Chiraiya has other bigger problems though. The series suffers from the excess in many ways. Relentless in its sense of sermonising, it doesn’t know where to pull the breaks. Every scene is underlined with a statement, and every statement is underlined with heavy-handed treatment just so that we don’t miss out on the theme. The show has no trust in its viewers. While there are a few good men in the series, the show is not afraid of pointing fingers at the root problems of our society, and how it’s still governed by patriarchy. But after a point, with so much finger-wagging, it must physically hurt.
The real mystery isn’t about solving the case, but rather about figuring out the inner selves of each other by sheer accident, even if it doesn’t necessarily link to the murder. These interactions are messy, raw, and revealing, never losing steam. There is a lived-in quality to the dialogue, to how the ramblings run over each other in a spacious room full of people trying to be heard. The banter sounds real, including the forced incorporation of a few bad jokes because they are better than awkward silences. So many interesting conversations unfold that after a point it ceases to matter who killed Sohrab — yet the mystery remains, simmering underneath and never letting you off the hook. The narrative often risks capsizing while keeping track of too many characters, diluting its own impact as a thriller, but the conversations bring us back each time.
A brilliant Manoj Bajpayee and Divya Dutta anchor this dry, caustic narrative about middle-class morality and Mumbai housing crisis that works for most parts.
However, the way these stories unfold alongside each other makes the show more complicated than complex. You are disoriented by the lack of direction. The more interesting figures like Ma’at Saab, Prashant and Waqar frequently drift away from the proceedings, while other subplots about counterfeit currency and the kidnapping of a young kid take precedence. There is no focal emotional point to the universe here, and Sankalp struggles to rise above this inherent flaw. Of course, a big-scale narrative like this would have many players; but after a point, it becomes too convoluted for its own sake, busy being indulgent while the viewer gets distant. There is also a good backstory twist around episode 4, which strangely doesn’t add too much to the existing conflict between the two rivals.
However, what lacks depth is the writing itself. Debutant writer-director Joseph Clinton forgets to build on the core tenets of his premise; i.e. the pressure young aspirants undergo at competitive exam institutes, or the rank-based sections where a student feels the constant need to be ‘promoted’ in order to feel worthy. It’s not a well-rounded universe in AIR, where you also get a glimpse of the toppers and the dark horses. This show has a very limited landscape, where it chooses to purely focus on the three boys, instead preferring to lend screentime to a subplot about an admin officer and his secret crush which adds nothing to the proceedings. The series spends too much on the fun and frolicking, and less screenspace on the actual conflict.
The show often gets stagnant in its proceedings. For all its anecdotal plot points, Home Town is devoid of any drama or high stakes. It is established early on that Srikanth’s father has invested in a policy to finance his son’s higher education. Every once in a while, the writer-director reminds us of this in a dry manner, barely attempting to increase the drama. The track around Srikanth’s romantic pursuit with Sameera, a Muslim girl who proudly wears her identity and aspirations, brings some respite as well as hope. However, the writer’s stubborn resolve to keep his protagonist’s challenges ‘chapterish’ spoil the proceedings. The adolescent romance has some sweetness, but provides no insight into the lovers' inner lives. You move on from the segment before you could emotionally invest into it. This criticism holds true for all the five episodes.
It’s not that Kingdom is a bad film, but the film never soars or lives upto the true potential of its themes. Gowtam’s previous work Jersey was as simplistic and straightforward a story as they get, riding entirely on its emotional weight. On the other hand, Kingdom has too many things on its platter, and ends up doing a disservice to most of them. But Kingdom’s ambitions go far beyond its action pieces or world-building. The film rests on the relationship between Siva and Soori, and how it evolves once they reunite under different circumstances. However, the film never makes peace with its core premise. You can see Gowtam Tinnanuri wants to make a grand epic that almost has a mythical quality. At the same time, embedded in the story is this inherent need to drive on emotional beats, which this film struggles to do.
There are a few awkward decisions in the early portions — the prologue, while admirable in its visual ideas (a talking radio, a killer insect) feels a little overbearing in its treatment. The initial attempts at humour (courtesy of Hyper Aadi’s character, mostly) befuddle you. There is a dream song sequence that belongs to the 90s. And yet, despite an awkwardly set up premise, Kishkindhapuri somehow settles down fine into a narrative filled with plenty of intrigue and thrills. The film finds a unique backdrop — a haunted radio station — and knows how to play around it. There are some convenient devices later on, but there is also a lot of conviction at work here. Koushik Pegallapati maintains a fine balance of intensity and kitsch on a writing level, as Raghav and Maithili find themselves deeper down a tale from the past that’s the cause of their woes.
I went in with some hopes for Mass Jathara, but it didn’t take the makers 15 minutes to squander all of those expectations. From the establishing sequence, underlined with a derivative background music piece for our hero figure Laxman (Ravi Teja) that only reminds us of other recent crowd-pleasers like Coolie and OG, it becomes clear that Mass Jathara has no intention of doing anything new or different, and wants to remain content with its derivative choices. Almost every scene here reeks of a certain cynicism stems out of a strong self-belief about what ‘commercial cinema’ means and must be relegated to. Anything outside that box becomes risky, so we must avoid it — Mass Jathara plays by this rule annoyingly to a fault. The narrative sticks to the oldest conventionals of masala movies. There is no sense of mood or emotional integrity to the proceedings.
Telusu Kada is undoubtedly outside the regular Telugu film idiom. It is complex and messy in all the interesting and enjoyable ways, and yet it’s not messy enough. Riding high on emotions, this film needed a balanced perspective of all its key players. We get a glimpse of the grey gamut of emotions that both Raaga and Anjali go through after taking the tricky decisions that they do. But after all the narrative play, Telusu Kada is eventually eager to sell us easy solutions. It breaks many barriers and is yet cautious of going all the way. Perhaps these are the perils of making a niche yet star-driven film in the Telugu industry; you can flirt with the boundaries, but only to an extent, no matter how admirable the star is.
