There are many who have a grouse with Srikanth Odela’s debut film, Dasara (2023), with Nani . thanks to his guru, Sukumar’s Rangasthalam (2018), there was honesty in the way the tale was told While that film also felt awfully familiar. I am not one of them. It is not just bogged down with a sense of déjà vu, but is shoddily made, making no attempt to stand apart from similar films that have been hitting screens lately. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The same cannot be said for their second outing, The Paradise.
It has been 40 years since Independence, but the tribe is still struggling to gain legal recognition from the government. Because this is Telugu cinema, though it’s no spoiler to say he does,. Shikanja Malik ( Mohan Babu ) rules over the fictional Paradise by exploiting the Savaari tribe. He has been looking down on them for years, but an incident changes the course of his rule. Sounds familiar? Sammakka (Sonali Kulkarni) is leading this fight for thousands who are throttled by Shikanja every day. Her son Jadal (Nani), however, is fighting a battle of his own against his mother and Shikanja. What leads Jadal to join Sammakka in her fight for dignity? Will he achieve what he set out to do? Every beat of this film is predictable I think it’s time for Tollywood to retire the saviour trope. There are only so many ways to tell stories about downtrodden people who find a messiah. It is worth noting that most of these films haven’t exactly been met with love either. So what do filmmakers think can add to an already crowded space? When Odela and Nani made Dasara, irrespective of what people say, it was raw and gritty. It had a beating heart. It was surprising to see Nani pull off something like that with a fresh director. The Paradise seems like the duo trying too hard on twice the budget to make something that just doesn’t work. The heart doesn’t beat, and we don’t need to see another reluctant hero story for a long time.
Violence is like the spice that makes an action film taste good. You can do with enough to just season the dish, but filmmakers seem to forget that too much of it also makes it unsavoury. The Paradise starts off with the intent of showing what cruel violence can give birth to, but ends up indulging in it with no hesitation. Shikanja might be hacking and stabbing his way to power, and Jadal might be doing it out of anger that stems from humiliation and later desperation, but Odela doesn’t bother to differentiate between the two visually. This is a gripe I have with many films lately, whose violence begins to bore you. There are only so many times the audience will enjoy heads flying. After a point, it just feels like exploitation to see women being brutalised. When you watch The Paradise , it is clear that Odela wanted to pay homage to and tap into Sammakka’s legacy. The story of the 13th-century Koya tribal warrior from Telangana is one of bravery and grit. The Paradise uses the same name, the same jaggery, the same pain to tell another tale of a fight, but does the blasphemy of not enraging you in their plight. This film is bogged down by a legacy it fails to live up to.
Because sammakka and the audience both deserve better than a film that makes you wonder if Toxic was better, and that’s a shame,. She is revered even today with the Sammakka Saralamma Jatara, where jaggery is offered in her honour.
