South Indian new movie dasara

Dasara, written and directed by first-timer Srikanth Odela,ventures into a space that mainstream Telugu films do not often dare to. It tries to be a ‘massy’ Telugu film that explores the ugly caste politics in a semi-fictional story set in the coal-laden hamlet Veerlapally, Telangana, with earnestness, and achieves this balance reasonably well. One of Dasara’s highlights is a chilling pre-intermission episode. The three central characters — Dharani (Nani), Vennela (Keerthy Suresh) and Suri (Deekshit Shetty) — are integral to the happenings. There is no scope for the display of machismo or bravado. The fear-inducing episode made me wonder, briefly, if this was the real incident based on which Srikanth had written this semi-fictional story.

First, to address the elephant in the room, Dasara is not a wannabe Pushpa or KGF. Rather, it tries to bring in the grittiness of Tamil films such as Jai Bhim, Asuran and Karnan, in its depiction of power equations. Dasara is also in a zone similar to Rangasthalam, one of the few significant ‘massy’ Telugu films that explored caste dynamics in recent years.

It takes a while to warm up to the world of Dasara, where alcohol excess is a way of life, a way of escaping the travesty of the daily grind. For the men in the village, life revolves around the only bar named ‘Silk bar’. Srikanth tips his hat to the sultry Silk Smitha.

The bar is where the rules of power become evident. The upper caste men drink inside the bar while the others stay outside. A backstory of the conflicts within a powerful family, involving the characters played by Saikumar and Samuthirakani and later Shine Tom Chacko, forms the undercurrent for the power dynamics in the village. Srikanth places the three childhood friends Dharani, Suri and Vennela in this milieu. Their names aligning with the earth, sun and the moon are metaphors for their characters and relationships.