Excessive violence and predictable storytelling suck the air out of The Paradise and reduce it to a limp, messy heap despite all the technical wizardry and visual vim and vigour that director Srikanth Odela packs into it end to end.
A Telugu mass movie that pulls out the stops, The Paradise homes in on a man who takes up cudgels on behalf of his mother and his marginalised tribe to avenge the brutal oppression that a feudal lord has subjected them to for many years.
Lead actor Nani, reuniting with Odela three years after the super-successful Dasara, plays Jadal, a seething rebel with a cause who returns to his people after serving a long prison sentence. He sets out to settle scores with the viciously exploitative Malik (Mohan Babu).
Jadal’s unstoppable rage is fuelled by the humiliation he faced in his early teens and by a slur directed at his mother, Shamakka (Sonali Kulkarni). The mother-son dimension of the revenge saga is of significance, but women generally receive a raw deal in The Paradise.
The film’s obsession with the torture of pregnant women borders on the inexplicable. Expectant mothers are thrown into the deep end in the opening sequence, the pre-interval block and the climax. The repetition inevitably yields diminishing returns and dwindling shock value.
Once the star, with a look and hairdo put in place to complement his action hero persona, gets down to business, it is mayhem all the way, for his adversaries and the movie alike. What he does to the world – and the system – that has filled him with all-consuming fury is what the film is solely interested in.
Not that The Paradise has a dearth of characters, but most of them pop in and out of the plot without making an impression. Nobody is done in as badly as the villain himself. His presence is exceedingly crucial to the tale. But that is hard to tell given the way he has to wait in the wings for long stretches.
What is worse, the bad guy is allowed only a single confrontation sequence with the hero. For a movie about a larger-than-life rabble-rouser, the villain is ill-advisedly turned into a bystander who must await his turn in the spotlight.
The inheritor of the mantle of evil, Vikram (Raghav Juyal in his Telugu debut), wears a lot of gold but does not exactly glitter. He is meant to be a fount of menace but comes across as no more than a flashy character type whose every move is a response to a contrived impulse.
The writing, which ranges from the passable to the muddled, does the actor no real favours, but Juyal does not stop trying. Full marks to him on that count.
Ditto for Kayadu Lohar. The actress breaks the monotony of the unrelenting darkness of a hermetically sealed world where blood is spilt at the slightest provocation. That is about it. More imaginative writing might have helped the film derive more from her presence.
As far as craft, visual veneer and quality of execution go, The Paradise has a great deal going for it. The first half, devoted to building a world in which a tribe is stripped of dignity, denied freedom and forced to exist in subhuman conditions, provides a promising set-up. The second half fritters it all away.
The first thought that crosses one’s mind as the lights dim and the movie begins to unspool is this: a mass movie that has eschewed trailers on its way to the multiplexes and has still managed to generate buzz of gargantuan proportions has got to be very special.
The Paradise is special all right only to the extent it is a signpost in the careers of both Nani and Odela. The scale and purported reach of the project are enormous. Sadly, the nearly three-hour movie – it is split into floridly titled chapters in an attempt to impart a structured feel to its twisting strands – struggles to find a steady rhythm and a consistent core.
It banks on a sprawling and sweeping canvas to dazzle the audience but forgets to fill the narrative expanse with characters that are more than shallow caricatures, a narrative sprawl that goes beyond just dense plotting and emotional situations that aren’t overly and superficially lachrymal.
The screenplay seeks to overcompensate for the lack of substance by squeezing in socio-political issues – feudalism, identity, the frustration and anger of the downtrodden – as well as allusions to contemporary political parallels.
But none of it rises above the ruins and contributes to enhancing the impact of the movie. These are merely touched upon. No attempt is made to expand on them and weave them into the film.
The production designer and the cinematographer do their bit to aid the film’s elaborate universe where an exploited tribe in a squalid 1980s Secunderabad slum is run to the ground. It is at the level of animating them with relatable sleights that the film is found wanting.
The Paradise is an opportunity lost, especially for a director who proved his mettle beyond doubt with his very first film. His second, scattered and uneven, is no patch on Dasara.
Nani powers parts of The Paradise to tremendous levels of intensity. Moreover, the film stays true to its setting. But its varied elements are way too scattered and uneven for the finesse on the surface to seep in deeper and make a difference.
As has been emphasised already, The Paradise is undermined especially by its over-reliance on graphic violence. Every action scene strives to outdo the previous one, with each act of brutality pushing the boundaries of the noxious.
Flying heads, severed limbs and gravity-defying, hell-for-leather stunts are common occurrences. It certainly isn’t for every palate. The A certificate isn’t surprising at all, although it is a rare event in Nani’s career.
His fans had every reason to be excited. The expectations were high. Too high, as it turns out. Nani pulls his weight. The film does not.
