screen. The aerial shots of the latter showed Rasool’s amazing capability once again.
Coming to the other side, there is no sweet romantic scene between the lead pair. As audience is the second director, he could easily guess that there will come a song if the lead pair comes in a single frame. A fight sequence follows the scene where protagonist and antagonists come under a single shot. Besides this there is an additional drawback for Shivam i.e., runtime. The film ran for 168 minutes with no interesting element in its story nor in its narration. Moreover the director tried to establish Shiva’s character in the pre-climax wasting all the previous runtime, with a silly point. Shiva portrayed as a selfish guy suddenly starts preaching a philosophy at the end, which was not digestive.
Thus, Shivam ends after 168 minutes though there were many chances to end, in the second half.
Coming to the music by Devi Sri Prasad, no song was attractive in audio perspective. I couldn't figure out what’s the need to shoot “Gunde Aagi Pothaande” song in a foreign location.
When talked about performances, Ram got a regular role as his previous films and no need to discuss about how he played it. It appeared Rashi Khanna has got a notable character but director failed to establish it strongly. Abhimanyu Singh did complete justice to his character. Despite senior comedians like Brahmanandam, Jaya Prakash Reddy and Krishna Bhagwan, youngsters like Srinivasa Reddy, “Shakalaka” Shankar, “Fish” Venkat and Saptagiri came up with entertaining performances. Famous singer Mano (Nagoor Babu) appeared as Rashi Khanna’s father in this film. Posani was boring as Ram's father.
Eminences:
- Rasool Ellore’s cinematography. As said above, this is the most eminent feature of this film.
- Production Values. Despite new director and old story, producer Ravi Kishore never turned down on spending an ample budget to make the film appear rich.
- Songs’ Visualizations.
- Entertainment at some places.
Lowlands:
- Story, Screenplay. Very old story and uninteresting screenplay by Sreenivasa Reddy.
- Runtime. Including intermission, this movie runs for almost 3 hours which is not necessary for these kinds of plots.
A Telugu version of this review can be found here.