Kalay Tamsme Namah - Titanic with a Twist: My quick take on Bahubali Prabhas’s “Radhe Shyam”
Because the human mind is a bit sloppy, it can be tough to accept a fresh image of a well-known celebrity. Especially when it's a megastar like Prabhas (Bahubali). For this so-called candy floss love story "Radhe Shyam," the muscle rippling hunk of Bahubali lost its action hunk appearance, and my initial reaction was "Yaar Kuch Jama nahi." Prabhas's persona, in my opinion, is not suited to love stories.
Secondly, if the maker (Director – Radha Krishna Kumar) thought of riding over the huge popularity of Bahubali and roping in Prabhas and Kattappa plus using some outlandish VFX to recreate Cameroon’s titanic effect and giving a Yash Chopra feel by taking us around some pristine European location, he would create a huge Pan India hit love story, then I am sorry to state that Director was grossly mistaken.
The storyline or story is not new; in 1985, Amol Palekar created a magnificent film called "Ankahee," which won the National Award for Best Music (Jaidev) and Best Male Playback Singer (Pt Bhimsen Joshi – which is why I remember this film). The plotlines of Ankahee and Radhe Sham are similar; both depict a confrontation between astrology believers and non-believers (Ankahee is based on a famous Marathi novel by CT Khanolkar - Kalay Tamsme Namah)
In this movie Prabhas plays a world-famous Palmist who can precisely predict what is going to happen in the future, just to establish this Nostradamus quality of character, the director has a scene where Prabhas read the hand of Late prime Minister Indira Gandhi and predicts that she is going to announce Emergency in 1977. Director then takes creative liberties moves our hero to Europe where he becomes even more famous & rich. Since Prabhas has read his palm and knows that there is no love line in his palm and taking advantage of that he becomes a Casanova type character until he meets charming damsel Pooja Hegde and the conflict between his heart and mind begins. Will he be able to get his dame despite missing the love-line on the pam? is the simple premise of the movie.
Rich Overall, the product design, cinematography, lavish settings, reproduction of the 1970s European era, outstanding Titanic-like VFX in the climax, and magnificent European landscape that will make Yash Chopra proud justifies the 350-500 crores spent on the product. I only wish they had spent a bit more time on the screenplay and editing of the film because it would have been more appealing.
The voice-over of Prabhas' character was greatly missing; it appears that Prabhas chose to dub his voice for the Hindi version (in Bahubali, it was dubbed quite effectively by Sharad Kelkar), and this is the film's weak link since the viewer will be unable to connect emotions and spoken words.
On the lighter note, I wish if Director had shown his palm to Prabhas’s character before spending a humongous amount on this 'likely to fail spectacular'. As regards Prabhas (I loved his Bahubali), it seems he is choosing the wrong films, after the debacle of Sahoo and now Radhe Shyam, he has to do some course correction soon and prove to the world that he is not a one-film wonder.
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