Nandini Reddy: Anni Manchi Sakunamule is my most honest film

There is an enormous amount of candour and clarity in Nandini Reddy as she speaks in depth about writing and cinema, the two intertwined crafts she has been working with over the last twenty-five years in Telugu cinema. Starting out as an assistant to filmmaker Gangaraju Gunnam and later, Krishna Vamsi, Nandini branched out into making her own films in 2011 with Ala Modalaindi. A classic in the contemporary rom-com space, the film also marked the debut of actress Nithya Menen. Much like the Hollywood filmmaker, the late Nora Ephron, Nandini Reddy has created a niche in the Telugu film industry with her films that may be small in scale but definitely big at heart, combining comedy and romance with sincere observations on the human condition.

Anni Manchi Sakunamule (AMS), her latest feature, is slightly different from the rest of her films, owing to its heightened drama that her other films had a lot less of. Speaking to CE, Nandini responds to the query on the dramatic treatment of AMS saying, “It is certainly not a rom-com. The film belongs firmly to the drama genre. Ala Modalaindi was very light. The conflicts are also much milder. After the film, everyone understood that delivering humour was my strong suit. Kalyana Vaibhogame also followed the same route, it had more comedy than drama. I was not sure about handling drama. It was my weak spot because I could not differentiate between drama and melodrama. I don’t like melodrama but I do love emotions. It was the success of Oh! Baby that made me feel more at home with helming high-strung emotional drama. That film gave me the confidence to write AMS without inhibitions.”

Another big factor separating AMS from her previous films was its location, as the story is set in a fictitious hill station called Victoriapuram. The town itself is a character in the film, with the two warring families of the film being rival coffee plantation owners. Speaking about the film’s distinct look, Nandini says, “Every detail in the story lends itself to a set-up and a pay-off. Nothing has been added for the sake of it. The town’s backstory is connected to a feud between these two families, with the feud in turn being connected to the romantic subplot of the film’s leads. The story also plays across intertwined timelines, going back and forth while providing due context along the way.” Nandini also states that the film’s backstory does not demand a massive suspension of disbelief as it draws its inspiration from the country’s colonial history, including the legacy of Sir Arthur Cotton in Rajahmundry.

Replying to the proverbial chicken-and-egg question about whether Victoriapuram came first or the film’s flesh-and-blood characters, Nandini says, “The genesis of AMS came from its protagonist Rishi. Obviously, if there is a boy, there is also a girl, and from there we started exploring their backgrounds, which led us to the crux of the story. I am a great believer that things happen for a reason so I explored all kinds of explanations within the story even though they may not be a part of the final story. Now, the story of AMS is a creature unto itself, starting from the crisis of Victoriapuram and going everywhere else.” Oh! Baby, the Telugu adaptation of the Korean film Miss Granny was a hit amongst people of all ages, despite its commentary on the plight of senior citizens appealing more to the older demographic. Was there an attempt of sorts with AMS, to simultaneously curry the favour of viewers young and old? “I don't tend to think a lot about who a film is supposed to primarily engage. It should appeal to me first, at a writing level. Then, the story at hand should be persuasive enough to appeal to a broader set of viewers, which is when conversations around a film’s target audience arise. But the success of Oh! Baby has truly taken us by surprise. Kids as young as five have taken a liking to that story and Samantha’s character.” Taking the example of her mentor Krishna Vamsi’s recent film, Nandini continues, “I have heard people in their mid-twenties watch Ranga Marthanda and find themselves relating to it. So you never know how a film is going to be accepted and it is best not to patronise our audiences. As long as your story is genuine, you are good to go.”

Speaking about the specific writing challenges she encountered, especially while writing the character arcs of AMS’s ensemble cast, Nandini says, “It was a conscious choice to not keep them in the background. When we wrote our lead Rishi, we wanted to explain why he thought or behaved a certain way and we did that by writing his father with depth and complexity. It was imperative for us to explore all sorts of interpersonal dynamics in the film, for us to be able to empathise with the lead character completely. We did not want to have a one-dimensional characterisation or just explain things by saying ‘Oh he is a Bommarillu father’. The same goes for the rest of the characters. Understanding these characters’ decisions at an emotionally forensic level and plotting all of that in the story was a challenge. This is the most I have worked on a film, my god, that was exhausting.” Continuing about the curveballs the film threw at the writing table, Nandini says, “AMS is a very simple story. But, ironically, the simplest things are the hardest to write, because there are no tropes in AMS. Nor do we have any twists that we usually see in films. All the conflicts in the film are internal. There is no villain looming in the background, to make life hard for the protagonist and easy for the writer. In the first fifteen minutes of AMS, I have told you everything that happens. The challenge is to engage you for the next two hours, through these seven characters from two families. These kinds of screenplays are the hardest to write.”

Crediting her fellow writers in a way that is as refreshing as it is magnanimous, Nandini says, “I could have possibly done justice to AMS alone. I wrote the original story of the film, the moola katha, with the help of Srihari Nanu, following which, Sheikh Dawood and I wrote the screenplay together, embellishing the film with details and nuances. Lakshmi Bhupala, who has also written the dialogues for my previous films, hopped aboard to pen this film’s lines.” Speaking about the value other writers bring to your project, Nandini continues, “It is important to have another perspective, a bouncing board of sorts for your ideas, lest you get circling round and round in your own world. I take these perspectives from other writers, viewpoints that are different to mine and amalgamate them into my screenplay. For my short in the Pitta Kathalu anthology, I collaborated the most with a fellow writer, because it was not a space that came easily to me. Radhika (Anand) from Mumbai wrote the story for me and we worked together till we got this beautiful Roald Dahl-esque climax.”

Has the journey in Telugu cinema been hard for Nandini, whose films are a stark contrast to the adrenaline-fuelled masala cinema this industry churns more prolifically? “Not really. I wrote Ala Modalaindi with my voice and texture at the centre of it all, most importantly, as a film I would like to watch as a viewer. Thankfully, the film became a success and my story found an enduring resonance amongst audiences. I found my space and evolved on the go. And there has always been a space for filmmakers in our industry with voices of their own, be it a Bapu garu or a Jandhyala garu.”

Taking the example of K Viswanath’s seminal classic Sankarabharanam and how risky that film was on paper back then, Nandini says, “It is so phenomenal when we think about it now. The film’s male protagonist (JV Somayajulu) was a theatre artiste with a government job, Manju Bhargavi garu, the film’s female lead was not famous either, there is no romance between the leads and to top it all off, it is a film about classical music, with barely any youth appeal. The film broke every rule in the book and how! Films need to come from a place of conviction, period.”

Echoing the value of unflinching conviction necessary for a film to soar, Nandini says, “AMS is my most honest film to date. I just wrote it, holding nothing back. The people who have seen the film so far have been moved, particularly by its climax. Our film is a labour of love and I am hoping everything just lands the way it is supposed to and things work out well.”