| Anthahpuram | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Krishna Vamsi |
| Starring | Prakash Raj Soundarya Jagapati Babu |
| Music by | Ilaiyaraaja |
| Cinematography | Boopathi |
| Release date(s) | 1998 |
| Country | India |
| Language | Telugu |
Anthahpuram 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] 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 and the Nandi Award for Best Female Playback Singer for S. Janaki.
Contents |
From the words of Vamsi,
| “ | somebody gave me the cassette of a tele film 'Not without my daughter', which was based on the real story of Mrs. Betty Mohammed. She was an american girl married to an Iraqi guy. That film was about her experiences in Iraq. 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 that 'Not without my daughter' to make a film for a long time. Along with the script of Anthahpuram I also told him two commercial story lines. But Bharadwaja picked up the 'Anthahpuram'. Then I worked over the script of 'Anthahpuram'. There were two standards of living, two different environments, two contrasting ways of expressing same opinion. There I identified the heroine called '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 husband. Soundarya was Bharadwaja's choice, as she had good market. I was not keen on sporting 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 sport 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 pronunciation of telugu language. He was ready to do it, if it was made in Tamil. He told that 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 all ready played loads of characters of Hubby . Instead, he asked me if he could do the other role, which was decided for RaviTeja. So I casted 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 got a reasonable budget for that film as the producers could not afford it. There were some date problems too. When 'Anthahpuram' was released there was bad talk in the beginning. It takes them to digest the violent and hard hitting film. Slowly it picked up. If I look back and see ... I find 'Anthahpuram' to be emotionally good .. but the format was not what I have conceived. The Impact was not there. The 'Anthahpuram' was just 15% to 20 % of what I conceived and what it should have been |
” |
[3].