Telugu people are big movie fans, and they go crazy when it comes to Megastar Chiranjeevi’s movies. This is true also of Telugus in the US, who were thrilled to see his latest movie, Stalin released in different US cities on the same day as in Andhra.
I went to see Stalin last Sunday (four days after it’s release). All Chiru fans were in festive mood – screaming and whistling as the title started rolling. This continued until the first song, but it became increasingly difficult to maintain the same level of excitement. The audience mood turns somber as Chiru gets into the serious business of helping handicapped women to set the stage for his grand scheme: “If you get help, you promise to help three others”.
Stalin, a son of communist leader, is a socially conscious person with impatient zeal to change the society. In the process of helping others, he realizes that it is not possible for him alone to save the world (in spite of his larger than life image and mighty martial powers of Indra + Tagore combined). For example, Stalin lends his hand to a brilliant handicapped (without two hands) student to write her college final exams. Unfortinately, she kills herself the next day due to her failure to find help to write her exams, and Stalin was busy helping a blind women do her Chemistry practicals. While helping another person, he launches the new scheme to multiply his efforts. The scheme starts sluggishly in the beginning, but takes off later like a wildfire. A 10-year girl saves the Chief Minister and hundred others from a jihadist. At one end of this multi-stranded chain, a rikshaw-puller-turned auto-driver helps Stalin to escape from villains. With this, the chain completes one full circle.
As if this larger than life image is not good enough for Chiranjeevi, there is a Kargil war track where Stalin defeats the enemy single-handedly, reclaims the mountain peak and furls the national flag. This track has little connection with the main plot, and is a big waste of footage, time and money.
Of course, there is a comedy track with two parts. Both are centered on the same (but also opposite) region of anatomy. In the first part, Chiranjeevi is to explain why his little nephew, Harbhajan Singh is called a chitti eluka by the heroine. Chiru is prevented from verbalizing his answer due to modesty, but gestures it nicely that audience get a chucke. But the little girl, whom the heroine escorts to the bathroom, does not feel shy to verbalize. She reveals to Chiru that both herself and the heroine are wearing the same color thing. The heroine feels exposed to the hero by this episode, and the song sequences follow.
The duets are beautifully picturized, but it is difficult to detect the right chemistry between the pair. See the heroine declares she is only 19, and the hero does not look like he is below 40s (or 50s). I saw pitru-vaatsalyam when Chiru kissed the heroine. By the way, Trisha looks ravishingly charming. Her youthfulness is no anyway diminished by the mismatched pairing. But nobody cares about the heroine. She is sidelined in almost all the scenes except the songs. Even the villains do not think she is worth going after. Instead, they take the little Harbhajan away in revenge.
The movie ends after Sunil lectures the expert cardio-surgeons on how Chiru’s heart is connected to the 10 crore other hearts and such an adored heart cannot be allowed to stop by a tiny bullet, however close it is to the heart.
How is the movie related to the real Stalin? In the west (and even in Russia), Stalin is known as a brutal dictator. He is famous (rather infamous) for three things: (1) Russian industrial revolution, five year plans forced through labor camps and Gulags, (2) Purges: elimination of his opponents in the communist party, and (3) collectivization of farming, which caused hunger and famine, and liquidated a class of farmers called kulaks. But that is not the Stalin people in India know. Our beloved first prime minister, Nehru portrayed Stalin as a Saint of the Soviet Union. We seem to believe that lie even now. Murugadoss and Chirajeevi seem to support this big lie about Stalin.
posted by Govinda Bhisetti @ 1:48 PM
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