Spoilers ahead…
After a point, the non-stop beauty of the visuals – and the effort to write scenes that contain such beauty – begins to suffocate the romance.
Dulquer Salmaan should get more films which have him in an unshaven, unkempt look. That’s one of the thoughts I had while watching Hanu Raghavapudi’s Sita Ramam. The actor is his usual smart, charming self, but towards the end, with a beard and with messed-up hair, we seem to be looking at a whole new performer, revealing whole new dimensions of pain. He plays Lieutenant Ram, who is in the Indian Army, and we have to wait a while for our first glimpse of him. Until then, we get the film’s premise. The Pakistan Army and the Mujahideen are setting out to break the unity of Muslims and Hindus in Kashmir. This portion is set in the 1960s, and we keep switching to the 1980s, where Rashmika Mandanna, a fiercely patriotic Pakistani, is entrusted with a mission involving Lieutenant Ram.
You can read the rest of the review here:
https://www.galatta.com/telugu/movie/review/sita-ramam/
And you can watch the video review here:
Copyright ©2022 GALATTA.
Baradwaj Rangan 
vijay
August 5, 2022
BR if I assume you follow these films thru subtitles, then wondering how you really get the ‘bite’ in the dialogue that you mention via translated lines. The accents and pauses that a native speaker in the audience watching this film gets could get lost even with some of the best subtitling around..this has discouraged me from pursuing some of these regional films
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anand
August 5, 2022
Is this movie similar to The Last Letter from Your Lover(2021)
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krishikari
August 6, 2022
Good subtitling is possible, conveying bite or bile, but my issue is it’s still often very generic, not that you could possibly lose nuance. I noticed that in a Malayam film I recently watched, they didn’t even bother to translate “Avan oru thenga pollum kadam tharan illa” – “He doesn’t even have a coconut to lend me.” They just subtitled it to “He doesn’t have any money.” This is just sheer indifference.
Also having someone not shaving when he is in pain, isn’t that a big cliche?
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sanjana
August 6, 2022
Sometimes they come up with their own innovations!
He does not even have a coconut becomes
He does not even have a tomato or
He does not even have a walnut and so on.
Really fun to read those subtitles!
If you want a perfect subtitle, You need to employ 2 or 3 dedicated experts who dont lazily go to google translate. And you have to pay them well. Who will take that trouble with that expense?
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vijay
August 6, 2022
..and sometimes they do perfect literal translations where it may not be exactly needed..like in songs..
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vishal yogin
August 6, 2022
I second the question/comment by Vijay to BR.
How do you appreciate the nuances and intricacies watching a movie with sub par subtitles in parts ?
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amith
August 6, 2022
@krishikari yes, it’s certainly possible. I think it’s the director’s responsibility to make sure their film is conveyed well across the releasing centres/platforms. Vetrimaran does a really good job with this (probably because Visaranai screened at quite a few film festivals and he knew the importance). I’d assume even a Tamilian would have found it difficult to follow the initial passages of Vada Chennai and yet the subtitling work was nothing short of brilliant.
I have read somewhere that filmmakers like Del Toro personally take part in the sub works. It’s especially painful to see the measured dialogues of Shyam Pushkaran and Alphonse Puthren being butchered by the subtitlers.
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karzzexped
August 6, 2022
Just putting it here. Watch from time-stamp 0:50. This gets me. Every. Single. Time. 🤣
Now mind you this is the subtitled version of the tamil song Chinna Thamarai from Vettaikaran in SonyMusicSouthVevo, and the joke is NOT about his various wigs.
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ravenus1
August 6, 2022
When you watch cinema from across the world, you are at the mercy of the subtitlers, and hope they’e done the best possible job. Even then one can’t be sure. But it’s not possible to learn every language with all the nuances and subtleties. Sometimes we see home video releases coming out with “New and Improved subtitles”, and forums are often abuzz with people discussing the accuracy of subtitles for Japanese and Hong Kong films. India is a world within itself with its multiple number of major languages and we will see the same debates here. Beyond a point a film lover must put his faith in the skill of the subtitler and concentrate on the overall impact of the film, which is why films with simpler dialog and a more prominent visual element are more widely appreciated.
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Severus Snape
August 6, 2022
karzzexped: Lmao, that was too good! Reminded me of this site: https://paagalsubtitle.tumblr.com/. This is a goldmine of hilarious mistranslations; I keep going back to this site often.
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karzzexped
August 6, 2022
@Severus Snape: Like how the legendary Mr. Peter Griffin from the Family Guy puts it – “This is Ha-larious”
Thanks a bunch for sharing this. Didn’t know of this existed.
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Srinivas R
August 7, 2022
This film was released in Tamil too. Guessing BR watched the Tamil version.
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amith
August 7, 2022
@ravenus1 I don’t think it’s even possible to carry all the subtext of the actual dialogue especially when it heavily references culturally specific events, idioms or proverbs. It occasionally happens when we watch Korean thrillers. However, the minimum expectation is for the sentences to look natural in the output language. Most of the recent Korean, Spanish and French films do a pretty good job in this regard. Subtitle for a lot of South Indian films looks off, not because they don’t communicate the nuances but because it seems someone made a word by word translation and then used MS grammar check to rearrange those words. It’s harder to overlook or have faith in the subtitlers when they write grammatically passable but laughably unnatural English.
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Satya
August 7, 2022
Spoilers *
You know, when the mind says “all it needed was just a proper and honest conversation”, it is a proof of how joyless film watching has become these days. And Sita Ramam, for all ot merits and poetic moments, made me say so all the way to the end. When the destination matters more than the journey, I guess it is worth making peace with what I saw and move on. Congratulations to the team, though. Such WOM and love from many in the Telugu states is precious for a love story like this.
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brangan
August 7, 2022
I follow a decent amount of Telugu. But…
When I say I love Gabriel Garcia Marquez, what I am really saying is that I love his subtitler. But that said, the architecture of the novel, the characters, how they are shaped and what they do, the events, the pacing — all this is universal.
I review films from that universal viewpoint WITH the understanding that when English-language critics raved about, say, the French New Wave films, they did not get every cultural nuance. Even in Tamil films, I may not get everything.
And yet, the “bite” I can recognise from the scene I mentioned in the review. I can recognise the stark beauty of that scene, which stands out from the opulent beauty of the other ones.
Reviewing art is not a perfect undertakinf. But if you connect to the soul of the film, that takes you past the language.
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H. Prasanna
August 7, 2022
“Reviewing art is not a perfect undertakinf.”
Well puf, BR.
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rsylviana
August 7, 2022
@BR – Man, you love Cinema and your job! It seeps through every word of your previous comment.
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vijay
August 7, 2022
BR, the universal viewpoint does have its limitations when you are reviewing films where the dialog and the language is the mainstay, like say a David Mamet film. Taking an extreme example, would you get Shakespeare in the way it is meant to be, translated to Tamil ? the playfulness with the words, the language is everything and all that is lost even if the translation is impeccable. Likewise with say Abhirami’s acting in Virumandi, a big part of which is the Madurai slang/accent/diction which she imbibed to a large extent. This universal approach may work better with say a 2001 Space Odyssey. Fortunately music doesnt have a lot of these issues.
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KayKay
August 7, 2022
vijay, but the fact remains, as someone above pointed out, to truly grasp all the nuances of the language, you need to be proficient in it. I love Umberto Eco’s The Name Of The Rose, and one of my book club mates who is Italian tell me that in it’s original text, the language is even denser and richer. But I’m not about to learn the language and read it in it’s original Italian anymore than I’m going to read One Hundred Years of Solitude in Spanish or Anna Karenina in Russian. You got to have faith in the translators. With respect to movies, yes there are some truly god awful subtitles out there but most of the ones on streaming do the job for me as I mostly rely on the actors performance and body language to convey the message.
You look at Lady Farmer’s (my own subtitling here) example above: “Avan oru thenga pollum kadam tharan illa”. Yes LITERAL translation is “He doesn’t even have a coconut to lend me.”
But this would, in my opinion still be a head scratcher to, I don’t know, someone watching it in Japan, wondering “Why coconut?” without the understanding of the proliferation of coconut trees in Kerala and how essential a part of Kerala Cuisine the coconut is. A better contextual translation would be “The man doesn’t have a cent to his name to lend me”, or “That miser will not part with even a half cent to loan me” which can be more universally understood. Else, “He doesn’t have money” works for me and it’s the actor and how the scene is shot that sells it to me.
By the way, I can NEVER watch Virumaandi without subtitles. I understand Tamil but the Madurai slang and the speed in which it is delivered means many parts of the dialogue frequently goes over my head. But Abirammi was just so damn brilliant she effortlessly conveyed her frustration at her frequently dim husband to be!
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vijay
August 7, 2022
“A better contextual translation would be “The man doesn’t have a cent to his name to lend me”, or “That miser will not part with even a half cent to loan me” which can be more universally understood”
maybe, but it also becomes more generic, losing its regional/ethnic context. And how would you subtitle truly thamizh swear words like Oru mayirum pudunga venaam or such and create the same impact in a non-native viewer’s mind..:-) Or all those typical village metaphors or idioms used in Bharthiraja movies. Its one thing that we may still get enough to appreciate those films beyond all these translation/cultural gaps, but they do limit us from getting the impact fully.
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krishikari
August 7, 2022
Else, “He doesn’t have money” works for me and it’s the actor and how the scene is shot that sells it to me.
oKay,oKay the bland translation works for you, but my very small point is that while it is functional, it doesn’t convey the sarcasm, which accumulated with all the other lazy translations in the movie makes it a less interesting film. That is a disservice to your audience and to the film maker. Even someone from another culture would guess that the coconut adds some regional colour to the sentence. Agree though that acting and staging can convey as much as the words spoken.
On global platforms it’s so important to invest in professional subtitling and I really appreciate when it’s done well. Personally, I prefer to see the regional quirks translated even if I don’t fully get the significance.
Here is a little interview with a professional subtitler about his art: Listen from 23:45
https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy8xN2FmMzU0L3BvZGNhc3QvcnNz/episode/NjgwNGQ2ZGItYjFkMC00NTE2LThiN2YtZjgyNDA3YTZmYzEy
@sanjana Who will take that trouble with that expense? It is the OTT platform often, not the film producer. I imagine it would be worthwhile for the theatre owners too. (If anyone wants Tamil French, I know a guy.)
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KayKay
August 7, 2022
“maybe, but it also becomes more generic, losing its regional/ethnic context”
Better than “he doesn’t really have a coconut to lend”, no? Tell me which non-Malayalam speaker is going to understand that?
As for “Oru mayirum pudunga venaam” correct CONTEXTUAL translation should be “You don’t need to do a fucking thing” which conveys the sarcasm and irritation the original line in Tamil is meant to convey as opposed to..what? “You don’t need to pluck out a single strand of pubic hair?”
Regional/Ethnic context means dick to someone not from that area. I’m from Malaysia…many,many,many Indian movies have regional/ethnic sub text that sail pass my head like an expertly thrown frisbee, but I still enjoy many of them. So all that brilliant subtext is lost on me, which amounts to what exactly, 20%, 30% of a movie? If a movie is ALL subtext, then chances are it was never made to travel outside it’s regional boundaries, and more importantly, that’s not a movie I’d check out anyway.
Not sure what we are debating here, but if the point is, we need more accurate sub-titling, then we’re singing the same tune. But expecting even the best sub-titles to capture every regional, ethnic, cultural, socio-political nuance is a tall order.
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KayKay
August 7, 2022
“but my very small point is that while it is functional, it doesn’t convey the sarcasm, which accumulated with all the other lazy translations in the movie makes it a less interesting film. That is a disservice to your audience and to the film maker”
Agree with this, totally. I’m for better sub-titles which capture the TONE of what the speaker is conveying for non-native speakers to better understand the context of the scene. You can’t capture every nuance is the point I’m trying to make. So a balance between toss-away generic one liner sum-ups of like 3 minutes of dialogue and very very detailed translations taking into account specific slang, sarcasms, jokes and euphemisms specific to a region must be found.
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dechaitanya
August 7, 2022
Loved the movie, especially the big screen experience.
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madhusudhan194
August 7, 2022
Reminds me of a conversation from another thread – when the discussion is not about the film and veers off into a different tangent. Not complaining but it is surprising that out of 25 odd comments, hardly a couple of comments actually talk about the film.
Watched it, loved it. The performances are fantastic – Dulquer charm is on steroids here and it works beautifully with the film’s melodramatic tone. As BR said, the film was therapy to the eyes. I am a sucker for well made melodrama and this one was just wonderfully made. It’s one of best tearjerkers to come out recently. Watched the film in tamil and found the dubbing to be quite good actually.
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Satya
August 7, 2022
madhusudhan194: IIRC it was Uppena.
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Voldemort
August 7, 2022
Big sucker for period dramas. Add a sad love story to the mix and you have me, hook line and sinker.
Watched this today and I have to use a phrase from your Maara review – was a total spa for the senses. And this is not to say this is just a visually beautiful film. It’s a wonderfully lovely drama as well. *Spoiler alert * Loved how it is mounted on an epic scale – Everything is beautifully connected and tied up into a neat butterfly-shaped ribbon. Sita just doesn’t fall for a lonely soldier Ram. He happens to be a very patriotic soldier, thus resulting in the AIR interview, leading to him telling he has no one, leading to the journalist talking about him on air, leading to Sita finding out he was the one who saved her, leading to her writing to him. We take out one of these events, and the whole thing falls apart.
I thought the main trouble would arise because Princess Noor Jahan’s brother would find out and try to get rid of Ram or something along those oh so cliche lines. It was refreshing to see that that was only a minor plot point.
I laughed at several places, smiled at some, misted up at some and straight up wept at some towards the end. The Brigadier being a spy was something I never saw coming but the other 2 twists -the real person behind the facade of Sita Lakshmi and the truth about who Waheeda was, though I didn’t guess, were beautifully set up well before. Hints were dropped early on – Sita is travelling in a first class coupe, is sitting on the first row for a show, etc. And yes, I knew Ram would have found out about her identity but it was still very beautiful watching it play out.
Two of the moments (among the many) that quite hit me like a brick on the face were
1. When DQ says, neenga ponga sir aana naa anatha illa. Damn.
2. Prakash Raj asking her “I have all rights to not answer but since you are the richest woman and a princess you want me to answer you” at which Sita breaks down and says something along the lines of “I’m not asking as a princess but as Seetalakshmi.” Yeah, we’ve seen this at least 2 dozen times, but it was so stirring someone behind me shouted “Hayo”
I watched in Tamil and it was just as good – the translations were mostly done really well which is generally not the case even in large dubbed films.
I’ve been longing for a good love story for a while now, and boy, am I satisfied.
P.S. Couldn’t help but notice how we had a Radhe Shyam in the beginning of the year and now a Sita Ramam, both from Telugu, both set in the 20th century, being (or trying to be in the case of RS) sprawling romances about charmingly beautiful people. Not doing the blasphemy of comparing both, though.
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Voldemort
August 7, 2022
My apologies for posting the same comment thrice. Kindly delete 2 of it if that’s possible, BR sir.
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Voldemort
August 7, 2022
Also, Sita’s character reminded me of the Kanchanamala and Moideen story.
Krishikari : Personally, I prefer to see the regional quirks translated even if I don’t fully get the significance.
Same, I love these little tidbits native to that culture, too. On repeat viewings or on watching some other film of the same language/region, it may click and lead to an “Oh right” moment which I enjoy. Or even googling a particular phrase or term. It doesn’t have to be informative or a fact, just a random phrase or word would still kind of make me understand and appreciate it even more.
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SG
August 7, 2022
Hi BR, might be asking for too much but can we expect a classic BR review of The Legend Saravanan movie any time? 🙂
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Sachi
August 9, 2022
^ totally agree, would love love a review of The Legend Saravanan for the blog at least BR
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brangan
August 9, 2022
Voldemort: Was RADHE SHYAM also this good-looking a film?
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vijay
August 9, 2022
“Better than “he doesn’t really have a coconut to lend”, no? Tell me which non-Malayalam speaker is going to understand that?….
If a movie is ALL subtext, then chances are it was never made to travel outside it’s regional boundaries, and more importantly, that’s not a movie I’d check out anyway.
”
That’s the point I was making..that no amount of precise subtitling(even if somebody takes the trouble to do it) eventually helps you fully get a movie thats loaded with ethnic/contextual/regional flavor or cultural subtext .A painfully literal translation like “he doesnt lend even a coconut..” will sound silly anyways to a non-native viewer.
Now, if its a generic action film then maybe all this does’nt matter much but a lot of these malayalam movies are’nt. Hence, the very first comment I made in this thread to BR regarding the ‘bite’ in the dialogue….If a Hindi viewer not familiar with Tamil is watching Virumandi purely with the help of subtitles he has already lost quite a bit of the intended impact in my opinion, not to mention the cultural nuances as well which poses another challenge besides just the language gap.You are two steps away all the time..Subtitling then, literal or generic, is a compromise at best.
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Severus Snape
August 9, 2022
BR: I haven’t seen ‘Sita Ramam'(and I’m happy it worked for many people, I’m a sucker for romances, too), but I did see ‘Radhe Shyam’ on a decent-sized TV after it came out on Prime. There was something very fake about the visuals and conceits, though I think part of it is due to the writing, which made the characters seem more lunatic than romantic. The acting of the lead pair didn’t help matters too.
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madhusudhan194
August 9, 2022
Anybody else got strong Kaatru Veliyidai vibes? – good looking leads, Kashmir / war setting, Soldier hero, lovely visuals and music, hero captured as a war prisoner. The stories couldn’t be more different. But nice to see two very different love stories in the same setting with a lot of other similarities.
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sanjana
August 9, 2022
Subtitling then, literal or generic, is a compromise at best@vijay
Of course it is obvious. But there is no other option except to learn about the cultures, traditions, habits, lifestyles of people from different regions. Easier than learning those languages.
Though I dont know the language well, I understand about the importance of coconut and coconut trees for Keralites. I can relate to the sentence. After watching many malayalam movies, I am familiar with many things about keralites belonging to different religions and their traditions.. Like christians love beef curry and so on. About the significance of retreat for kerala christians. The banana and rubber plantations, the lushgreen mountains, the rivers, the lakes, the tiled houses, the dressing ways etc. Malayalam movies made me aware of all these things more than any book could have.
Most of the south Indians who are away from their native states know more than 3 languages.
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Satya
August 9, 2022
madhusudhan194: I saw the KV similarities in th setting and filming, but I felt this resonates more with Roja towards the end. And then the rich woman pretending as a commoner leading our hero, who would usually be out of her league, run after her was very much like Malliswari (the Venkatesh starrer).
*** Spoilers ***
Sita Ramam didn’t work for me because of many reasons. But one of those, is the casting of Vishnu Sarma character. It was an interesting take on the traitor archetype, and I wished for someone like Ajay to play it.
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vijay
August 9, 2022
“But there is no other option except to learn about the cultures, traditions, habits, lifestyles of people from different regions. Easier than learning those languages.”
I didnt deny that. But for a professional reviewer or film critic who is trying to evaluate a film, its a bit more than just ‘learning about cultures’ which is at stake. Even for native language films, because of cultural gaps a lot of nuances may be lost on the reviewer. These language gaps only add more to the gap in understanding..
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vijay
August 9, 2022
Actually, if your motivation was to just learn about what happens in Malluland or their culture, these days you have plenty of youtube videos, documenataries or other sources at a click of a button. My motivation to watch these films is not to learn their culture(which may certainly happen unintentionally in parallel) as much as it is to get a wholesome experience and to have a tangible measure of the film itself in my head. I do rely on subtitles at the end of the day as there is no other choice but knowing well that its a huge compromise depending on the kind of film it is.
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sanjana
August 9, 2022
Though I know certain languages very well. for example telugu, I also scan the subtitles as a matter of fact. Sometimes some characters talk too fast, have local accents , mumble. To get broad meaning, subtitles help to move on.
I think our esteemed critic is more concerned about form first and content he can make out. There are so many aspects of the visual experience of cinema like photography, direction, music, acting etc. and language is one of them. One may give more importance to the language nuances and expecting the same from the critic is not undesirable. But one should think from the point of critic also and his limitations in certain aspects. We cant expect a general practitioner to do intricate surgery. Or expect a cancer surgeon to do root canal as perfectly as a trained dentist.
When reading something, we will get everything. That is why a written work is more satisfying for some of us. When a book is adapted as a film, it is risky. You will either love the book more or you will love the film more. Depends.
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Voldemort.
August 9, 2022
BR : There were some outstanding locations and beautiful sets in the first half of Radhe Shyam like a Hogwarts express like train going through the woods, picturesque European streets, gardens, ice capped mountains and the like. (Apparently the budget was north of some 200 crores or something) But like Snape here says everything felt super fake – the dialogues were extremely cringeworthy (I want flirtationships/ Einstein of Palmistry), great stars Prabhas and Pooja Hegde’s overacting, terrible forced comedy, that it left you with secondhand embarrassment.
Also, vfx in the second half (special mention to the titanic copied shipwreck) was really bad.
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kaizokukeshav
August 9, 2022
Like for how Sita Ramam was compared with Radhe Shyam given both have similar titles from two biggest mythological stories of Hinduism. Also yes, Radhe Shyam was most Disneyesque movie made in the South IMO.
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Madan
August 9, 2022
sanjana : And to add, we just assume that because we know English, we get everything in English language films from the US or UK but we, again, miss out on a lot of regional subtext (of course assuming the film is rooted in the extant universe and not multiverse etc). My father can understand all the Yes Minister comedy but even some of the more ‘universal’ Blackadder skits are harder for him to appreciate. On a similar note, I found Tina Fey’s autobio Bossypants and started reading thinking I would enjoy it but found it was written so much for the ‘inside’ audience that I couldn’t, in spite of understanding every word.
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Anu Warrier
August 9, 2022
The whole idea behind subtitling, especially for a universal audience, is to ensure that the idea is not lost but that it is acceptable to the majority of the people. Netflix, for instance, insists on common usage for specific terms. Which is why you get ‘burger’ for vada pao. You can crib all you want about regional ‘nuances’ being lost, but keep it regional and you lose a major part of your viewing audience.
I subtitle old Hindi films for a friend who cleans up the audio/video and uploads them – the brief is don’t translate literally (in any case, any language into English or vice versa) because most times, it just doesn’t make sense. And like Double Kay, I wouldn’t have translated that sentence into “He doesn’t have a coconut to lend me.” I would have perhaps said, “He doesn’t have a cent/penny/paise to lend me.”
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brangan
August 10, 2022
Hearing that this has become a blockbuster both in Telugu and Tamil. Good for them!
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vishal yogin
August 12, 2022
I finally got to go on the last day of the first week yesterday, and I should say that for a 3:40pm show, it was almost housefull @pvr kurla, Bombay.
Success indeed!
I instantly fell in love with the stunning visuals so intricately laid out – it was a constant tug of war with the eyes flitting back and forth to the subs.
Certain stretches evoked memories of,
Kaatru Veliyidai
Geetha Govindam
Mausam (2011)
I’m wondering whether the film was consciously or otherwise depicting the practicality of dharma as is strongly connected with Lord Rama in Ramayana.
The name of the movie is an incomplete fragment in Sanskrit, and thus perhaps in itself is a succinct pointer to the happily ever after not materializing.
सीता – कर्ताकारक
Subject
रामम् – कर्मकारक
Object/destination
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Satya
August 14, 2022
I don’t know why, but for the last few months in Hyderabad (at least per my knowledge), multiplexes are screening Telugu films with subtitles. Including this one and the more recent Karthikeya 2. What’s more interesting is the way the font, colour and size complement the film we watch, unlike a standardised / blanket job. But outside Telugu states, I don’t know why the same film doesn’t get subtitles. Am I missing something?
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Voldemort
August 14, 2022
As per your review, the run time is 2.03 hours, but where I watched, it was somewhere around 2 hours 40 minutes. Were certain portions cut, and if so, wonder which ones?
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vishal yogin
August 15, 2022
@Voldemort
The runtime listed as 2:04 is wrong everywhere except on Wikipedia and imdb.
The correct runtime is indeed 2:40.
I checked the watch when watching the show because I was aware of this discrepancy and was wondering if anything was cut if it was 2:03
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Voldemort
August 22, 2022
Apparently the budget for Sita Ramam was only 30 crores (though it had a decent sized star in Dulquer). It still looked so gorgeous. Goes on to show that simply splurging doesn’t guarantee anything.
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Srinivas R
August 22, 2022
@Voldermort – Perennial issue of money going to the stars and not to the movie
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Rahul
September 11, 2022
I saw it on the small screen(Amazon Prime), so that may have coloured my experience, but I was underwhelmed. Firstly, I could not buy into Ram’s superheroic accomplishments in the army. The way he was able to take on the villagers, convince them, and get a confession from the agent was too much for me.
Secondly, fantastic visuals apart, the concept of falling in love by writing letters to each other did not make sense to me because of the personas of Dulquer and Mrunal. Here, we have an uber-confident and dashing hero, who does not seem like he would have any problems meeting or talking to girls in real life, somehow zeroes in on letters from an anonymous girl and falls hopelessly in love with him like he is Surinder Sahni from RNBDJ. Also, we have Mrunal, who is by no means a demure damsel, having the guts to say no to the Sultan of Oman, no less, but still has to go through this long roundabout way to reach Dulquer. As I have heard from my mother and father, dating did happen in those days. Once again, I know that this is not unusual in romantic movies, but the suspension of disbelief did not happen for me.
Rashmika and her journey was interesting to me , though, and there was suspense as to how things would resolve, which kept me watching.
One easter egg that I noticed is that Dulquer says “Charlie speaking” in the first scene, in an obvious nod to the Martin Prakkat film.
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brangan
September 11, 2022
Rahul: I knew this film would not work for some people watching on OTT. The big screen experience just blows you away, but the huge screenplay issues become more obvious on the smaller screens.
This is a very “surface” movie, and while that is not a problem as such, this particular romance needed more, I felt!
From my review:
After a point, the non-stop beauty of the visuals – and the effort to write scenes that contain such beauty – begins to suffocate the romance. The poetic quality begins to feel strained. It’s certainly charming, but it plays mostly on the surface, without much edge or depth. The film’s best scene involves a sex worker, and the casual bite in the dialogues in that stretch left me stunned. I would have liked some of this bite in the romance, too. Given the ending, “light and breezy and charming” isn’t enough. There needed to be more pain, more intensity in the emotions…
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Anand Raghavan
September 11, 2022
Shyam Singha Roy and this, soulful love stories in recent times. Stunning visuals and the old world style music added to the charm.
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SR
September 16, 2022
Talk about a movie making one feel ones’ age. This movie was definitely not made for people in my demography. I see the craze of this movie among younger people . I see people coming out teary eyed after watching it in theaters. I felt nothing of the sort while watching the movie.
While watching, I was thinking that the female lead, though pretty ,isn’t a great actress and is a bit stilted. I was thinking how if the female lead was a little shorter, round faced, big eyed and naive looking , the love story would have worked better for me (very much a personal preference and conditioning. Precisely the reason ok kanmani worked for me and thattathin marayathu didn’t). Here the heroine looked too self assured, statuesque and smart for me to believe that she will do all the silly things she did in the movie.
Also since one is very much aware of all the off screen details of all the actors’ personal life, I couldn’t buy into DQ’s orphan act as someone who sacrifices himself for his country. I am a bit too familiar with his privileges as a star son, his expensive car collection , comfy life and vacations he takes, for me to fully involve myself in his sympathetic love story. But he is definitely a good actor.
All the above factors are definitely not the movies’ fault, but my own personal taste and preferences stopping me from fully appreciating the film. The story and the screenplay was also a bit too silly and simple for me to enjoy. I feel that if the movie was well made, I wouldnt have been dissecting the actors’ shortcomings, but would have lost myself in the world building in the film. But the movie sadly wasn’t engaging. It felt like a mishmash of old movies , and….as if trying a bit too hard .
Also very telling is the fact that i cried pretty badly in the climax of the movie charlie, when rakshit breaks down. It could be because one knows about Rakshits’ journey in the movie industry, his hard work , failures and heart breaks . So maybe what i responded and reacted to in charlie is also to Rakshit the person and not just the movie story per say.
This is becoming more and more apparent to me as I watch movies these days…that how an actors’ personal life colors my appreciation of his/ her movies. How I wish I could go back to the days when movie stars maintained some mystery and wasn’t so readily available to the public.
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Jayram
September 18, 2022
If DQ really said that this is his last film in the romance genre, then this is the perfect one for him to sign off with. I watched in Telugu and was swept up by the lead pair, the visualizations, music, story and direction. Finally, Hanu Raghavapudi gets that blockbuster he wanted and I’m happy that this Telugu film starring a non-Telugu lead pair has done extremely well. I agree that it’s mostly surface level and doesn’t contain much depth, but as Satya says, “the destination mattered more than the journey”.
It does start off shakily with Afreen’s character and her anger not being well defined, but when DQ shows up, the film jumps to a higher level and is riveting from then onwards. Yes, perhaps the falling in love could have been more convincing, but the chemistry between DQ and Mrunal was convincing that I didn’t bother too much.
I’m glad that Noorjahan/Sita Mahalakshmi is made to be an empowered, independent woman, who despite the conflict of revealing her true identity to Ram, can make her own decisions, knows what she wants and doesn’t hesitate to talk back to her older brother (Jisshu Sengupta). Maybe Aditi Rao Hydari would have been a better choice, but Mrunal makes a good debut. DQ just owns the role and emotes really well, despite Telugu not being his mother tongue. He may have been super heroic in his actions, but it was not made to be hero-worshipping which was a relief. And 100% agreed with madhusudhan19 that his charm is in on steroids.
As for the Brigadier Vishnu Sharma traitor character, it was brave for Sumanth to take on the role even though he is not a great actor. Ajay may be too familiar to those of us who have seen him as a villain, but to answer Satya’s question I think he would have been more convincing; I loved his performance in Ishq (2012 Telugu movie).
Rashmika as Afreen and her journey to discover the truth was interesting, though I wish she emoted better during the reveal scene. But she was decent. On the other hand, I enjoyed Tharun Bhascker as Balaji a lot more and I’m glad he was not made to be a love interest to Afreen. Vennela Kishore was comically delightful as well as Sunil.
Also, special shoutout to GVM for dubbing himself in Telugu.
The movie may work better on the big screen, but it’s still a grand watch on OTT!
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tonks
September 20, 2022
Content over form for me still. So the gorgeous visuals and eye candy leads didn’t compensate for the poor script, and the irritating dialoguey melodrama (you fix the operation, I’ll fix the bulb). Nor was I moved or convinced by the love story. I adore movies with people getting to know each other and falling in love over letters (Guernsey potato peel romance, You’ve got mail, Kathal kottai) but I found this one superficial. There was no back and forth, it was just one way, till he hands over the return bunch and the way the romance was depicted I found childish and shallow. I guess I am in the minority.
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brangan
September 20, 2022
tonks: This is not exactly a good example of a movie whose form is interesting. It has pretty people, pretty sets, pretty costumes – and for me that made the film a very watchable big-screen experience.
But “form”-wise, there isn’t much the film does. “Good looking” is not really “form”. It’s how you use the medium, and here that aspect never rises above the scale of the production.
Now THALLUMAALA – that’s a great example of a film that uses form interestingly and bends rules. It’s not just about the quirkiness factor in the visuals, songs and dialogues. It’s about how this quirkiness is organically woven into a story told in a very “Gen Z” way — transcending conventions like “character arcs’ and so on.
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bts
September 20, 2022
The reason DQ is being typecast in love stories is bcoz of ok kanmani. He was average in his other movies until then. He took direction too well in kanmani and did a fabulous Job that tamil and telugu audience can see him only as the lover boy.
I remember him saying that he wasn’t very comfortable doing that role.
Mani Ratnam does use malayali actors well in his movies. Mohanlal in iruvar and dq in kanmani .
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tonks
September 20, 2022
Yes, my son forced me to sit and watch Thallumala (which gave him an adrenaline buzz when he watched it on the big screen) on OTT last weekend and I could understand why he liked it. (I remember telling him BR would have liked this, too).
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tonks
September 20, 2022
I found the techniques used in Thallumala a little similar to the 2018 Spiderman movie (Into the spiderverse)
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Madan
September 20, 2022
Done with this and loved it. I am amazed to hear that zoomers are loving it because this is such an old fashioned romance so maybe it’s true what Wimbledon told Fed in 2021,that absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Romantic tragedy rather than comedy which used to be a genre in our cinema a long, long time ago. But without descending into relentless handkerchief abuse territory a la Idhaya Kovil, Kanni Raasi or Anand. The device of stoutly anti Indian Afreen having to perform a mission perhaps helps steer away from the traditional weaknesses of the genre. Nice to see Sachin Khedekar too after what feels like eons (wiki tells me he is quite active South side lately).
This will go down or already has gone down as yet another instance of Bollywood ceding away its ‘territory’ by making its own hit formulas verboten. This was kinda Veer Zara-ish (though I haven’t dared watch that one and am referring more to the plot type than the style) and by making a Telugu film about a pan India topic, they have captured ground Bollywood used to occupy. It’s such a weird time. You have Telugu in particular but also KGF and even Charlie in some ways embracing a more nationwide context while Bolly makes films either for New York or for sub regions within the North via its small town films(a welcome development which however has had negative implications commercially speaking).
I loved Charlie too. When I read SR’s comment, I feared this might be a Telugu Raja Rani but it was anything but. I guess it comes down less to demographic but whether a particular film speaks to you, which is such a subjective and elusive thing.
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