Join WhatsApp Channel
Such movies are rare, and most of these emerge from the South. This 180-minute marathon succeeds in making up for its overlong length with its amazing visuals and VFX. For once, packaging does have an edge.
‘Spectacle’ is a tepid word for this technical extravaganza whose story is a complex blend of mythology, history and contemporary drama. The action and emotion are at centerstage and, clearly, are intended to be. Post-Dhurandhar’s epic success, brutal and graphic violence are now trendy (this is the only ill-effect of that massive epic duology, though the excess therein was employed with good reason in those adult-certified films). Here, at least two child artistes should have been spared the ordeal of shooting these sequences at their age.
Apart from these issues—the length (which could have been pared down to around 160 minutes) and the children facing such violence—one is captivated by the imagination, conceptualization and above all execution of this quasi-epic. It explores India’s ancient Vishnu temples, an enigmatic ritual called Nagabandham, other sacred traditions and naturally greedy human beings.
The opening frames and voiceovers talk about two everlasting qualities in such humans: their greed for power and their craving for immortality. At the beginning, we see a greedy bairaagi (ascetic) essayed by Ramachandra Raju trapped within a tree due to his sins. This trapped evildoer encounters Abdali (Rishabh Sawhney), a descendant of the Afghan invaders of the 1750s, who unleashes his vicious and evil side onto his American associate, Tesla (Jason Shah) and his wife, daughter and father-in-law, Professor Prabhakar (Jagapathi Babu).
Bairaagi has ordered Abdali to procure the precious Brahma-Kamal, a golden lotus that sits on the reclining idol of Ranganatha in an ancient temple at Srirangapuram. This will make Bairaagi free from the tree that has imprisoned him in its branches and he can rule the world.
Rudra (Virat Karrna) decides to protect the Brahma Kamal from falling into the wrong hands after it is stolen from the temple by a mysterious person. There is unlimited bloodshed and dirty manipulations by the evil forces, and ultimately, after a prolonged flashback to 1756, we see the antagonists vanquished.
Nagabandham starts off with the backstories around the devotional aspects. Archaeologists come in and we have a potential appointment with even the Prime Minister that is not kept for tragic reasons. It continues with a couple of twists in the tale, grandiloquently-shot devotional and romantic numbers, stunning shots of mountains, crowds, battle sequences, temple community ceremony scenes and animals like elephants, eagles, crocodiles and, above all, snakes—with sets that must have cost a bomb.
It is thus the ostentation that dominates as even in the sequences that look repetitious, the visual magic overpowers, The background score would have been arresting if not so loud in the final mix, and the script takes its time to reach the predictable end, but if you are a Telugu film fan, you are in for an absolute treat.
Virat Karrna as Rudra is just one-film old, but he holds his own and makes a mark with expressive eyes and his essay of a character who is as hard as nails. Rishabh Sawhney as Abdali is an exaggerated comic book villain with his leers and sneers and thus effective for the needs of his character. Jagapathi Babu as Prabhakar scores in general, but as a performance it’s a shade erratic. Kiara Khanna as a child makes a solid mark, but as said before, one hopes that the sequences she is made to do have not psychologically scarred her. The same goes for the other child actress later.
Murli Sharma is impressive as Achyuthachari, but Mahesh Manjrekar as another head-priest is wasted. From the ladies, Nabha Natesh is very good as Parvathi, but the others are merely functional. In any case, the women have no real identity of their own here, including Parvathi beyond a twist-point. From the rest, John Kokken leaves a mark.
Soundar Rajan S.’s camerawork is uniformly picturesque and mood-oriented, but R.C. Pranav’s editing needed much sharper cuts to make this a loftier exercise. Pats, however, are abundantly deserved by the costumes team of Rajesh Kamarsu, Chalamakla Vibha Reddy and Sashi Chowdary and choreographers Brinda, Ganesh Acharya and Shrasti Verma for their excellent work. The action (Kanal Kannan, Vlad Rimburg, Real Sathish, Kecha Khamphakdee, Nandu, Run Navarach and Jr. Venkat) only proves the more the bloodier and gorier. This is one area that should have been tempered.
A true hero is production designer Ashok Koralath, who has not majorly depended on CGI: the sets are simply out of this world!
My goal, as in so many such movies, is always to assess and weigh a film’s aptness for its target audience against its plus-minus balance of cinematic aspects. Like Jawan, Animal (both directed by South filmmakers for banners from Mumbai), Lingaa, Vikram and Jailer, this film will work for the viewers it is aimed at and the intended sheer opulence and hard work put in by the unit will override its shortcomings. Especially when the filmmakers here have courageously homed in on an actor who is no cult superstar to be the center-point of this film.
Rating: ***1/2
NIK Studios’ & Abhishek Pictures’ Naagbandham: The Secret Treasure Produced by: Kishore Annapureddy, Nishitha Nagireddy & Abhishek Nama Directed by: Abhishek Nama Written by: Abhishek Nama & Kalyan Chakravarthy Music: Junaid Kumar & Abhe Starring: Virat Karrna, Nabha Natesh, Mahesh Manjrekar, Jagapathi Babu, Murli Sharma, Ramachandra Raju, Anasuya Bhardwaj, Saranya Ponvannan, Rishabh Sawhney, Daksha Nagarkar, Kiara Khanna, Soniya Singh, Iswarya Menon, John Kokken, John Vijay & others
