Anthahpuram
| Antahpuram | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Krishna Vamsi |
| Starring | Prakash Raj Soundarya Jagapati Babu Sai Kumar |
| Cinematography | Bhupati |
| Music by | Ilaiyaraaja |
Release date | 1998 |
| Country | India |
| Language | Telugu |
Antahpuram is a 1998 Telugu film directed by Krishna Vamsi, which was later remade in 1999 in Tamil with the same name. The film stars Prakash Raj, Soundarya and Jagapati Babu in prominent roles.[1] Prakash Raj won National Film Award – Special Jury Award / Special Mention (Feature Film) for his performance in the film. The film won three Filmfare Awards South for Best Film, Best Director and Best Actress.[2] The film also went on to win the Nandi Award for Best Supporting Actor for Jagapati Babu, Nandi Award for Best Female Playback Singer for S. Janaki and Nandi Award for Best Female Dubbing Artist for Saritha.
Cast
- Prakash Raj as Narasimha
- Soundarya as Bhanumati
- Jagapathi Babu as Dubai Pandiyan (extended cameo appearance)
- Sai Kumar as Shekhar
- Sharada as Narasimha's Wife
Production
From the words of Vamsi,[3]
Somebody gave me the cassette Not Without My Daughter, which was based on the real story of Mrs. Betty Mahmoody. She was an American woman married to an Iranian. That film was about her experiences in Iran. I loved that film very much. My mood was disturbed for 3 days as those incidents were lingering in my heart. Later on I came to know that all our top directors and heroines have made attempts to remake that movie, in vein, as they had no clue about how to adapt. That film was about an educated and sophisticated female go to a place where the primitive culture exists and how she fights her self out of that situation. Immediately I captured the soul of that movie.
Then Bharadwaja and Kiran approached me to make a film for them. When I was thrown out of 'Anaganaga Oka Roju', Bharadwaja was the only person who encouraged me. At that time he called me and asked me to narrate the script. After listening to that script he told me that he did not have that much of money to make a big budgeted film and asked me if I could come up with script for a small budget film.
After the release of 'ChandraLekha', Bharadwaja told me that he was in financial mess. Then I narrated the story of Indianized version of 'Not without my daughter'. Narration went like this ..... 'There is an Indian girl in Mauritius .... an island with abandoned water .. a beautiful place ... that girl goes to Rayalaseema that was boiling in factionalism and she struggles to come back.'
After listening to story line Bharadwaja told me that he was trying to indianize 'Not without my daughter' for a long time. Along with the script of Antahpuram I also told him two commercial story lines. But Bharadwaja picked up 'Antahpuram'.
Then I worked over the script of 'Antahpuram'. There were two standards of living, two different environments, two contrasting ways of expressing same opinion. There I identified the heroine 'Bhanumati'. How does she traverse from Mauritius to Rayalaseema and go back to Mauritius? What her struggles were?
After the script was ready, I wanted Aravind Swamy to play the role of Bhanumati's husband. Soundarya was Bharadwaja's choice, as she had good market. I was not keen on selecting Soundarya for that role, as I thought she was a normal actress. (Later on I realized that she is very sensible actress.) I wanted to cast a new heroine. I approached Aravind Swamy. He liked the script. But he told me that he was not keen on doing straight Telugu films, as he had a bad experience with a Telugu film. He also told me that he was very uncomfortable with the speaking Telugu. He was ready to do it, if it was made in Tamil. He said he was regretting his decision of missing a good film. I was even ready to shoot all his sequences in Tamil and dub it in Telugu. Then Aravind told that he does not want to do injustice to the role. I started searching an actor for that role. Then I asked Jagapathi Babu to do that role. Jagapathi Babu refused to do that role, as he already had played similar characters. Instead, he asked me if he could do the other role, which was decided for RaviTeja. So I cast Saikumar and Jagapathi Babu for those two roles.
While making 'Chandralekha', we had lots of financial problems due to the effect of 'Sindhuram' and 'Chandralekha'. All the artists like Jagapathi Babu, Soundarya, Saikuar and Prakash Raj were going through a lean phase at that time. Due to that I could not even get a reasonable budget for that film as the producers could not afford it. There were some date problems too.
When 'Antahpuram' was released there was bad talk in the beginning. It took time to digest the violent and hard hitting film. Slowly it picked up.
When I look back ... I find 'Antahpuram' to be emotionally good .. but the format was not what I have conceived. The impact was not there. 'Antahpuram' was just 15% to 20% of what I conceived and what it should have been.
References
- ^ "Anthapuram: Movie Review". Indolink.com. Retrieved 2011-11-30.
- ^ "Filmfare awards presented at a dazzling function - The Times of India". Cscsarchive.org:8081. 1999-04-25. Retrieved 2011-11-30.
- ^ http://www.idlebrain.com/celeb/interview/interview_krishnavamsi.html
External links
- Anthahpuram at IMDb
