Out of all the biopics made in Tollywood, Mahanati will always stay closer to the hearts of the audience. They will always love watching the film whenever it is telecasted. They will always hum the beautiful tunes from this film. They will identify the actors with the screen names they went by in this movie. Such influence this movie has created upon the audience.
Mahanati is the story of a great Indian actress Savitri. She ruled Tollywood with her priceless beauty and legendary performances. With a total of 138 Telugu films, 100 Tamil films, 6 Kannada films, 5 Hindi films and 3 Malayalam films, she created a massive impact on the Film Industry. Along with acting, she was also famous for her singing and dancing. Along with the immense talent as an actress in the films, she also has a huge heart. She helped people around her even at her lowest of the low times. She received people’s love, affection and warmth with her humanity and kindness. Till the last breath of her life, she died helping and serving people. The complete three hours of Mahanati revolves around Savitri, her success and her downfall. Three hours are never enough to depict her greatness. But these three hours are enough to know her.
A biopic about such a legendary person should be equally exceptional. And yes, Mahanati is a huge success and the director Nag Ashwin was even more successful in giving such a fantastic film to the audience. Although Mahanati is Nag Ashwin’s second film to be directed, he made sure that it didn’t look like one. The audience was mesmerised by the neat presentation and work done by the director. Keerthy Suresh played the title role as Savitri. Though Keerthy was in the initial stage of her career, she blended well as Savitri and took great care of her performance. That bubbliness and prettiness were well balanced. Keerthy gave her a hundred per cent for the role. Besides Keerthy, Dulquer Salman as Gemini Ganesan fitted the character quite good. Be it a lover-boy look or a husbandly look he suited pretty well. He is perfect as Kadhal Mannan(King of Love). All the other actors like Samantha, Vijay Devarakonda, Rajendra Prasad, Shalini Pandey gave their splendid performances proving they are the best for their roles. Cinematography and music added more beauty to this film making it worthy to watch.
Mahanti is all about the ups and downs Savitri went through. Having faced lives hurdles, Savitri rose to prominence with her talent and expressive eyes. Her success was with her until she fell in love. She gave love and took the pain. Being cheated and heartbroken, she gave up hope in life and experienced a downfall. She helped people throughout, but no one was with her when she needed their help. Even in her lowest times, she wanted to help but she barely sought help. All this is shown in Mahanati through a journalist’s point of view. The movie runs parallelly showing Savitri’s life and a journalist who is aspiring to write about Savitri while Savitri was on her death bed. The simultaneous run between the scenes is good to watch and never confuses the audience. As the journalist learns more about Savitri, people get to love her more knowing her greatness. Mahanati does not just reveal the life story of Savitri but allows the audience to learn from the mistakes made by Savitri. Her every step teaches a fair lesson to the viewers.
The retro feel the film gives, takes the audience through a nostalgic ride. Every frame reminds the audience of the ’80s and ’90s. The way actors dress up, vehicles on the roads, language and the slang used, take people back to the old times. The background music and the songs are melodious and rewind the golden old music. Every frame shot is exquisitely beautiful and colourful. The lights used at different times of the story represent the phases Savitri goes though. The actors’ top-notch performances poured lives to those characters making us believe every scene. The audience fell in love with the movie as a whole be it the story, screenplay, cinematography or the actors. They also declared that the movie lived up to their expectations. Very few biopics were successful and Mahanati is one among them. This film has a perfect mixture of everything in every department and surely earned audience’s appreciation.
