I have very recently begun exploring South Indian films, in just under 2 months I’ve seen over 20 tamil and telugu language films. Sri Anjaneyam ranks amongst the best films I’ve seen and was truly a spectacular film to watch.
I have not seen many films by Krishna Vamsi, other than the Hindi film Shakti, which was also quite spectacular, but was too high pitched for it’s own good. However Krishna Vamsi is in spectacular form in Sri Anjaneyam. Although, it still has his trademark surreal and psychodelic style; it is much much more engaging.
I recall few films that had me so entranced, so enchanted and so impressed before. The amount of time I gaped in awe, felt currents surging through my body, in fact this film was nothing short of a spiritual experience. This film is SPECTACULAR visually and emotionally and I really mean SPECTACULAR in big letters and moves at an unrelenting lightening pace, with unbelievable action, digital pizzaz, fantasy, spiritual wisdom, awe-inspiring cinematography, crazy-editing and grande songs numbers which are monumental events themselves. It is like going on a rollercoaster ride for 3 hours; non-stop thrills.
The film’s story is simple. A hanuman devotee(Anji) who was adopted by a priest of an ancient Lord Rama temple, after his parents were murdered over the issue of a construction of a dam, is facing all kinds of hardships in his life. Anji is a simpleton, a weak person who everyone takes advantage of. His heart is pure, his body is pure and everything in his life revolved around devotion to Hanuman, he even brings him daily food offerings and this brings him ridicule from the local rowdies. Matters because more worse when a politician discovers that Anji’s temple has black gold underneath it worth more than 100 crores at the least and can only be extracted if the ancient temple is demolished. The politician sends rowdies to create trouble at the temple and opens up an liquor store right in front of it to defile it. Evil hits a new peak, when the politician seeks the service of a wizard(tantric) to use magic to destroy the temple, but the wizard needs a human sacrifice of a pure man; they need Anji. This is when divine intervention takes place, Hanuman himself takes human form and befriends Anji. Now the fun begins!
This is the kind of cinematic experience the word SPECTACULAR was coined for. It has absolutely out of this world action, special effects and cinematography. Just don’t expect any reality in this film, this film is far removed from reality, it’s like going on an acid-trip and flying through a blur of surreal psychodelic images and emotions. The special effects, while noticably are limited by it’s small budget so that have to settle for lesser rendered CG thus making the graphic scenes detectable, yet are nonetheless very good and only second to Kodi Ramakrishna’s Anji in quality in India.
The best CG work is the fight scene between the Hanuman statue and the rowdies, a good blend of CG graphics and wire fighting. When the statue first steps on the ground, it causes a shockwave sending rowdies flying hundreds of feet into the air in all directions. Close, is the scene when Hanuman decides to appear to Anji, here there are a sequence of CG scenes: The first is a CG generated palm leaf that flies through the air during a wind, and to make it more believable the CG team mix it with live footage of real leaves flying about. The leaf flies upwards towards the head of a 150 foot Hanuman statue, and then flutters back down in style, with rays emanating from it and the words ’’Sri Ram’’ engraved in it accompanied with some Sanskrit music. Later, when Anji is walking down a forest, the leaf appears again and starts to rapidly circle around the crowd generating a 150 foot whirlwind and the figure of Hanuman appears in it. Later, a 150 foot living statue of Hanuman appeared made from rocks that self-assemble to form him and moves about, stepping into an ocean, as it moves rocks fall from it and it eventually disintegrates and form the word ’’Sri Ram’’ again; the effects are very similar to the Mummy Returns. Finally, the sequence concludes later at night when Hanuman is formed again, but this time from a liquid substance and then shrinks to take on the human form.
The trip of Anji to the centre of the universe is very visually interesting. Anji falls through a sequence of surreal mystical locations, with a lot of Hindu patterns and all kinds of abstract imagery such as spinning vortexes, liquid plasma, galaxies and one sequence looks as if he’s falling through red blood cells. This is a very visually interesting sequence that reminds me of the trip through space-time in Contact.
The worst effects were the demon Karshuka, which is a CG demonic head of a Ram(or something like that) but it only appears twice in the film for just a few seconds, it’s not very well done, it is very similar to the demon that appears in the film Little John. In one of the songs number, there is also a superman-ish sequence with Hanuman taking Anji for a ride flying just over an ocean. The entire background is CG generated and is glaringly fake.
More wow effects include Anji jumping over a lake. The CGI is blended very well in the film, because they entire film has been digitally graded(using a digital intermediate) giving the film a surreal and international look. It looks like a mega-budget film with the amount of special effects, action and huge crowd scenes. The action, done with wires, is as spectacular as you would imagine from seeing a film like House Of Flying Daggers, and more, the final action scene is just crazy(in a good way)
The biggest strength of this film is Hanuman and Anji’s relationship in the film and their portrayal by the leads Nitin and the actor who essays Hanuman. His characterization is very good, he walks as if he has a tail makes gestures and growls as if he really is a monkey.
Hanuman is not portrayed as an intelligent, divine powerful being, in fact he’s very human, almost child-like and is very mischievous and just like Anji is completely devoted to Hanuman, he is completely devoted to Lord Rama, the contrast here is very interesting. Hanuman shares profound wisdom with Anji to wisen him up. One such snippet of wisdom, is when Anji gives his offerings, a banana, to Hanuman as usual, and Hanuman(the human form) picks it up and eats it saying he’s hungry. Anji is angry and Hanuman asks him ’’Where did the food come from’’ Anji responds ’’From the Tree’’ then Hanuman asks ’’But, who gives us the food’’ Anji responds ’’Lord Hanuman’’ then Hanuman says ’’So Lord Hanuman gives us the food, and you give it back to him(snip) Lord Hanuman would be more pleased if you gave this food to a hungry man and served humanity’’
I am in love with the songs in the film and especially how they are picturized. To some peoples disbelief there is a sexy number in this film too, which may seem oddly placed in a fantasy and devotional film, but it should be appreciated that this is a modern film and attitude towards sex are more liberal, indeed even the ancients Indians were quite liberal towards sex. There are two purely classical Sanskrit numbers as well and maybe I am just biassed, but whenever I hear Sanskrit sung resonantly, it resonates within me and touches my soul.
A must see.