Velugu Needalu

Velugu Needalu
Vamsi




Here is the the series that focuses on the many greats who lurk in the shadows behind the silver screen bringing out the best in them, to radiate and redirect their brilliance onto the silver medium. We hope that these articles would focus our attention and applause to these true "stars" to whom limelight and spot lights do not usually beckon upon.

1. The sewing machine's pedal is worked on continuously
2. The small wheel on the top of the machine rotates furiously
3. The cloth moves from one edge of the machine, through the needle onto the other
4. While the jacket drops on the other edge
5. A lady rises to from the bottom of the frame, wondering about the jacket in an exaggerated fashion
6. Sundaram, a spectacled bundle of undying optimism and false promises, is framed between the triangle she makes with her hand on the hip and the unrelenting needle that is pushing into the cloth
7. All this while the background music is rattling like a twig on a tin roof

And these are 6 different cuts that happen within a span of a few seconds. The pacing is furious, the framing is innovative, the editing pushing the retentive capacity and the discerning capability of the eye in regard to the holding time of each frame, and more importantly the music, the main partner in the crime, is pulling the strings in the background.

Pick any few seconds of his movie, the frames feel like moving at twice the prescribed pace for a regular Telugu movie. Add to that the hurried nature of his characters, which seem to occupy their own frenzied world, caught up in their own whirlwind of activities. His transition from a normal story teller to a different kind of narrator to a 'dynamic' director would however need to observe at half his pace and half his speed. He never deviated from his off beat path and never tried to run the mainstream race. It takes a different kind of imagination to pull off even the weird imagery in a tasteful way like a beautiful woman in a garish dress holding a huge lotus between her teeth, a small face wearing a huge vermillion, the hero's costumes with the dangling price tags, glasses that seem too large for the face, to name a few. He handled the dolly as an assistant to the director, he worked his pen as author of good repute, he wielded his baton creating some hummable tunes, he worked behind the lens that eventually made his name synonymous with weird, innovative, jarring, imaginative, confused, dynamic and many such extremes - Vamsi.


If history is any indicative, a given audience can fairly predict the style of a movie coming out of a director's pedigree. That is because they usually confine themselves to a particular genre they can truly identify with and truly believe in and hence do not stray too far from that comfort zone. This gives some sort of predictability buffer to the audience so that there is a near or an absolute match between what it expects and what the maker delivers. In this aspect it is quite difficult to categorize Vamsi as a 'genre director', for the range he has showed in his repertoire and for the pattern and predictability game that he so willingly refused to be a part of. He balanced a "manchu pallaki" with a "preminchu pellaaDu", he upended a "sitara" with a "anveshaNa", he neutralized the ripples of a "aalaapana" with a "Ladies Tailor", he rib-tickled the viewer with a "April 1 viDudala" while showing the depths of pathos with a "Maharshi". The fact that he never tried recreating successes by sticking to the same formula that brought him monetary rewards and commercial acceptance, speaks a lot about his desire to not fall back on his previous glories but start the reconstruction process with each new venture by deconstructing himself totally. And just like anything, which tries to tread a new ground that is vastly different from the previous terrain that would meet either totally acceptance or summary rejection, quite a few of Vamsi's ventures tried to stand up on failing legs.

Two technical aspects stand out in Vamsi's movies - the hurrying camera and the over worked editing machine. During the times when a framing a shot consisted in placing the camera right in front of the talking parts and observing the action as a impassionate observer, not too far from duplicating the standard setup of the good old drama days, Vamsi's camera has the sort of urgency that would grab hold of audience's attention and virtually drags it at the same pace, racing through the forests, running along the roads, maneuvering through the woods and hurrying through the fields. The energy that the movement infuses into the frame, which correlates with the mood of the scene, is one reason to explain why a picture is worth a thousand words. Sundaram hopes to get rich, and get rich quick. He basks at the idea of having to wait years spending his energy, life and importantly time at the sewing pedal. He seeks quick nirvana and instant gratification. And when a half baked get rich quick scheme back-fires on him, he finds himself caught up in the vortex of a turbulent tornado struggling to keep find some breathing space while furiously trying to score at another half baked quick scheme. Add to this mix his characteristic trait - he is lazy. The camera work in Ladies Tailor reflects Vamsi's getting into the mindset of Sundaram. Sundaram has a deadline before he finds the "maccha unna bhaama" that would bring him name, fame and glory. He whittled down the sample size to 3. He has to work in a secretive manner, lest he becomes the object of some serious "attention" of venkata ratnam. All the 3 "bhaamalu" are closing on him at an alarming pace with marriage proposals. The race against time and life that is rightly depicted in the camera accompanying sundaram at every step, working at double the normal pace, places the audience right in sundaram's shoes in understanding his urgency of the task and urgency of his mind.

Rhythm forms an important part in his style, while cutting between two frames. His cutting almost assumes a lyrical nature that fits into a musical scale that is controlled by the pace and the tempo of the scene. He does not hold on to a scene till it has completely justified its purpose but instead splices in several extra frames that completely changes the way the scene would play out normally, were it cut in a conventional way. This extra information that pertain to either a sudden changed emotion of the characters involved or an exaggeration of an inner feeling, urges the audience to not take the character on his/her spoken word but instead treat it on the 'face' value in light of this new information. Maharshi, who has a dubious distinction in college, rags on a girl to prove his superiority, only to be hard slapped by Suchitra. The moment Suchitra imprints her palm impression Maharshi's cheek, the scene cuts away to Suchitra dousing Maharshi with a bucket full of colored water, some on his shirt, some on his face. If followed conventionally, Maharshi would start a hate-love relationship that would finally culminate into Suchitra accepting Maharshi. Instead, Vamsi cuts down the process of Suchitra adding color to Maharshi's pale and vapid life, with just a single frame of dousing. No love-hate relationship, no courting, no cheesy dialogues, no corny situations. Just one slap across the face, just one spliced frame in between and movie takes a different direction. The forest officer suggests that Bhanupriya and Karthik act intimate to catch the killer let loose in the jungle in "anveshaNa:. And while the mechanics of the process are being worked out between the hero and heroine, the frames of Satyanarayana (forest officer) turning his grim expression into a sly smile while his eye balls roll above to their roof, suddenly changes the equation for the audience and throws it off the scent. Again the nature of the scene that is played out heavily contributing to the rhythm of the cutting. The dynamic nature of the camera and the furious and unforgiving scissors, helped Vamsi trademark his style and vision on the silver screen, as one with little patience for lethargy and scant respect for the gravity of the scene.


Part - II

When the age of age-old heroes was ruling the roost dictating box office returns, Vamsi picked up the case of the proverbial ornate piece of the Telugu film - the heroine, and built strong situations around her allowing her to pursue the possibilities that tested her mettle through intelligence, patience and perseverance, than showing her the easy way out of the tough and troubled times through the regular song and dance routines, or weep and wallow techiniques. manchu pallakee, sitaara, praeminchu pellaaDu, anweshaNa, Aalaapana, Lawyer suhaasini - these movies bear testament to the fact that the female character, the focal point in all of the above, was only provided with the right tools to pull herself out of the tough situations she finds herself in, stand on her feet and brave the world, than allowing the character to lean against the stronger shoulder of the hero and depend on him to chart out the course of her life.

It is interesting to note that though the single note of a world built around revolving around the female character is played in all those aforementioned movies, it is the application of this milieu to different genres that is unique to Vamsi's ability to apply similar situations to varied circumstances. While Manchu Pallaki, a straight drama, deals with a woman trying to mend the ways of 4 wayward youths and showing them a world that they never knew existed before, Preminchu Pellaadu, a comedy piece, deals with a woman trying to the mend the relationships between 2 families and showing them the better colors of world through love and caring. While Anweshana, a suspense thriller, toys with the life and the ambitions of a wide-eyed girl venturing into troubled waters, Aalaapana, a musical set piece, finds a damsel in distress finding solace at the feet of art and dance.

Adapting his own work "mahallO kOkila" to the silver screen, sitaara brought out Vamsi's best as a story teller, script-writer, visionary beyond his years, and an ear that even surpassed his vision. sitaara, and maharshi to a certain extent, are his only introspective movies that revolve around the plight of the central characters while viewing the entire world through its lens in an almost first person narrative, and understand what they have to undergo to find themselves at peace with the world around. Symbolisms galore, sitaara had Vamsi exactly pin pointing the mindset of a girl, held captive in her own house (and in her own mind) by rules and regulations, trials and tribulations, screaming out for a voice of understanding and reaching out for a hand of compassion. sitaara is torn between her own fear masquerading as loyalty towards her family and her own inability to break free from the clutches of traditionalism, when fate gives her a chance in the form of Raju, a street performer.

The images of a lark held captive in a "bangaaru panjaram" before the arrival of Raju into sitaara's life and its gradual transformation from being a reticent one to one which speaks her mind freely and sings her heart out merrily, brought out in such vivid fashion in the song "ku ku koo, kOkila raave, raaNee vaasamu neeku endukO, rekka vippukO chukka landukO (lyric: Veturi)", demonstrates in ample measure Vamsi's vision of extending a metaphor to literal terms and depicting a literal situation in symbolic terms. In one heart rending scene when Sarath Babu comes to know about his loss in a court case, on which their (his and his sister sitaara's) entire lives depended on, Vamsi takes the dialogue out of the scene to convey sarath babu's mindset and instead relies on imagery - Sarath Babu lighting up his cigarette standing underneath a birdcage, the voices in his head drowing down his weak voice of reason, sitaara looking at her brother anxiously, sarath baabu extending his arm slowly and burning the wings of the birds in the cage up above, the violins screeching simultaneously in tandem in the background, sitaara muffling her scream in shock and disgust - to drive home the point in less words and more images.

Parallel this story and imagery to a similar one set in reverse - a free bird, with neither care or concern walks into a well laid trap willingly (and unknowingly at the same time) and by the time it realizes of the danger, it has already set in motion a series of dangerous incidents out of which there is no escape. Collaborating with Yandamuri Veerendranadh, Vamsi's anveshaNa remained one of the best suspense thrillers ever made in Telugu. sitaara and anveshaNa had this similar thread of damsel in distress, metaphorized in picking up the life of the birds, sweet but short lived, free but always on the look out for the imminent danger, spreading joy all around while hiding their inner turbulence all the time. If sitaara plays out as an introspective piece, anveshaNa opens up the playing ground in a broad way by throwing in enough portions of edge of seat suspense, and nail biting thrilling situations into the mix.

Similar to Yandamuri's abhilaasha, the suspense in anveshaNa is written into the framework of the script and when the final moment of revelation occurs, and the motivations and the machinations of the killer are revealed, the audience is caught with total surprise when they retro-fit the pieces of the puzzle and find all the loose ends tightened up and gaping holes covered up. Vamsi revisits sitaara's imagery of birds in captive and takes it a step further with anveshaNa. Just like the score of Bernard Hermann for the movie Psycho, which comprised of entirely stringed instruments, Vamsi's interpretation of mood swings of the lead character (essayed by Bhanupriya) completely revolves around the flaps of the wings, the songs of gay abandon (or the shreiks of anguished cries), the freedom of their spirits (or the fetters of the traps) of the birds. With manchu pallaki, sitaaraa, praeminchu pellaaDu and anveshaNa (and to some extent, aalaapana and Lawyer suhaasini), Vamsi covered full spectrum from female emancipation to female empowerement adding visuals to his structure and adding aurals to his visuals.



P.S. Guess who collaborated on the script with Vamsi on Lawyer Suhasini?




Part - III

Illayaraja - In ways beyond ordinary imagination, every turn that Vamsi took while trying to find his style, his niche and his way of interpreting the words on paper to images on the screen, be it with finding unique angles to look at a frame, playing with the pacing of the scene either by speeding up the cutting beyond the conventional standards or slowing it down below the acceptable standards, here is this unassuming partner in crime, aiding and abetting Vamsi's whims and the fancies in regard to the distinct and a different vision, seeing Vamsi's challenge of the rough cut (of the movie) and then raising the stakes even further with his re-recording, trumping Vamsi's jumpy editing style with an equally (and sometimes more) quirky score, in the process, making Vamsi's movie as much as his movie.

After much vacillation and a final validation with his would-be, Rajendra Prasad decides to ask for a 2% fee for his services as Urvasi's lawyer in cheTTu kinda pleeDaru. The moment he quotes his price to the client sitting in front of him, his head falls on the desk with the hand making a V sign. The frame holds on for a second and the beat starts with the nodding of the Urvasi agreeing to his fee. The two note beat (twig on a tin roof) grows even further and stronger and slowly merges with a harp, a violin, the percussion and the rest of the accompaniments, when the shot cuts away to a weird dreamland, where the hero and the heroine wear huge spectacles with no glasses, ride on a bullock cart with no driver and move about in a house, with no walls. Yet another brutal battle of artistry at display between these two artisans who 'shamelessly' push the limits of their skills to unconventional corners and often derive pleasure subjecting the celluloid to never before seen imagery, never heard before melody.

It is not so much in the regular melody department, which is greatly mellifluous in itself, that Illayaraja announces his presence with his baton raised high when working with Vamsi. The mark that makes up the Vamsi-Illayaraja style (and it is not just Illayaraja style here) consists in the male voice constantly interrupting the female without letting her complete her sentence, or the female tone chipping in with her additional input to each paadam while the male voice carries along the tune in a careless, reckless spirit in case of a regular duet, or the hurried or haphazard directions that the tunes and the tones take in case of a solo, or the humdrum, confusion dangerously bordering on cacophony in case of a group effort.

kOnalO
sanni jaaji malli jaaji malli
maenulO
ponna poola valli paala velli
vaeNilO
kanne naaga malli naagamalli
teerulO
anuraaga valli raaga valli


There lies a marked difference between Vamsi-Illayaraja's duets and Illayaraja's regular compositions with other film-makers, in that, most of the tunes with Vamsi reduce (splits) themselves to the point that they cannot bear the extra weight of orchetrations, nor any extra gloss (beats, rythms et al) that go hand in hand with the commercial format of the telugu movie song. Equally interesting is the fact, that the musician is completely attuned to the ways the director cuts his songs even before the camera rolls, and thus builds the requisite breaks, pauses, interruptions and overlaps already into his tunes, laying down the proper foundation that the director could build his vision upon. It can therefore be said without further consideration that if the picturization is built on a rythmic scale, the music supporting it assumes a lyrical nature.

Illayaraja's efforts in Vamsi's ventures are distinctly two phased - pre-picturization and post-picturization. After the principal photography is completed and the film is secured in the cans, the director collaborates with the editor in trimming down the picture to acceptable levels. At this point when the sound is still not mixed with the picture yet, and temporary tracks (song tracks and dialogue tracks) usually assist the director in deciding the tempo of the scene, Vamsi's skill in editing comes to fore. A good understanding and appreciation of his ability, to visualize the video and the audio components that go into the scene, could be had if the aural part of the movie is completely eliminated from the equation and the movie is watched just with the images, since that is exactly what Vamsi delivers to Illayaraja's table before the background score is mixed in. Consider a editing resource intensive song like "ekkaDa ekkaDa ekkaDa" (Ladies Tailor) which, as lore has it, was picturized without the song being recorded in the first place. And when the film is delivered to the recording theater with just a bunch of images cut in a seemingly chaotic form, the music director infuses life into the images by breathing in mood into them. Considering that each image does not last for more than a second, and each image is completely different in framing to the next and to the previous, and the perspectives that keep changing rapidly from one to the another, it takes a herculean effort on the part of the music director to compose a tune that is fast (for the pacing), dynamic (for the mood), catchy (for the content) and appealing (for the senses).

Sanskrit discos (Maharshi), recording dance tunes (Sri Kankamahalakshmi recording dance troup), peppy duets (Preminchu Pellaadu), baleful solos (Anweshana), classical treats (aalaapana) - Illayaraja matched Vamsi's thirst for difference and his quest for uniqueness at every step and marched along the creative roads of weird imagery and refreshing sounds, tagging his name permanently to Vamsi (ala, Bapu-Ramana) while making the team Vamsi-Illayaraja synonymous with innovative, creative and imaginative.


Part - VI

Even though muLLapooDi introduced the suaveness and the coolness of gOdaavari dialect (maanDaleekam) with Contractor's character in Muthyaala muggu, it was Vamsi who really patronized the accent and popularized it in almost all his movies. The dialogue delivery being rapid paced, the accent being distinctly different, and thanks to the actors' ability in skillfully moulding their speech around this unusual brand of telugu, the gODaavari yaasa has found wide spread acceptance with the audience and has come to remain as a central stay even in the current movies. Majority of the Telugu movies follow sisTlaa maanDaleekam, which is usually the standard dialect for all the talking parts of a movie, whose origins are found in Krishna and Guntur districts. When a character (or the writer) chooses to follow a different dialect (like Kota Srinivasa Rao's Kaasayaa character in pratighaTana) that is different from the norm, it places an enormous amount of burden and pressure, both on the character and on the writer, while trying to hold the audience's attention without getting distracted away the way the language is spoken. It is mainly for this reason that serious characters are seldom given different accents and majority of the characters that deal with the accents are comedic in nature. Vamsi uses this principle to separate his serious characters from the spoofy parts. For example in April 1 Vidudala, while everybody around Shobana and the Doctor character converse strictly in gOdaavari yaasa, these 2 choose to remain faithful to the standard accents, thus differentiating the tone of their speak and mood of their tone.

Vamsi's dialogues owe a lot to the chaos of the group environment that make up most of his comedic frames. Most of the times it might not even be because of the wit of the dialogue than it is because of the timing of the delivery and the timing of the firing of the dialogue within the chaos. When one character tries to out-pace the other, and the other tries to catch up with some other, one character slows down the complete tempo of the dialogue for creating the rib-tickling effect. "paenu korukuDu" subbaa rao stands up on the stool trying to fix his wiring of the ceiling fan while holding both the ends of the wire in his mouth shouting instructions to his second wife about turning the switch on on his command, while she is totally lost in the dreamy eyes of her favorite hero on TV. subbaa rao's instructions to his second wife are interspersed with his voice of his first wife who is getting antsy while holding onto the stool, preventing her from getting on with her morning chores. The TV in the background blares out the latest song of the hottest hero mesmerizing his second wife completely grabbing her attention. Diwaakaram looks at this seemingly explosive situation and tries to work it to his advantage. The entire setup of this situation is not so much about the dialogue as it is about the timing. subba rao shouts his instructions, second wife lost in tv, first wife screaming about her daily routine, diwaakaram walks in and calls out subba rao's name, subba rao accidentally blurts out the switching instruction to is wife, second wife turns the switch on, the circuit completes in subba rao's mouth. If muLLapooDi's dialogue charaterizes the wit and sarcasm, Jandhyala's dialogue brings out light hearted humor, Vamsi's dialogue churns out the comedy through sheer group dynamic.

Vamsi's association with Tanikella Bharani (and Vemuri Satyanarayana) to a large extent laid the foundation for his initial foray into comedy and it was Bharani's rapid wit that evolved into Vamsi's style over a period of few movies. praeminchu peLLaaDu, anweshaNa, Ladies Tailor, Maharshi, Sri Kanakamaalakshmi Recording Dance Troupe, cheTTu kinda pleaderu speak for Vamsi brand humor which was later continued in his association with L.B.Sriram and Sankaramanchi Pardhasaradhi. While their initial movies were too hesitant to step off the conventional comedic tracks, Vamsi and Bharani's Ladies Tailor marked a clear departure from what is standard, what is regular and what is conventional. Setting the movie in a remote village in the Circars, with the only set piece being the natural splendor around, Ladies Tailor created an interesting backdrop for a bunch of interesting characters centering around an interesting plot point. The interesting aspect of the script is that it does not highlight nor does it exploit the "maccha" point of the script inasmuch as it is concerned about Sundaram's travails in getting to the point. baTTala satyam, seenu gaaDu, venkaTa Ratnam roll off the wit of the pen while naagamaNi, daya and neelavaeNi take shape along the sharper edges. Ladies Tailor became a template for the rest of their collaborations where it is more about the characters than it is about the plot, where it more about the dynamic that it is about the dialogue and where it is more about setting up than it is about the payoff. The colloquial humor of the area, the rhythms in the speech of the speaking populace, the lush and natural vegetation that provided a safe habitat for these seemingly normal characters, all his low budget ventures seem to catch various glimpses through different slices of the same interesting setting.

Following his mentor K.Viswanath's footsteps, Vamsi had a keen ear for great music, acute eye for amazing camera angles, a dictatorial attitude while chopping up the film and a zany mind for a weird sense of humor. A true director in all senses of the word, a true visionary in all facets of the craft and a true film-maker in the truest spirit of the art.

The End