Salaar Telugu Movie
Writer-director Prashanth Neel's "Salaar: Part 1 - Ceasefire" is one helluva movie. It spans generations and continents. It has a lot of violence and a lot of drama. It somehow fits a story of brotherhood set in the modern day into the story of an ancient empire with multiple clans seeking territorial control. The first half, set in the smartphone era, is a series of build-ups and reaction shots. With quick cuts and frantic editing, Neel draws you into the world of Khansaar, not gradually but with the touch of a virtuoso filmmaker.
You sense a bit of rush in the editing in the first half. Here, Neel jumps from one set of characters to the next so quickly that it is hard to keep up. The only bits of story I could understand in the first half are that there is a woman in duress, a bunch of madmen gunning for her head, and a mother who keeps her savage son on a psychological leash. Prabhaas' Deva belongs to one of the tribes of Khansaar, the fictional world where Salaar is set. From various characters, we get to know that he is a volcano waiting to erupt any minute. All of these characters are connected to the dark past and the troublesome present of Khansaar.
What a dense world Khansaar is. Khansaar is in India but is not on the map. It has its own rules and its own rulers. Neel uses a great deal of exposition to help us unravel this world, but it is not easy to make a mental note of everything and everyone. There are clan leaders and their successors plotting to kill the other clan members. Not every kill plot has a conventional route, though. Take John Vijay's character, for instance. He is a mad man seeking revenge and a piece of Khansaar who waits to unleash an army of drug addicts on one of the film's central characters. There are people who work as soldiers for clan leaders with the worst of human tendencies. A kite ritual works as a trigger to choose whom one of the soldiers gets to rape that day. Only a voting system and a ceasefire can tame them temporarily.
All of this means Salaar's plot is a lot to take in. At some point, the film contains a bit too much exposition and borders on exhaustion. But it never becomes tedious or uninteresting thanks to Prashanth Neel's unique world-building and storytelling. Let me warn you that this is not for those who enjoy subtle cinema. Neel's storytelling and plot contain elements similar to the Ponniyin Selvan duology, but replace that film's subtlety and sensibilities with the over-the-top quotient and the relationship dynamics of Salaar, and what you have is a movie on steroids.
The action is a bit wishy-washy, but Salaar has such good drama and some pure filmmaking to keep KGF fans interested. Neel is such a singular talent. It is fascinating how he envisions certain sequences in an otherwise generic context. There is this one seemingly generic action stretch where someone associates Deva with Kali, and Neel shows us a startling image of a man with parts of swords behind him, representing the goddess in human form.
The writing is also very good, especially in the second half. I like what Neel has done with the Prithviraj character, Vardharaja Mannar. This is a pure character with an arc of his own, not some mass movie action hero. The dynamics between his Vardha and Prabhas' Deva are the beating heart of the film. It is what drives the narrative and leads the audience to some of the film's gooseflesh-inducing moments.
Speaking of gooseflesh, Salaar is a testosterone-filled ride. It is the men who get the lion's share of screen space in Salaar, although the film is not devoid of powerful female characters. Easwari Rao and Sriya Reddy play two such characters with the power to decide the fate of the clans. While they lack the depth of the film's other main characters, Neel reminds us that he is capable of dialing up the drama just in case. With Neel, the higher the stakes, the greater the highs, and the more elaborate the drama, the better the output. This is something he has proven with KGF 2, and "Salaar: Part 1 - Ceasefire" is likely to tread a similar path. Warts and all, what a film! I cannot wait for Part II.
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