In a year where Telugu cinema was at its most nostalgic, yearning for the comfort of older aesthetics, older forms of storytelling, old-fashioned romance, and the simplicity in older representations of the political — its craft, production values, and its technical prowess were propelling it rapidly into defining the future, allowing it to scale higher and grow further than ever, beyond the borders of the Telugu states and into International markets. This is a selection of some of the best scenes that Telugu cinema had to offer.
Sita Ramam: Sitamahalakshmi visits Ram
Sita Ramam is not nostalgic for a certain period in history as much as it is for a certain period in film history, when duets functioned as a form of stylised dialogue, when women said “Evandoi” to call their men, when plots about unexpressed emotions pivoted around undelivered letters. When Sitamahalakshmi (Mrunal Thakur) visits Ram (Dulquer Salman) at his friend Durjoy’s (Vennela Kishore) house, the two continue the courtship that they began over letters, and it is in this exchange of old-fashioned, highly stylised, highly poetic dialogue that the film truly soars. They flirt, walking through rooms filled with mirrors and hung carpets, and when they finally emerge out in the rain and he asks her for her address, Sita replies: “Aapadha ki address icchi intiki pilavadam, antha thelivayna pani kaadu Ram garu” (It isn’t the smartest thing to let peril know where you live and invite it home)—she refuses to give him an address, but this is also a confession: because, after all, what could be more perilous than love?
Ante… Sundaraniki!: A Thousand lies, One wedding
Sundar Prasad (Nani) has learnt to navigate his family’s orthodoxy by becoming something of a serial liar. When he enters into a relationship with his childhood crush, Leela Thomas (Nazriya Fahadh), knowing that both families would do everything to prevent the alliance, he concocts a series of lies to tell both families that he convinces Leela to go along with. This sequence, in which they plan the lies that must be fed to each family to pave the way for an inter-religious wedding, is one of the most formally inventive in Telugu cinema—with Sundar and Leela not just in dialogue with each other, but also with their childhood versions who chime in with inputs. Sometimes, as the couple argue, the children hang out in the background, taking selfies with Leela’s polaroid camera. It is this bonkers inventiveness, propelled by Vivek Sagar’s brilliant score, that makes Ante Sundaraniki truly special among Telugu rom-coms.
Ashoka Vanamlo Arjuna Kalyanam: “Pre-Wedding Photo Shoot”
In this quietly subversive film about defying patriarchal expectations around marriage, Vishwak Sen plays a mild-mannered thirty-something Arjun, a man excited about his upcoming arranged marriage, until he realises his fiancée seems reluctant. He discovers this reluctance when the couple are coerced into awkward poses as part of a “pre-wedding photo shoot” by an overenthusiastic photographer, a shoot over the course of which she begins to break down. This is a sequence that acts as synecdoche that echoes the broader themes of the film— in its framing of the Great Indian Wedding as a ceremony in which everyone’s whims, egos, and desires seem to take precedence over the woman. A subtle bit of storytelling in a subtle film.
Major: Elegy
The fictionalisation of Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan’s story is part thriller, part drama, but it peaks in its final stretch when it takes the time to articulate an emotional elegy. A large part of the credit for its effectiveness goes to the actors, particularly to Prakash Raj and Revathi who play Sandeep’s (Adivi Sesh) parents, and their portrayal of the grief involved in losing a young son. Vamsi Patchipulusu’s cinematography is unsubtle about this being visual elegy, but it is undeniably beautiful and moving, particularly in the confines of the theatre where a film has you exactly where it wants you, lined up for its punches.
RRR: The Mansion Invasion
RRR’s revisionism and its exclusion of certain forms of nationalism while unabashedly championing others raise questions, but as a piece of action fantasy—as spectacle—it certainly ranks among the best offerings around the world in this genre. Perhaps no scene cements its position as its “interval-block” scene does, and it is emblematic of Rajamouli’s core strength—the audacity to let his imagination lead the way rather than concerns about tone, genre, or plausibility. Recalling the viscerality of Simhadri’s Godavari Pushkaralu sequence in its emotional beats and its viscerality after all these years, it also reveals Rajamouli’s penchant for staging battle-sequences in distinct phases with escalating melodramatic stakes. Is there going to be a mass scene that tops Bheem’s entrance into the Scott Mansion with the animals who go on to maul British soldiers? We wouldn’t be debating its politics and what it says about us, if this hypermasculine spectacle wasn’t, in the first place, effective in making its (now global) audience revel in cinematic violence.
Saakini Daakini: Restaurant Brawl
Nested in Saakini Daakini’s second half lies one of the most fun brawls I’ve witnessed in a Telugu film. It consists of two female police trainees beating up a group of human traffickers in a restaurant and it is more believable than most fight scenes in “commercial” Indian films involving male stars. For one, we’ve witnessed the characters train for this. But the fight is as gritty as it is comedic—chairs are smashed, someone’s beard is lit on fire, and noticeably, it resists the temptation most South filmmakers filming fights seem to have given into—the Snyderification of every action scene with their alternatingly sped up and slowed down frames—done to extract a series of “hero shots” that disrupt the flow and grit of the action. It is an impressive piece of sequence design (the opening blows are underscored by Danny Morrison’s hyperbolic praise of a smashing Rohit Sharma innings on a TV in the background), stunt work, fight choreography, and sound design (deliciously violent sounds of bones cracking and heads smashing against tables)
Masooda: Eerie Beginnings
Masooda understands that the best horror films do not frighten you as much as they submerge you in an atmosphere permeated by a sense of the eerie, disorienting your rational compass, and making moving images projected on a screen with some sounds thrown in threaten to stop your heart. It tells you that it understands this right away in its brilliantly crafted opening scene, as two men walk through a farm to achieve a mysterious objective. The environmental sounds disappear, and all you can hear is the quickening of their breath. More disturbing imagery follows, and you realise in its first few minutes that you’re in for an unrelenting, spine-chilling ride. A masterful opening to a truly atmospheric horror film, albeit one that doesn't necessarily upend the extant conservative conventions of the genre.
Virata Parvam: A Father’s Ballad
Virata Parvam has scenes of great power, and several of its action sequences are thrilling and tense, but it is this affecting moment between father (Sai Chand) and daughter (Sai Pallavi) that cuts the deepest. When Vennela (Sai Pallavi) falls in love with Ravanna (Rana Daggubati)’s poetry and runs away from home, her father sets out to find her. En route, he is taken in by the police in an effort to capture Ravanna through him and Vennela. And yet, when he finally meets his daughter, the balladeer’s heart wins, and he tells her to follow her heart—something that eventually leads her into greater danger. This moment comes as a surprise, and is filmed minimalistically, allowing its emotional power to take center-stage and linger long in memory after the credits have rolled.
Ammu: The first transgression
The first time Ammu’s (Aishwarya Lekshmi) husband, Ravi (Naveen Chandra) hits her, she stands there, for a moment, in disbelief—it is like the fabric of her reality has been ripped apart: this is a man she has begun to fall in love with over the past few weeks, someone she considers home. She then walks away, and he goes after her, holds her, tries to console her, but insidiously, immediately begins persuading her that this is not who he is, that he had reasons for acting out, a story that Ammu eventually internalises and tries to conform to, forgetting the truth. It is perhaps the best acted scene of the year, with a stellar performance by Aishwarya Lekshmi, who is so searingly real in the way she breaks down under abuse, that it is often painful to watch. She is equally compelling in the scenes when she finally gets to dish out his comeuppance.
Oke Oka Jeevitham: Mother Sentiment
Oke Oka Jeevitham is a time-travel film that doesn't use the device to construct a puzzle plot as much as it does to revel in sentimental nostalgia for a bygone childhood in the nineties. This is decidedly a strength and one of the very best examples of its effectiveness is when the protagonist, Chaitu (Sharwanand), travels back in time and meets his now-deceased mother (Amala Akkineni), as well as the adolescent version of himself, whom he is hired to teach guitar lessons to. The amma sentiment here evokes that in the temple scene in Mani Ratnam’s Thalapathi (1991), but the twist here is that it happens in a sci-fi time-travel film, truly Indianising the genre. It wouldn’t work without some great acting from both actors, but they deliver, weaving in this scene the core sentiment that holds the film together.