Saakshyam
| Saakshyam | |
|---|---|
 Movie Poster | |
| Directed by | Sriwass |
| Written by | Sriwass Sai Madhav Burra (dialogues) |
| Produced by | Abhishek Nama |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Arthur A. Wilson |
| Edited by | Kotagiri Venkateswara Rao |
| Music by | Harshavardhan Rameshwar |
Production company | |
Release date |
|
Running time | 164 minutes |
| Country | India |
| Language | Telugu |
| Box office | est. ₹22.7 crore[2] |
Saakshyam (Nature is the Witness) (transl. Witness) is a 2018 Indian Telugu-language action film[3] produced by Abhishek Nama on Abhishek Pictures banner and directed by Sriwass. The film stars Bellamkonda Sreenivas and Pooja Hegde with Sarath Kumar, Meena, Jagapathi Babu, Ravi Kishan, and Ashutosh Rana in supporting roles. The music is composed by Harshavardhan Rameshwar with cinematography by Arthur A. Wilson and editing by Kotagiri Venkateswara Rao. The film has collected 13 crores at the worldwide box office on first week release.[4]
Plot
 | This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. (November 2020) |
The movie starts with a group of people forcefully taking away a cow and its calf trying to follow them. The scene shifts to the house of Raju Garu, where the family has gathered for the naming ceremony of his son. Just then, a group of people come there with the calf and inform them that Munuswamy's brothers have kidnapped the calf's mother (who belongs to the temple) along with many other cows. This leads to Raju Garu beating up Munuswamy's brother and bringing the cows back.
The news of his brothers' humiliation reaches Munuswamy, and he and his three brothers, go to Raju Garu's house, where the celebration is going on. They brutally kill every member of the family, except for Raju Garu's wife, who gets injured. Raju Garu manages to distract the brothers while his wife runs away with the child, but she becomes weak and is unable to continue due to her deep injury. Just then, the calf (whose mother was saved by Raju Garu) comes and stands in front of her. Raju Garu's wife takes this as a sign, wraps the child in a shawl, and ties him onto the calf. The villains come just in time to see the calf running away, and a chase ensures. The injured calf manages to evade the villains and land the baby on a truck carrying soil. The villains see the child falling down the cliff and believe him to be dead. In order to conceal their crime, they set fire to the cowshed, because in bad time even animals can become a prime witness to their sins.
The story then goes into a narration where the narrator explains that even though Munuswamy is happy that he has destroyed every witness to his crime, he has forgotten that the five elements of nature that are present everywhere have witnessed his crimes and will surely take their revenge for his atrocities.
Meanwhile, the child is carried to a soil mine, where the truck dumps him along with the soil. A Hindu saint sees the child, takes him to Kasi, and leaves him in Temple. A childless couple, Siva Prasad and his wife, are there to pray for a child and are overwhelmed to see him. Then the temple priest names him Viswa because this is nature's order to rise the child by them. Later the couple leaves for the US with the child.
20 years later, Siva Prasad and his wife are shown to be celebrating the success of their company. A reporter asks about their son Viswa, who would be taking over the multi-billion dollar empire, but Siva Prasad states that Viswa is not interested in taking over the business as he is interested in developing games. Viswa and his friends are introduced. They are in the process of developing a new video game, which they are sending in to a company to be released.
Unfortunately, their video gets rejected due to lack of culture factor. Viswa and his friend run into a girl named Soundarya Lahari, a Hindu Spiritual Preacher who came USA to preach on Indian mythology. Viswa is instantly smitten, so he and his friend follow her to get her help in developing the game with culture elements. However, Soundarya is offended by their offer of money and says flatly that culture is not something to be sold. Viswa and his friend help Soundarya's sister and brother-in-law to secure jobs, using his influence, which leads to Soundarya reluctantly agreeing to help Viswa.
She introduces the group to Valmiki her childhood friend an IT professional who has an ardent knowledge on Indian Mythology, who helps by giving them a unique idea for a game which resembles Viswa's life story - about a boy whose entire family was killed by villains and the five elements of nature taking revenge on the villains through the boy. Vishwa impressed with the concept of Valmiki and hired him to develop his game.
Meanwhile, Soundarya leaves for India to see her father Tagore, who was bedridden by Munuswamy's gang for fighting against them in court. Viswa follows her to India and starts developing the video game there.
Meanwhile, Munuswamy ordered to kill Soundarya because as a warning to stop Tagore on his way. Later in a couple situations Soundarya was saved by Vishwa from Veeraswamy, Munuswamy's 1st brother and eventually kill by him through the air and earth elements in nature. He was shell-shocked when he discovers the story of the video game happening in his real life. When he came to Kasi to give salutations from his mother side to kaasi Vishwanath temple there he accidentally meets 2nd brother of Munuswamy he was killed through him by element of fire. He tries his best to stop it, but in vain. Meanwhile, Munuswamy is on search of his brothers' killer.
Soundarya accepts Viswa's love for his efforts to save her from Munuswamy's brother and agrees to marry him. Meanwhile, Valmiki designs full game and come back to India and meets his grand father practicing the vedic astrology who are looking the bad omens of Munuswamy and his brothers and also fixing the marriage dates of Vishwa and Soundarya.
After hearing Valmiki's game concept he understands that this is a vengeance on Munuswamy and his brothers by the Almighty of Mother Nature because of their sins committed on Vishwa's biological parents. He remembers Valmiki that in his childhood infront of young Valmiki, Youth Munuswamy and his brothers criticizes the astrologer and denies god to leave on their own terms. He reveals to Valmiki that this screenplay was written by the mother nature through him,she witnessed all the incidents and selected him to design the situations and it cannot be stopped by anyone. Meanwhile, Viswa's business rival, Shakti join hands with Munuswamy for taking over his major stakes in India and abducts them, then he threatens Vishwa to give them the shares documents. Vishwa comes to deal with them finally, the nature elements of fire, water, earth, air take revenge on all the villains through Viswa which was witnessed by the other element Sky.
Cast
- Bellamkonda Sreenivas as Viswa, a video game developer and designer
- Pooja Hegde as Soundarya Lahari, a woman who teaches Hinduism and culture
- Sarath Kumar as Raju Garu, Viswa's father who dies in the hands of Munuswamy and his brothers
- Meena as Viswa's mother who gets injured and ties her son to a calf
- Jagapathi Babu as Munuswamy, the man who killed the calf's mother
- Ravi Kishan as Veeraswamy, Munuswamy's 1st brother
- Ashutosh Rana as Munuswamy's 2nd brother
- Madhu Guruswamy as Munuswamy's 3rd brother
- Kabir Duhan Singh as Viswa's business rival
- Jayaprakash as Siva Prasad, Viswa's adopted father
- Pavithra Lokesh as Viswa's adopted mother
- Vennela Kishore as Viswa's friend
- Rao Ramesh as Tagore, Soundarya's father
- Posani Krishna Murali as Defense Lawyer
- Sameer as Raju Garu's brother
- Jhansi as Soundarya's sister
- Brahmaji as Soundarya's brother-in-law
- Krishna Bhagavaan as Soundarya's paternal uncle
- Hema as Soundarya's aunt
- Annapoorna as Soundarya's grandmother
- Raghu Babu as Siva Prasad's assistant
- Mahadevan as Munuswamy's aide
- Kasi Vishwanath as Advocate Murthy
- Surya as Hindu Saint
- Ananth Babu as Priest
- Ananta Sriram as Valmiki, a game designer (cameo appearance)
- Sri Pusapati as Sri, a Cognos developer (cameo appearance)
Soundtrack
| Saakshyam | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Soundtrack album by Harshavardhan Rameshwar | ||||
| Released |
| |||
| Recorded | 2018 | |||
| Genre | Soundtrack | |||
| Length | 33:22 | |||
| Label | Junglee Music | |||
| Producer | Harshavardhan Rameshwar | |||
| Harshavardhan Rameshwar chronology | ||||
| ||||
The soundtrack of this film is composed by Harshavardhan Rameshwar. All the lyrics are written by Ananta Sriram. The music released on Junglee Music. A single track, Soundarya Lahari was released initially on May 4, 2018, through the internet. The complete audio was released on 7 July 2018 in Hyderabad.
| No. | Title | Singer(s) | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Design Your Destiny" | Harshavardhan Rameshwar, Haricharan, Jithin Raj | 4:53 |
| 2. | "Ishq Karle" | Haricharan, Yadhu Krishnan, Janani | 3:44 |
| 3. | "Soundarya Lahari" | Jithin Raj, Aarthi | 4:18 |
| 4. | "Dung Dung Dung" | Padmalatha, Manasi, Ananthu | 4:07 |
| 5. | "Shivam Shivam" | SP Balu, K. J. Yesudas, Hariharan, Kailash Kher, Bombay Jayashri | 12:18 |
| 6. | "Cheliya Choode" | Harshavardhan Rameshwar, Madhu Priya | 3:25 |
| Total length: | 33:22 | ||
Release
The film was released on 27 July 2018. The film was later dubbed and released in Hindi as Parlay: The Destroyer in 2020.
References
- ^ "Saakshyam (2018) | Saakshyam Movie | Saakshyam Telugu Movie Cast & Crew, Release Date, Review, Photos, Videos". FilmiBeat.
- ^ "Tollywood box office report of 2018: highest grossing Telugu movies of year; List of hits and flops". 23 November 2018.
- ^ "Saakshyam review by jeevi - Telugu cinema review - Bellamkonda Sai Sreenivasa, Pooja Hegde". www.idlebrain.com.
- ^ "Saakshyam box office collection day 3: Sreenivas movie grosses Rs 13 crore in weekend". International Business Times. 30 July 2018. Retrieved 4 October 2020.