Krish's 'Vedam' is an apt follow-up to his debut 'Gamyam'. As honest as his earlier work, 'Vedam' is more ambitious in content and succeeds too to a large extent. Adapting the multiple story thread narration, Krish narrates about five parallel lives, their ambitions and conflicts in this appropriately titled 'Vedam' (Literally meaning 'Knowledge') and reveals how in this one big world people live in their own life bubbles grappling their own ambitions, problems and vulnerabilities. Despite this being the first attempt at a multiple story narrative in Telugu movies, Krish manages to keep the soul of the movie stay atop the narrative style. All credit goes to Krish for being such a thinker and a filmmaker with heart. If at all I felt something amiss, it is only in the last half hour. After managing the content and screenplay wonderfully till then, the movie seem to be forced towards the 'action' in hospital. While clearly the Mumbai siege inspired that part, it lacked the depth the movie had all through in its characters. While all characters we saw till then are fleshed out so wonderfully with their human vulnerabilities, the bad guys who arrive announced in the climax are cardboard cutouts. The climax could have been put up to make the movie commercially viable. And honestly it would have been quite a task to imagine a climax for 5 parallel story threads whether the threads converge or not. So this standard action climax could have been employed as it is 'safe'.
Nevertheless, long after you leave the theatres, you still have the very real characters and the emotions they evoke lingering around. Whether it is the poor weaver from Sircilla, the humiliated Muslim or the bigoted police officer, you cant help but admire the casting, the acting and their lines. The authenticity seen in the language, dialect, costumes employed in these threads depicting diverse cultures show that lots of thinking went into the movie. Contrast this with how the same 'Sircilla' lingo was depicted in 'Jalsa' or how Muslim customs are portrayed in general. Allu Arjun, Manoj and Anushka for once played the characters asked for and not acted like stars. However what was surprising is that Manoj was credited for a 'Guest Appearance' while he is in there all through from opening scene to closing scene! Was that because his 'senior' co-star felt insecure? And that after all the self-congratulatory noises from the stars about ushering in 'multi-starrers' keeping aside their king-size egos! Well, lets hope some of the abundant wisdom in the movie rubs onto the stars!
'Vedam' also has some wonderful and timely songs that adds flavor to the theme. The lyrics are great depicting realities of our lives and the background score is superb switching between the five threads. The editing and photography is top-notch. The movie of course would ignite the debate about 'sad ending' in Telugu film industry. As blogged earlier, I never thought Telugu viewers are particularly averse to so-called 'sad endings'. But we can debate that another day. For now, let us cheer 'Vedam'. Let us also hope it will wake up the Telugu movie industry from its delusional world and make more meaningful movies.
