Credits

Banner: Creative Commercials

Cast: Venkatesh, Meena, Nasser, Brahmanandham, Sujatha, Allu Ramalingaiah, Vinod, Prasanna Kumar, Maharshi Raghava, Kallu Chidambaram, and others

Music: Ilaiyaraaja

Cinematography: K Ravindra Babu

Editing: Krishnamurthy - Siva

Art Direction: A. Chanti

Dialogues: G. Satyamurthy

Original Story: P Vasu

Screenplay - Direction: Ravi Raja Pinisetty

Producer: K.S. Rama Rao

Release Date: January 10th, 1992

Writing/Direction: Probably have to credit P Vasu here as he wrote the original story. I dont have the knowledge of the olden days but its a typical thing where its a poor guy falls in love with rich girl but their family doesnt approve of it. Eventually they have to fight to win for their love.

Here they took two incredibly innocent characters and it made all the difference to the treatment. Screenplay by Ravi raja Pinisetty is amazing.

Movie has 3 themes that we need to talk about

Class differences/slave complex - the village is called Ramapuram and a family of zamindars rule. Typically in the heirarchy of society, yejamani is always above and beyond. To symbolize this, the director shows the house of the family as being on a hill top away from all the villagers and its rich and grand already symbolizing in their place of living that they are above and beyond. They rule over the villagers and make the riles. For example they make the rule that if anyone looks at or talks about Nandini they will make them bald and face the consequences. As a result the villagers have to listen to what the rulers say. They dont have anyone to entertain their sister and sing songs for them so they get the idiot in Chanti and make him do it almost with a Chinna choopu. If you notice, Chanti is basically a slave in there compound. He has to do whatever they say otherwise they will make his life a living hell. And they essentially own him. Nandini is also the same in a way where she has been confined to 4 walls and is a slave in her own house unable to go out as per as brother’s wishes
Innocence: Chanti and Nanindi are both innocent people - Chanti because he is uneducated but has a heart of gold but doesnt understand things and Naindi because she doesnt know what the outside world is due to being a prisoner in her own house. She doesnt know how to feel, interact with people, or any of that stuff. She has some friends but they don’t visit very often. She understands Chanti for who he is, a erri bagoledu with a heart of gold and falls for him.

So many examples but Chanti asks what it means when a mogga visiri poovu avvadam anamaata, he actually thinks its a flower becoming bigger, then there’s that scene where he ties the knot not knowing how a marriage works.

Also beautiful set up and payoff for that scene: one scene where the pain manishi asks Chanti to ask when Brahmi will tie to the knot to her and starts talking to her about the various threads in the village but doesnt understand the manga sutra and then at interval does the same when the pichodu comes and unknowingly ties to know and marries Nandini

3) Fear: Nandini is afraid of her brothers but finally gets the courage to stand up to them in the climax whereas Chanti is always afraid of what they will do to him if he does something wrong or if they find out what Nandini has been doing to him.

Using these two characters, they build conflict in each and every scene and it;s so brilliantly done. Their chemistry is also heart warming to see.

But more than anything, Especially the character of Chanti. So likable and so lovable that if anything happens to him you feel like saying no don’t beat up Chanti. Especially in interval Venky acting brings tears to your eyes. Such an innocent guy they beat him up and you’re like no same reaction as Nandini.

Direction by Ravi Raja Pinisetty is masterpiece. With amazing emotion in each every scene, there’s a certain intensity and most of all suspense in the movie like what will happen next as it keeps going.

Venkatesh's Chanti (1992): Review + Interesting Facts