Sambhavaami Yuge Yuge Review

It's a small-time, low-budget movie, but thank-god for that because they are the only ones that seem to be saying anything out of the ordinary nowadays. My judgement is colored with Sambhavaami Yuge Yuge simply because it is out-of-the-ordinary, and given the calamitous, mind-numbing rate at which formula movies are force-fed to us by Tollywood, just a reasonably eccentric storyline is enough to for me to cock-up my head up and stare ostrich-eyed.

This is a story of the mafia and gang-wars in a small Andhra town. Of areas and jurisdictions of various annas, territorial aggression that just stops short of peeing all across the boundary-line, of flaunting guns like toys, of wanton killing and fiery egos and those who get blown to smithereens between the firing lines.

Of-course director Ravi says it is about three youngsters who fight the evils in the society, but that message comes out all garbled, encoded unintentionally by meatier and more intriguing tales. In fact, the said youngsters' lives seem like an incidental, side-story, or a catalyst to the central plot at the most, which is good because it is really quite unexceptional.

If we were to construct a hierarchical pyramid of characters, at the tip of Sambhavaami Yuge Yuge would be Mallanna (Jack), of the black gums and glittering rivers of gold around his neck. Cutting an impressive figure in unbuttoned silk shirts and shorts, he is aggressive, inconquerable and yet violently insecure emotionally. Next in the pyramid are Erraadu and Nalla Seenu, two other gang leaders. Gopi, who is Mallanna's aide-de-camp and something of a trophy-friend, also belongs here in terms of how much he warps the continuum of this story.

At the very bottom are our three little pigs...ahem...college-kids - holding hands, hooting at girls, break-dancing on roads and harmlessly smoking ganja. They are Anji (Anji), Sailaja (Srijana) and the dumb Ali, who are such bosom-buddies that when Sailaja gets pregnant cum paralysed in the latter half of the movie and has no one to take care of her, Anji valiantly flouts all societal norms and propriety and moves in with her to nurse her through her pregnancy.

The story is hardly a story in the Tollywood sense - more like an aggregation of events occurring over a 20 year period of time. Living in a poverty-stricken town, blighted by floods, the three kids grow up in a crime-ridden neighbourhood. Sailaja is orphaned early enough and only has the boys Anji and Ali for her friends. All actors in the movie have refreshingly average, next-door looks and sail unselfconsciously through their roles.

The ganja habit of the three little pigs brings them to brush against the big bad wolf Mallanna every once in a while. Even otherwise, like flies and carrion birds that settle on everything rotting in a flood-hit town, these goons are spread thickly in every nook and cranny, and a confrontation with them seems veritably unavoidable. Things come to a turn soon enough as Gopi falls in love with Sailaja and wants to give Mallanna a ditch so he can run away with her.

Mallanna is insanely jealous of the girl 'cause he is perversely possessive of Gopi. Chaos ensues as a bunch of disasters occur coincidentally, and Gopi is shot dead while Ali's girl-friend and family are butchered too. Ali turns to Erradu's gang and begins toting a gun and a murderous look in his eyes, while Anji becomes a press-photgrapher while trying to earn a living to support Sailaja who is pregnant by now and also paralysed by the shock of Gopi's death.

As is the case with all Tollywood movies, Sambhavaami Yuge Yuge cannot resist the temptation of turning to incoherent bullshit towards the end. The lives of all characters start criss-crossing in totally improbable ways, in a mad attempt by the director at some sort of convergence of all the numerous sub-plots. Like a smoothly functioning computer IC doused with water, the film starts spluttering and sending off violent sparks to end like a fireworks display on Guy Fawkes Day.

Then again, while it screws up the resolution, Sambhavaami Yuge Yuge remains true to its soul and doesn't resort to masala. That of course is commendable. There are far too many songs too, and at the most unlikely of places which is rather inexplicable coming from the same director who was deviant enough to want to film this plot.

In any case, Sambhavaami Yuge Yuge is a superb watch this weekend, but only for those who can stomach a little non-conformism, a story of a world that is not theirs. It entertains too, with its novelty and nuances of the mafia world that will make you sit up and think. Sambhavaami really is what you would call an intelligent movie, in conceptualisation, if not in execution.

Isn't that a lot better than what we have come to expect from Tollywood?