World Famous Lover: Love with No Seasons

Star Cast: Vijay Devarakonda, Raashi Khanna, Aishwarya Rajesh, CCatherine Tresa, Izabelle Leite.
Screenplay by Kranthi Madhav
Directed by Kranthi Madhav
Cinematography by Jaya Krishna Gummadi
Edited by Kotagiri Venteswara Rao

SPOILER ALERT

Intensity doesn’t mean that we try to be bold or just cry by looking deeply into the heavens. At times, few makers believe that intensification of a story needs slowing down the pace and dragging it needlessly or bring two characters close in a conversation for a mid-close or extremely close profile and make them talk in a husky way. Mani Ratnam never tried to overuse this technique and he knew exactly how to use it and where to write brightly or broadly and where to keep it simple. We can learn from masters and this is not a void comparison. I am not expecting everyone to be Mani Ratnam or Balachander but when to aspire to be like them, it is better to inspire yourself with ideas that are fresh than just too old to work out.

A good actor can pull off giving up eyes for his love but we have to try and see, how logical it is when we are making it on screen as well. There is no issue if the maker had decided to show that the hero died and she got his eyes. She is living his life on behalf of him. Watching the world through his eyes and with him. This might not be a better spin-off that works for you, but as a story, this has more depth and logic than what we saw on screen. Why? Because the character of Gautham is not a person that cheerful. He might have tried to say that Yamini who cheerfully sacrificed for him to live a life that envisions but that doesn’t mean she is happy turning blind, which she is obviously not. She wants him and she wants his love, not amendments. Then, it is better to say that she died for him but he never recognized it. Hence, she and him, both had to live apart and face the same “jail time”. The climax would have had more meaning than just being another wannabe Arjun Reddy.

Similarly, Seenayya – Smitha – Suvarna story doesn’t come up with clear cut character motivations. Even though Seenayya might be an extension of Gautham but at that point in the story, we did not meet Gautham completely either. So, it just feels like an abrupt beginning to a random thought which a good writer will always try to reason within a novel. In the film, viewers need to understand a character through his actions and solve the pieces of the puzzle to take his or her side. In a book, we get a writer’s special description. Just how the KGF Chapter 1 writer understood the necessity of the narrative structure better, we wish even Kranthi Madhav, had understood it in the same way.

If that was the case, we would have gotten Seenayya’s dilemma and story through Gautham’s vision. He might not have come up with “Gayapadda Simham …”, kind of lines but he would have given us his own description of what Seenayya stands for him at that moment when he wrote those words and what he stands for him after coming out of jail. What these two years have given him? How they changed his perspective towards life, would have been clear to audiences as the director wanted to share it. He tried to give you a picture of Yamini’s love for Gautham through his own words as a story. This is indeed a story of Yamini than the story of Gautham.

He might have written it but he wrote it thinking he is the best lover but Yamini is the real person who loved. Yes, she asked him to look for a settlement with a job than following his passion. But when he came to her and said that he took such a decision to follow his passion impulsively, without prior discussion, she accepted his reasoning. After that “sacrifice”, all she got was lonely nights, a person who doesn’t care for himself or her. He doesn’t try to bounce ideas with her until she breaks the relationship. She became too lonely that she felt she was also an object to Gautham than a person. So, Gautham had to understand that it is not her who left him but it is him who left her, on the day he decided to become a writer, without discussion.

He might have saved her job and decided to take a back step in his career. But she would have not felt as abandoned as she did, even if he had taken the Paris job and traveled to the new country, with her. As Indians, we are programmed to compromise, support each other in a relationship. Even in Foreign countries, the relationships that respect each other stand long term like 35 to 40 years or till death do them apart. Yes, the foreign relationships, you keep reading about and making fun off too have longevity, all that is necessary is trust, patience, and compassion.

As an actor, Vijay Devarakonda comes across as a person who has 1000 aspirations but many limitations. Yes, he wants to try different things and has guts to okay some different concepts. The real challenge lies in pulling them off like Kamal did with Balachander and K. Viswanath. Even when he doubted himself, they never did. That is the kind of talent you aspire and that is what inspirational too. Raashi Khanna gave her best and I am glad that she did such a role. Got to see that, she has more talent than the world noticed to date. Still, somehow our female characters never stop coming across as people who are there to be loved by our heroes than them being characters that magnetically attract them. Maybe another aspirational quality that our earlier generations did ace but we are failing to take the right inspirations.

As a writer, World Famous Lover‘s story had all that potential but as a film, it lacks a skeleton. It could have easily been a writer finding himself and the reasons for break-up without his love of life, telling him. But this ends up as another rambling drama that aspires for being “Love for all Seasons” but ends up as a “Long Summer with no relief.”

Theatrical Trailer: