Sontha Vooru- An honest tale, but not convincing enough
Sometime in the year 2005/2006 when officially work on the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport at Shamshabad on the outskirts of Hyderabad started, there was a sudden rise in real estate prices in that area. Not only was land being acquired by the Government for the sake of building the airport, also a lot of real estate developers came forward to buy land and develop properties. Among a lot of people who sold their lands there were quite a few from the Lambadi Tribes for whom such kind of money was unheard of till then. Initially they freaked out by buying expensive cars and other such things but soon they were struggling. The reason being they did not know how to manage such a lot of money & also now they did not possess the land that they had with them.
Ok now why am I talking about all this over here? Am I against economic development? No this is just a preamble to the review of a small but honest Telugu movie which released recently – ‘Sondha Vooru’ (Native Town/Place). Directed by Sunil Kumar Reddy and based on his story and screenplay, the movie is set in a village not very far from the city (frequent glimpses of Hyderabad are shown in the movie). Rudraswamy (L.B.Sriram) is a funeral undertaker and lives with his daughter and grandchildren. The good samaritan in the village is referred to as Devudu by everyone (Tanikella Bharani) and he is somebody everyone including Rudraswamy respects. The other main characters are Bujji (Raja) a young man who walks with a limp and is head over heels in love with Malli (Tirtha) a prostitute.
The Government decides to set up an SEZ (Special Economic Zone) in the village and Devudu is asked to convince the villagers to sell the land for the sake of setting up the SEZ. In the process most of the villagers sell the land & migrate to the city. But Rudraswamy prefers to stay back in the village. In the meanwhile Bujji and Malli decide to get married. That is when Rudraswamy realizes that Devudu has erred in asking people to sell their land and there is a tragic twist in the tale. Though the story is honest, the way it has been handled could definitely have been better. It’s only fairly late into the movie that one actually gets to the crux of the issue- i.e about how the SEZ can actually uproot you from your own ‘vooru’ and how the villagers actually struggle as they do not know how to manage all the money they got for selling their land.
Also why on earth was the item number appearing out of nowhere in the 2nd half? The director Sunil Kumar Reddy at times comes across as quite confused as to whether to make a hard statement with the movie or to combine it with commercial elements. The real star of the movie is the dialogues (L.B.Sriram, Nagaraju Gandham & Sunil Kumar Reddy).In fact L.B.Sriram’s character walks away with some of the best dialogues and it’s a brilliant performance from the seasoned veteran. Tirtha also impresses in a difficult role to play. Raja is ok and the support cast like Tanikella Bharani,M.S.Narayana,Jayaprakash Reddy are all efficient. Music by Saketh Sriram is good and is mostly melodious. Overall the movie has a good message but is not very convincing enough.
Tags: L.B.Sriram, Raja, Sunil Kumar Reddy
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Honest attempts like this need all the support they could get – and PFC is never behind in giving a good movie its due. Thanks for this Sethu. I haven’t seen Sontha Vooru yet. But whatever little I’ve read about it reminded of another great (but flawed) Australian movie (there aren’t too many of those), The Castle. Drawing inspiration from the famous Mabo case (about aboriginal land rights), the movie tries to allegorize the compulsory acquisition law (known as the eminent domain act in US) used by the governments to confiscate citizen’s property under the guise of economic development. I hope Sontha Vooru is just as effective and as humorous as that, if not more.
@ wb- yes you are right.We @ PFC certainly need to give such movies their due.Its a very honest attempt for sure.I haven’t seen The Castle but from your description I can vouch for the fact that its nearly as effective and engrossing.Its a pity that the makers of Sondha Vooru didnt promote the movie well.Nobody here@ PFC also seems to have a clue about it.