Double Engine Review

Watching an Avanti Cinema film is sorta like hanging with friends at a house party. Someone is recalling an absurd anecdote here, while someone is talking about lunch there. At some point maybe a joint gets passed around. There is a sense of familiarity and comfort, maybe even boredom. But that's just the Avanti way - capturing life in unrefined form. For Rohit & Sasi, the creators of this renegade brand of hyperrealistic Telugu films, there is hardly a more worthy subject for cinema than life's mundanities. To realize their vision, they do things that would send the average producer into a fit. They don't write scripts, don't fuss over camera angles, don't care for heroes and heroines. Their distinctive style has garnered them a cultish following on YouTube, where they've been publishing their work until now.

In Double Engine, Avanti's theatrical debut, they miraculously hold on to their ethos. The movie follows a group of friends as they try to capture the elusive two-headed snake (double engine). Danny, Gopi and Mouli set off on a quest in the scrubby Telangana countryside. Whether they find the snake or not is somewhat irrelevant. Rather, the film's essence is the inner lives of their characters. Danny (Muni Myatari) is an auto driver in the city. Gopi (Bachi Ajith) runs a kirana shop in the village. Mouli (Rohit Narasimha) has racked up debts. Their lives are blurs of frustrations made bearable by booze and borrowed fantasies.

One immediately notices the unorthodox camera angles. In the opening scenes, Hyderabad is visible, but not through aesthetic shots of the metro snaking its way against a clear blue sky. We instead see what's underneath - the ugly concrete pillars, the dangling electric wires, the dug-up roads... in other words, the view that most Hyderabadis see everyday. What might raise an eyebrow in a typical film - blurry angles and tilted frames - becomes a deliberate style with Avanti.

The camera moves like a person. It stands back and follows Gopi at a distance when he goes on a soul-searching walk. It closes alongside Danny as the friends sit around a bonfire and fantasize about spring beds, packets of cigarettes, and girlfriends - what count as luxuries for a bunch of village boys. In an erotic scene, that I would categorize as the film's "item song", the camera roves over a woman's body like a voyuerist - both being covetous of her but nervous of being caught.

While there is merit to Avanti's non-conformist filmmaking techniques, at times you wish it extracted more out its characters and situations. It is too lax, too intent on being an observer. This yields undeniably authentic performances by Shanth and Ajith, yet occasionally becomes dull. The film aims to convey a blend of deep pain and shallow pleasures that live inside its characters, but we witnessed these elements deliver a far more impactful emotional punch in movies like Pareshan and Balagam.

The monotony breaks only when Avanti decides to spice things up with some cinematic flair. A regular fight scene turns into a showstopper with close-ups of furious faces staged to perfection. A sensual scene gets a whole new dimension with a psychedelic edit. So, yes, while its hyperrealism keeps it down-to-earth, it's the hyperstaging that takes it to a whole new level. A two-headed approach, you might say.

Vivek Sagar's trance-inducing music does more for the emotional resonance of the movie than most anything else. And at times, it is the primary driver of the story. The album's top song Palletoori Pillagada, which plays when a frustrated Gopi leaves the house on a grim mission, doesn't just put voice to his angst but reaches out and consoles him.

I spent much of the movie asking myself the question: what makes Double Engine special enough to make it to the big screen? Why is it not a "festival film", or for that matter a "YouTube film"? What's stopping just anybody from picking up a camera and improvising like Rohit did?

Well, nothing is.

And I think that is what makes the arrival of Double Engine to the big screen worth celebrating. It is a filmmakers' film - one that cracks open the theatre doors for a new generation of creatives to look beyond the stale stories filling up our Friday mornings week after week. That this tiny indie film is being laid across the very same canvas that was painted by Pushpas and Bahubalis should give us some hope for the future of our cinema.

Admittedly, Double Engine is not to the taste of the average Telugu film audience. If you've grown up eating idli-sambar, it is understandable that your first plate of sushi makes you gag. You are allowed to think that it's "just" sticky rice and raw fish. Maybe at least you give it a try?