Readers Write In #767: What is Sukumar’s identity?

By Aadesh Ramaswamy

Something deeply personal has affected Sukumar after Nannako Prematho. I don’t know what it is. But whatever it is has resulted in Sukumar giving one of his best films. Anyone watching Sukumar’s films before Rangasthalam would consider him to be a writer first and filmmaker next. But Rangasthalam shows that Sukumar’s direction is no less than his writing. Glimpses of this direction were always present in his previous films. The shaky and hastily cut action scenes of Jagadam not wanting us to be inspired by the violence of the film, the way Arya melts on seeing Geetha’s face in her ID card and stops hitting the molesters (the writing still reigns supreme but the way the molesters go from “spinning due to being hit” to “spinning due to being in song”, its bliss), the rapid cutting of Nannako Prematho being a race against time in itself etc all showed that beneath the good-looking man was someone who genuinely wanted to be good. Confused? The human body is the content that the soul (the form) wants to deliver. It is what people look at and easily say they like. It is what deceives people into believing that a person is good. Or, a filmmaker is good. Like Radhamohan. 

But Sukumar’s angst about being good is clearly seen in Nanako Prematho. Or maybe, even from 1:Nenokkadine. A man who doesn’t know who he is ultimately forced to learn from his enemies about who he is, could very well be applied to Sukumar, a possible art filmmaker(form) stuck in the body(content) of a commercial filmmaker.. It is probably in this sadness that he literally has to change his identity in his next film Nannako Prematho, about a father who wants his sons to take revenge against a man who forced him to change his identity.. It is also the reason why Abhiram is probably the best looking and stylish protagonist in Sukku’s entire filmography.. Designer suits, stylish boots and a hairstyle to die for (a modern undercut), Abhiram is the most intelligent and good looking of all Sukku heroes, who ultimately helps his father gain the satisfaction of dying as “Ramesh Chandra Prasad”, his father’s true identity. Now that he has died, Sukumar can comfortably go on to make his most daring (in form and content, of course) film, Rangasthalam…

As a result, Rangasthalam is probably the most Sukumar film… Which raises the question of, what is a Sukumar film? Wikipedia states the following: 

“In most of his films, Sukumar’s protagonists are shown to be characterised with grey shades”

“His screenplays are mostly complex and multi-layered which earned him the reputation of being an intelligent screenplay writer.”

All this is definitely true, but for example, Abhiram in Nannako Prematho didn’t strike me as having any grey shades… Neither does Chitti Babu have any grey shade in Rangasthalam. But Rangasthalam is what I’d call as Sukumar’s most “Sukumar” films. 

So, what is a Sukumar film? The very descriptive statements reflect the core of every Sukumar film: Identity. Sukumar’s identity is:

“In most of his films, Sukumar’s protagonists are shown to be characterised with grey shades”

But it isn’t to me Sukumar’s identity i.e. these don’t DEFINE Sukku’s films for me. They are merely characterisations because the  core theme that Sukumar has always tried to show in his artworks is about Identity.

In Rangasthalam, the base conflict is the challenging of the President’s (Jagapathi Babu in a brilliantly muted performance) identity, so much so that people don’t even know his real name and only address him as “President Gaaru”. And it leads to a terrific masala high when Chitti Babu calls him “Phanindra Bhupathi”, with the edit showing the shocked reactions of the President’s henchmen. Power wasn’t acquired due to identity. Power is identity. And this power is questioned for the first time in the rousing action sequence, where, Chitti Babu hits Shesha Naidu, for again, talking insultingly about the identity of his grandmother (her being “related” to the President’s father).  

All of this is on the text level. Where the film cuts deeper, is the final revelation of Dhakshina Moorthy being the murderer of Chitti Babu’s elder brother Kumar Babu. It ties into the fact that the Chelluboina family is low caste: a social identity which doesn’t even deserve the respect to enter Dhakshina Murthy’s home(according to Dhakshina Murthy). The Inti Peru causes Kumar Babu’s death whereas the absence of the same “Inti Peru” is the base conflict of Sukku’s succeeding film, Pushpa. 

A man whose growth stops at 10 due to the societal embarrassment of not having an ”inti peru”, Pushpa’s travails involve his attempt to outgrow this “inti peru” but also about how he ultimately keeps coming back to it. This is most explicitly shown in the climax of Part 1, where Pushpa and Bhanwar Singh Shekawat, have a ballsy(pun intended) face-off. Ballsy because it’s exactly the kind of dramatic storytelling Indian filmmakers forego due to “commercial demands” and also because both the characters become naked (except for their underwear, the symbol of their male identity). The scene is brilliant, no doubt, but I’d wager that Sukku makes his point about Pushpa even more fiercely in the pre-pre-interval “Srivalli Sammandham pesura” scene.

The cause/reason for MuniRatnam(Srivalli’s father) to accept the marriage proposal is due to Keshava saying that Pushpa is the son of Molleti Venkata Ramana which makes MuniRatnam exclaim “Aithe, Maavaade” i.e. “He is OUR guy then”.  In the following scene, when Pushpa goes to Srivalli’s house for the “pelli choopulu”, the bomb under the table is lit with Pushpa’s mom fearing their formation of this alliance on the basis of their association with the identity of Molleti Venkata Ramana. Identity is the bane of Sukumar’s world. The bomb explodes when, like the omnipresent God(for believers), Ajay’s character comes in, as usual to humiliate Pushpa. By making Ajay disrupt this marriage alliance, Sukumar essentially demonstrates how Pushpa is denied a new life(as marriages are known for), precisely because the basis of this alliance is using an identity that has haunted Pushpa, all his life. 

By preventing Pushpa from creating a new life(for himself, which would have helped him shed of his old identity) using his father’s identity, Sukumar further creates a psychological need (in Pushpa) to carve out his own identity, which makes him go and talk to Mangalam Srinu, which eventually helps him get the identity of “Syndicate head”.  It is very interesting in the way Sukumar cinematices this. 

When Ajay places the 1^st question of identity (“Do you know whom you are giving your daughter to?”), a whip pan carries not only the separation of Pushpa and Ajay’s character, but also the emotional violence being inflicted like a slap on Pushpa and his mother. Another shot of Pushpa has him and Ajay in the same frame but separated by such a depth of field, which very much implicates Ajay’s character’s backwardness, and as a result, society’s backwardness too.

(Another brilliant aspect of this scene is the setup of Srivalli’s mother saying “We send our daughter to get her surname changed” getting a solid emotional (and sad) payoff of Pushpa in the Jaathara sequence in Pushpa 2).

But where Rangasthalam shines is the way the secondary characters are also cursed with Sukumar’s identity crisis. In BR’s interview, Rajamouli said that Sukumar’s strength is in his world, which helps overcome the other flaws of the film. I disagree.

It is not in Sukumar’s world building that his strength lies in, but it is in the fact that Sukumar shares his world to us. It is not creation but it is reproduction. This is to me, the essential difference between Rajamouli and Sukumar. Sukumar’s “world” is the reproduction of a mind which has the most fascinating (or weird/fucked-up) love stories, characters who kiss their one-side love when they are alone without her consent, women who somehow always secretly like the hero and all sorts of weird idiosyncrasies which keep his films off-kilter and fascinating. We are not seeing characters but parts of a man, the essential humanness which is the strength of another favourite filmmaker of mine, Sandeep Reddy Vanga. And Rangasthalam, is arguably Sukumar’s most personal, tragic and depressing film. And as I pointed above, this world shines because of the identity crisis that his secondary characters also suffer from.

Rangamma ( a fascinating and sweet Anasuya), is a wife living in the longing of her husband, who works in Dubai. This is the identity that she has according to Chitti Babu and the other residents of Rangasthalam. And later, it is revealed to us(and Chitti Babu), that Rangamma too is living using this identity because she is scared of losing her identity(of a waiting wife), which also keeps her away from the lustful eyes of the men in the village, who according to her become more “manly” (or in Sukumar terms , reclaim their identity)when they hear of a woman losing her husband. 

So naturally it is not surprising that, she finally stops keeping pottu and all marks of marriage right when she is made the new President, a taking up of new identity, which gives her the power to safely give away her old identity. 

In a similar vein, Pushpa is a representation of the same thing but different. Pushpa’s mother is Rangamma but a “keep”. Pushpa is a man without identity but also a low caste( I presume). And when we consider this, a man who is “anti-social” (no place in society) and we see him do what he does, especially in the scene with Srivalli where he refuses to help “guard her chastity”, it is truly a very anti-masala moment in Indian cinema. The moment maybe temporary but it presents a fascinating artistic evolution for a man who has always made his characters blend with the masala template in which they live.

This is in addition to what Sukumar does on a social level. Sukumar’s sub layering of this caste conversation in both Rangasthalam and Pushpa 1 is only an evolution of his association of identity with class in his pre-transformation films i.e. those before Rangasthalam.

Both Dhakshina Murthy and Phanindra Bhupathi are shown to be high-caste people, an identity associated with power. In 2 scenes, this becomes quite explicit. The scene where Bramhaji’s character visits the President, he is forced to wash the glass in which he drank tea. Another aspect of this is the way everyone keeps their footwear outside the President’s house. 

This is another recurring idea in Sukumar’s films. The representation of power dynamics via physical object or via interaction with the real world. 

It is seen in the scene in Jagadam where Seenu changes the radio while travelling with Laddu, the ball-game in Nannako Prematho, the iMac in 100% Love, the cigarrete lighting scene in Pushpa all show the power that Sukumar’s character’s hold and the form through which they reach their owner. 

So, it wouldn’t be a stretch to understand that in a certain way (and that is a very certain way), Sukumar was indulging in a veiled commentary on the way caste works. And like the invisible way caste works (except for Brahmins), this invisible part of Sukumar’s films is what raises him to one of the most important artists working in our cinema today.