Parugu

I read "My family and other Animals" a long time back and the first thing that struck me was the aptness of the title. I and my brother have very diverse opinions among others about Telugu cinema. He is the true "mass follower" of Telugu movies. It is my personal opinion that he and Raju sustained the commercial viability of all Telugu theaters in RTC cross road between 1999 and 2001. His endorsement of Bhadra type movies further alienated his taste of Telugu movies from mine. I started an internal ranking of his reviews.



My brother first recommend the songs of Parugu, which I did not find too appealing. Later, when I saw Parugu, I was struck by the songs and Allu Arjun's dances. I enjoyed most of the songs except "Parugulu". I also liked the village sets and the comedy track in the movie. It became my movie of choice to watch while I stood in pasport renewal queues.

As I watched Parugu multiple times, I was struck by a few things. One of the major "revolutions" brought out by Chiranjeevi in telugu films is gendar role reversal. In older movies, heroines were asked to dress down (literally) and given complicated dance steps for song sequences to cover up "obese" heroes. Chiranjeevi changed this aspect completely. Now heroes perform all the complicated dance steps and the heroines are further marginalised to just shedding their clothes.
The other point that struck me was that the heroine in "Parugu" did not have a voice at all. She kept following the lead of the hero and her father at all times without developing her own opinion. The one time that she expresses an opinion and shows the spunk to follow through with her actions, she is over-ridden by the hero. Infact there is just one song in the entire movie to express the heroine's thoughts. It looks like she is continuously in need of an overwhelming force in her life. This characterisation is so unlike the director's first film heroine - "Hasini in Bommarillu". Wonder if this change is due to the story line or the fact that he was working with a hero like Allu Arjun and interference from the first family of Tollywood.

The story was run of the mill - girl eloping with her lover in the face of family opposition. A tried and trusted hackeneyed plot, it also opened interesting threads due to the excellent interpretation from the director. There was one thread of the consequences of elopement on the couple, weakening of caste rigidities due to education and urbanisation (not explored at all). Instead the focus was on the impact on the family due to elopement ( a la Chiranjeevi's daughter). The director could have done away with the entire second half and still made a good movie. movie.

I am now looking forward to see Bhaskar's next movie without the first family's influence.