Bollywood director Rohit Shetty and Chandra Shekhar Yeleti’s friendship goes back to their childhood. Yeleti and Rohit Shetty both studied Physics together and then their worlds grew apart. While Chandu made films which sounded like Theory of Relativity to everyone, Rohit played with the apples and made fun of Physics in his movies to become one of the top directors of India. On the occasion of release of Manamantha, the two sat together to discuss about the movie.
Rohit : I think your time has finally arrived, you made this film in 3 languages and hope it does pay off big time, why didn’t you dub the movie in Hindi?
Chandu : I thought you might want to remake it! (Smiling)
Rohit : The only flop film in my entire career was remaking ‘Anukokunda Oka Roju’ as ‘Sunday’. I think you are the ‘Karna’ of Indian Cinema. Even I couldn’t make your film a hit.
Chandu : I always do this post-mortem of Anukokunda. I don’t understand even today why that film was not well received and finally I convinced myself saying if Rohit couldn’t make it work then no one could.
Rohit : I think every director makes one movie in their entire life and remakes that one film again and again. But in your case your first two movies are such classics and I personally think you made your signature movie with ‘Manamantha’
Chandu : Interesting, what made you think that?
Rohit : Every great filmmaker while making a classic wants to stick to a single theme in their movie. Generally they tend to choose Hope, Freedom, Enlightenment, Courage and try to make a narrative in which the main character faces a conflict and finally achieves one of the above.
Chandu : So which theme do you think I picked in this movie?
Rohit : You are smart Chandu. You didn’t pick one but you picked entire life as the theme. You made this an interactive movie where the audience will have a soul search along with the characters in the movie. There is a scene in the movie where the little kid locates a minister son and asks him to help him find her friend. When the minister son asks her to stop being a Mother Teresa and instead have fun, she asks him ‘when does he become sad?’. Then she picks a stone and while everyone is tensed, she says ‘You will be sad when I hit your car’.
Chandu : Thanks Rohit!
Rohit : We should be thankful to you. It takes a lifetime to write a character like Gowthami’s character in the movie. The way she questions herself ‘What makes me happy?’ and the realization towards the climax is pure magic.
Chandu : I am a small film maker whose entire film budget will not even be half of one of your fight sequences.
Rohit : We don’t make films Chandu. We make packages and presentations. We make sure everyone likes it when they watch it. It is just made to make you like it in that 2 hour span. Most people will forget the hit films one hour after the movie. But you write characters and the actors pretend as those characters while you capture it on film. That film my friend stays on forever , it’s the same after an year, decade. That film is eternal, you are the film maker and we are the packagers.
Thus ended their fake interview. Yes, Rohit and Yeleti’s friendship was just a figment of my imagination. An honest review of ‘Manamantha’ wouldn’t have been noticed by many people. But this packaging will at least get your attention. In today’s world everything is packaged and presented in such a way that it is consumed instantly and forgotten even instantly. There are few people who still believe in movie as an art form and try to capture that one moment. That one moment which changes the fate of the film. That one moment for which a unit struggled for and entire year. That one moment for which a director never ruined his brand to get a commercial break.
That one moment was all about Gowthami smiling in the climax. Chandra Shekhar Yeleti might not have got his commercial due till date but he would have inspired a generation of aspiring Telugu Film makers. Art and commercial always had a bad past and even greatest film makers like Kubrick had to face the burn. But we hope Yeleti will be welcomed by this new generation who have access to more multiplexes to give this maverick opportunities again to make films which are not just packages but art.
Written by: Santosh Eppalapally- A true Telugu Film Industry Fan!
