Watched Maheshinte Prathikaaram, The way this movie goes on would make you feel relaxed,the beauty of this movie is that its cast and crew selection all the actor in film potrayed their characters very well. Not a single dull moment. Fahad faasil's acting was too good.I thoroughly enjoyed the film. Maheshinte Prathikaram,later came to be known as Pothettan Brilliance was one of those movies that taught me that we dont need a big story or big actors for pin Films I Watch: 2016. ‘Maheshinte Prathikaram’ revolves around the concepts of love and revenge. The movie is directed by debutante Dileesh Pothen, Aashiq's Abu's associate. The film set in a rustic background has Fahad Fazil playing a studio photographer who takes wedding photos and is the owner of a studio in Idukki.
In a chat with TNM, the ‘C/O Kancherapalem’ director talks about his second film ‘Uma Maheswara Ugra Roopasya’ and choosing Satyadev to play Fahadh’s part.
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In 2018, with a quaint film set in a sleepy town in Vizag, director Maha Venkatesh gave Telugu audiences a story that brought with it a wave of change for Telugu cinema. C/O Kancherapalem came as a breath of fresh air with its four heart-warming tales of love and 86 debutants in the cast. Maha won critical acclaim for the film, which went to multiple film festivals across the world.
Maha is now all set to release his next film Uma Maheswara Ugra Roopasya in April this year. An official remake of Maheshinte Prathikaram from Malayalam, Maha’s second film has actor Satyadev reprising the role of Fahadh Faasil from the original. Praveena, the producer of C/O Kancherapalem, is co-producing the film along with Mahayana.
A bitter-sweet revenge story, Maheshinte Prathikaram is still etched in the memory of the Malayali audience for its delightful portrayal of the lives of the common people in Prakash, a town in Kerala’s Idukki district. Maha’s Uma Maheshwara Ugra Roopasya is set in Araku, a hill station situated in Andhra Pradesh, another small town like Kancherapalem, close to Vizag.
Maha calls UmaMaheswara an “intern project”, a film before his next big budget directorial that is on the cards.
“I came across Maheshinte Prathikaram during the post-production of C/O Kancherapalem. I really liked the film and had then decided that if I ever get a chance to remake a film, this would be my choice,” Maha tells TNM.
In a candid chat with TNM, Maha tells what made him go for a remake after the phenomenal success of C/O Kancherapalem (for which he had written the script too), on choosing Satyadev to play Fahadh’s part, and why it is not right for directors to underestimate the audiences’ intelligence.
After a movie like C/O Kancherapalem that was hailed for its raw and novel content, what made you choose a remake of a Malayalam film for your next?
When I first watched Maheshinte Prathikaram, I thought this was something that should be made for the Telugu audience. I didn’t immediately want to make a remake, but thought if I ever get a chance to do one, this would be my choice.
In 2018, we made Kancherapalem with hardly 15 members in the entire crew. So my plans next were to make a moderate budget film which had a larger cast and crew. My next directorial is a big-budget movie, so I wanted to make an in-between movie, which wasn’t as small as Kancherapalem and also not as big as my next movie would be. I gave Praveena all the scripts I had written but nothing fitted the budget bracket we had in mind. That’s when Praveena asked if I wanted to do any remakes and Mahesinte Prathikaram was my first choice… UmaMaheswara will be our intern project for making a bigger film.
Remakes come with a lot of challenges, especially when the original is a celebrated movie. So what made you pick a tough one like Mahesinte Prathikaram?
This is the first question that Praveena asked when I suggested Maheshinte Prathikaram. But it’s been three years since its release and no one has picked it up yet for a remake. I met Dileesh Pothan and Syam Pushkaran before making the film and came to know the movie was inspired by a true event that happened in Idukki. So I took the screenplay as it is and tweaked it a bit to suit the sensibilities of Telugu audiences. But let me tell you, Satya is going to look very different from Fahadh in Maheshinte Prathikaram. This is Maha’s Mahesh and I have added bits to the screenplay from my experiences of staying at Araku.
Also, comparisons to Kancherapalem should be drawn with my next film, which is my original content. Uma Maheswara is my directorial project and it is told purely out of my love for its original version.
Fahad Fazil in Maheshinte Prathikaram
Maheshinte Prathikaram is a movie that gave a lot of importance to its geographical location and the culture of the people in Idukki. Does Uma Maheswara also follow the same course?
The nuances in Maheshinte Prathikaram are tiny; one needs to understand the culture to realise why Syam has added a particular bit to the script. During the pre-production of the film, I used to clarify my doubts with my cinematographer who is a Malayali. Also, the film in Malayalam is a little dramatised. What is pbr image windows 10. So, wherever I wasn’t able to add more than what Syam has written, I added my style of filmmaking to it. Talking about cultural nuances, so far for our audiences Araku has been a place where actors go to dance between trees and flowers, but after watching Uma Maheswara, Araku is never going to be the same place for them ever again.
After Kancherapalem, you could have chosen any big name to play Maheswara’s character. How did Satyadev come into the picture?
I wanted a person who looked like a layman to play Uma Maheswara’s role. If I throw Satya into a crowd, it’d take people some time to notice that he’s an actor. While making casting choices for Uma Maheswara, we had written down 52 names that would fit the bill for the lead actor. We started striking off one name after the other and finally zeroed in on Satyadev, who was also my first choice for the role.
After Kancherapalem, small budget films have been working extremely well with Telugu audiences. Do you think the next wave of change in Telugu cinema is finally here?
Audiences are now like the spectators of a football match. They know when it’s a foul and when it’s a goal. They know what is coming up next. And so do our movie viewers who are tired of redundant movie plots.
The success of small films like Brochevaevarura, Agent Sai Srinivasa Athreya clearly points to one thing: that our audiences are not dumb. They are craving new content. I wouldn’t say small films come without flaws. For example, C/O Kancherapalem lacked technical sophistication. But the audience accepted it for its novel content. I think we should stop questioning a viewer’s intellect. Audiences are much more intelligent than directors think them to be.
There have been a slew of remakes in Telugu cinema, most of them tanking at the box-office. Why do you think Uma Maheswara will be different?
Whatever I have done for Uma Maheswara is from the perspective of the audience. And not just the Telugu audience, something that will have a universal appeal. I started my career in films being a part of the audience. I grew up in Vijayawada where they were close to 30 theatres and I used to watch a film every single week. I think we’re confident of having done a good job because at no point have we questioned the intelligence of the people who will be watching the film.
With Uma Maheswara, is there a fear of being stereotyped as a director who chooses only slice-of-life subjects?
I don’t have that fear since this is only my second film. My third film is going to be a different setup where you can label it neither as an urban nor a rural film. I am also collaborating with a friend of mine who is doing a proper urban film. Whatever you have seen in Kancherapalem or will be seeing in Uma Maheswara, none of that would be there in my next film.
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'Mahesh Bhavana is a young man who is beaten up in the town's marketplace and who consequently pledges that he won't wear his slippers again, till he avenges the beating.'
'But Mahesh can't get his revenge that easily -- his punisher is off to a distant land. So what does Mahesh do? He waits. And the town waits with him. And we wait with him.'
'But Mahesh can't get his revenge that easily -- his punisher is off to a distant land. So what does Mahesh do? He waits. And the town waits with him. And we wait with him.'
'Maheshinte Prathikaram is one of those movies where I didn't know what hit me. I don't remember another movie -- at least in recent times -- that I surrendered to with such happiness,' says Sreehari Nair.
IMAGE: Fahadh Faasil in Maheshinte Prathikaram.
Is Fahadh Faasil India's finest young actor?
When he's waltzing through a role, Fahadh seems to be in complete possession of a luxury that only the screen's greatest icons and cricket's greatest batsmen have: That extra bit of time. For, when he is in his elements, nothing about Fahadh looks rushed or hasty. He buys that extra time from us. And we give it to him almost readily.
That's quite unfair, one might argue. So to make matters more 'balanced' perhaps, the universe unleashed another trick: It took away a part of Fahadh's hairline. A near-balding Fahadh could not be that interesting to look at, right? But Mother God, how wrong we were.
For, his steadily-thinning hairline only made Fahadh's eyes more prominent. And they are wonderful eyes; not just when they are angry or stunned or verily sentimental; but even when they are unsure or forlorn or merely surveying a room. Ghoulish eyes.
The prominent eyes are what truly give Fahadh Faasil his stride, and when in his stride with all that extra time he buys from us, Fahadh scorches the screen down. Very slowly.
![Prathikaram Prathikaram](https://www.filmibeat.com/img/2019/01/x03-1547553122.jpg.pagespeed.ic.rbu4GHolI9.jpg)
However, this screen-scorching Fahadh is not the actor we meet in Dileesh Pothan's Maheshinte Prathikaram (The Revenge of Mahesh). As Mahesh, here, Fahadh doesn't need to bring himself to the forefront.
Instead he merges into the other elements in the frames: Into those around him, the furniture, the rustic backgrounds, the rituals, the deaths and his natural environment -- with the forests, the grime, and the mud.
Maheshinte Prathikaram is one of those movies where I didn't know what hit me and how certain scenes got their effects. But I also don't remember another movie -- at least in recent times -- that I surrendered to with such happiness; smiling through the entire length of its run.
In its core plot, Maheshinte Prathikaram may contain all the key qualities of a great short story. But in its rhythm, in the way it effortlessly and almost lazily leaps from one episode to another and from one character to the other, the movie is closer to the 'Creative Non-Fiction' style that Esquire magazine's writers of the '60s pioneered.
So imagine a star Esquire writer like Tom Wolfe getting to cover an assignment set not in the American South, but the Indian South -- specifically in Idukki, Kerala. Imagine the subject of his piece to be someone really plain and in his plainness, someone who is also great tabloid material: Mahesh Bhavana, a young man who is beaten up in the town's marketplace and who consequently pledges that he won't wear his slippers again, till he avenges the beating.
But Mahesh can't get his revenge that easily -- his punisher is off to a distant land. So what does Mahesh do? He waits. And the town waits with him. And we wait with him.
This is really NOT the story of Mahesh's revenge as much as it is the story of his waiting. And it is this wait that the director and his writer Shyam Pushkaran -- very much in the fashion of Esquire writers such as Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese -- turn into a sensitive portrait and a microcosm of small-town life.
Like those Esquire pieces, the movie alternates between the 'general' and the 'specific' -- one moment offering a vivid, dense view of the world that the piece is set in and in the very next moment condensing its essence to a set of motley characters.
The movie plays around with its central conflict and adds so many overlapping patterns that by the end, it subverts the conflict. Zoom r24 driver mac.
IMAGE: Fahadh's performance and his character Mahesh reminds you of that particular breed of men who might never raise their voice or their eyes, but if you wound them, will remember little details of that unfinished deal even when they are putting dog-food on the puppy plate.
Debutant director Dileesh Pothan maybe that rarity in cinema: He is a poet of the commonplace. Pothan stages long takes with minimum fuss and mixes those with impressionistic, small edits. And the movie derives its basic pulse from that Domino Effect of a small confusion setting off a chain of bigger confusions, ruckus and even mayhem.
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Incidental characters and happenstances at one point in the story turn into major characters and course-changing events, at a later point. And what might have come across as gimmicks in the hands of a showier director become pieces of breathless lyricism here.
Mahesh's pledge itself has mythical undercurrents: The kind that can only be taken in a really small nondescript town -- where people keep track of each other's affairs, remind each other of their schedules and need that 'rush' every now and then.
It's the kind of pledge that distances Mahesh from his natural gentleness and brings out the natural warlord side in him, makes him more focused, affects his psyche, and creates a premonition of apocalyptic spectacle in those who surround him.
Mahesh Bhavana, however, wasn't made for all of this. He is just an average photographer -- someone whose idea of 'clicking pictures' is essentially going through a series of fixed physical rituals: Chin up, chin down, eyes wide, shoulders down and all that jargon jazz.
If it's a really important photograph that you want him to click, he will draw open the curtains behind you -- in the manner of a self-styled wizard -- and reveal a set of corny wall-motifs. However, at a certain point Mahesh realises that the trick of photography was always around him, and yet he just didn't seem to take notice.
His father -- an old, worldly-wide man -- is the one who appraises him about this fact, just like he had once appraised Mahesh that it's not a 'Shop' that he works at, but a 'Studio.' In the course of the movie, this is not the only the discovery that's thrust upon Mahesh -- he also comes in contact with his feral side and Fahadh, here, carefully calibrates both those discoveries, not letting one eat into the other.
IMAGE: 'Mahesh Bhavana is just an average photographer -- someone whose idea of 'clicking pictures' is essentially going through a series of fixed physical rituals: Chin up, chin down, eyes wide, shoulders down and all that jargon jazz.'
Fahadh's performance and his character Mahesh reminds you of that particular breed of men who might never raise their voice or their eyes, but if you wound them, will remember little details of that unfinished deal even when they are putting dog-food on the puppy plate.
Even as the men in the movie hold deadly grudges, get into petty fights and share cold handshakes without looking into each other's eyes, it's the women who turn on the heat very calmly.
Anusree who plays Soumya -- Mahesh's first love -- has such a radiant presence and a great camera face that she gives off two varying eccentrics with easy grace: You see her differently when she is by herself and then through Mahesh's eyes. She is naturally sensual and looks bewitchingly good when performing mundane tasks, like when she is just scrubbing the clothes on the stone.
And Aparna Balamurali as Jimsy -- the other woman who nurses Mahesh's sore heart -- has a terrific ping about her; a girl-woman who matches Fahadh gaze-for-gaze. She starts off on a rattle, stops to check if he's listening and after she has confirmed that he is indeed listening, picks up the beat again.
Also wonderful are all those nameless women characters who drift in and out of the scenarios, but all of whom come with their personal tricks and small strategies. Like Soumya's mother, who publicly states that her daughter will decide for herself who she wants to marry, and then privately at night in the bedroom, tightens the mental screws on her.
IMAGE: Anusree in Maheshinte Prathikaram is 'naturally sensual and looks bewitchingly good when performing mundane tasks, like when she is just scrubbing the clothes on the stone.'
Maheshinte Prathikaram is actually a film about the inner strength in women that often masks the grand follies of men; a point that is driven home not through overt declarations but with glancing touches such as suggesting Idukki itself as a metaphor for 'The smart, shrewd woman' -- a rendering of that class of women who give their men the pleasure of barking orders from their armchairs while silently deciding for themselves what is 'correct' even as they peel the tapioca away.
It's not that the men in this movie are any less aware, it's just they are 'charged' by elements, different. There are two classic turns here. Alancier Lay as Mahesh's dear-old Babychettan is wonderful in the role of a man who maybe graying at the temples, but still has time for his antiquated theories about masculinity.
And Soubin Shahir as Crispin is proving to be the find of this decade; a Buster Keaton-like performer who manages to be funny while just being genuine and heartfelt. These men, like everyone else in the movie, go through their own lives while being the ideal foil for Mahesh as he tries to pull off his galoshes of pain.
The performers seem to 'perfectly understand' the short story-journalistic tone of the movie and approach their parts suitably, but Dileesh Pothan makes this a movie celebration -- he has different movie-stations running within one movie, activating each at his own pleasure. And he teams up with cinematographer Shyju Khalid to deepen the meaning of the scenes -- a little sleight of hand trick, always works for him.
Nature -- with its thick forests and streams and terrains -- is not captured here for its beauty alone, but as a silent chronicler of lives lived in a certain volume of harshness. To Pothan and his cinematographer, nature could be unjust, lulling, scary and surprising, all at once. When the men fight in dark-brown dirt, the camera tilts upwards slightly and you get the feeling that the lofty hills, like the Gods above, are maybe watching the showdown.
The medium may seem absent for most parts of the movie, but when it becomes self-consciously alive, it intensifies the effect of what you are watching on screen. Like, when Fahadh as Mahesh climbs the steps to his photo studio in a fit of joy, the camera is placed marginally overhead. It's a minor angle, but something that captures Mahesh's Cheshire Cat-like elation brilliantly well. Laarni a dream by loreto paras sulit.
Dileesh Pothan and Shyam Pushkaran draw from their own experiences and memories of growing up in Kerala's small towns but they also pull back enough -- like seasoned journalists -- to ensure that the rhapsody doesn't get to them and their nostalgia is not scandalised.
So nothing seems half-done and nothing seems overstated: It is simply a magical union of out-of-breath reporting and imaginative storytelling where the titration is perfect and the scaling, just right.
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Most importantly, however, the writer and director band don't see their characters as 'little people' who can be dumbed-down or played out for a few, cheap gags. The people in Maheshinte Prathikaram are all real people and they are smart and cunning and they all have their personal defence mechanisms, their staunch definitions of what is right and wrong, their individual take on big city trends, their party talents and their own tactics for survival.
You will be tempted to call Maheshinte Prathikaram 'a sweet and simple film' because it doesn't have big story-arcs or discernible character-growth patterns. But the movie is more than just that.
In its frankness, its directness and almost cliche-free flourishes, Maheshinte Prathikaram becomes a rare movie experience that is also incredibly generous -- both to the world it is set in and to the world it is made for.