Deconstruction of The MegaStar!

Chiranjeevi post his Megastar-dom has mostly been a conflicting personality. The guy who after modest and industrious beginnings has seen the unsurmountable highs till the time of ‘Gharana Mogudu’ (A Rajini remake, remade in Hindi as Ladlaa) later sunk to inexplicable inconsistencies ever since and has become more desperate to regain his invincible status.

The harder he tried, the more difficult it was to reconquer the invincible summit, till he finally gave up after various futile attempts by way of forgettable films from 92-97. Of course, he slowly rediscovered the Midas touch by picking some well thought off scripts and signed off with a hattrick of blockbusters in the early millennium. Once he reached the second pinnacle, a downward slide was seemingly inevitable again.

The next slump took him to the lowest ebb in his life when he started an innings in Politics, where he failed miserably. His trusted lieutenants (including himself) again let him down and Chiru’s fragilities in decision making was exposed as he constantly made contradicting statements and decisions. I think he probably wanted to go to the next level and match the legendary NTR and create a Mega wave so to speak but he failed to assess that the era of NTR and MGR was gone and the current times were different and so were the masses.

Unfortunately, his popular dialogue of “just time gap anthe timing lo no chance” was one of the chief contributors for his political debacle. Andhra was vexed with Congress and Indira Gandhi & NTR was at the pinnacle of his career and had a certain demi-god status back at the time, and everything just magically fell into place when NTR made his political debut.

That was not the case with Chiru at all as there were some haunting episodes before and during his political journey.

There is that enduring fiasco of Uday Kiran & how a failed engagement with his daughter allegedly led to the downfall of Uday, which mixed with other factors ultimately culminated in his sad, premature demise. The silence of Chiranjeevi in this entire episode was rather uncomfortable for his neutral & rational fans.

To be fair, Chiru was himself in search of his acting successor. Earlier, he rather prematurely drew parallels with Srikanth and how a ‘Pellisandidi’ was Srikanth’s ‘Khaidi’ but that was a one-off blockbuster for Srikanth. He then found Uday Kiran who again made it to the big league on his own and he might have thought he would give him a lease of life like Chiru was given by his legendary comedian father in law, in a way that he never looked back, but Uday was not in sync with this and while Chiru was magnanimous enough to accept the decision of Uday, the forces behind Chiru were not that graceful and the rest is a rather sad part of history.

Then there is Chiranjeevi the parent where his youngest offspring dragged him into the news for wrong reasons right before his political launch & he maintained his composure and tried to set things right momentarily. The timing of this incident drew obvious parallels to his leadership, guidance, and administration.

As a person, he never looked to be at peace for the last 20 years for the most part and always seemed like an out of form batsman who is very eager to regain the form and ended up chasing the wide away swinging deliveries only to be caught constantly in the slip cordon. Listening to contrasting advise from multiple coaches and changing his technique too frequently.

Except of course when he was Chiranjeevi the actor! When you see him on the silver screen, you tend to forgive and forget everything and relish and relive the moments that made him the Megastar.

Ace director K Balachander once said that Chiru was the amalgamation of the class of Kamal Hassan and the mass of Rajinikanth. Iconic director Bapu said that his biggest asset was his eyes and how right the two legendary directors were.

Kamal might not do a Thalapathy or Rajni cannot do a Sagara Sangamam but Chiru could don both the roles.

Finally watched Syera and while the initial part of the movie is slow and the script in some places is weak, the Megastar showed us that when you have appropriate theatricals, wonderful voice and effective eyes, you don’t need the machoness of a Prabhas or the ferocity of a Rana nor years of training in Gym with equipment worth in crores to make an impactful scene.

The audience would forget that the protagonist is a 65-year-old senior and all one would see is an ageless aging Megastar who would make you forgive the inadequacies of a weak script and take you on one tidal wave after another on a Tsunami called Syeraa where one would relish the high-octane action-packed surfing!

Chiru often faced criticism for his overindulgence in directors role and eventually make the film look quite stereotype, but over here, he took the special care that Chiru the Megastar is not the one who we see on the screen but it’s Chiru the actor, the one we just cannot take eyes off from the screen even if the other person sharing the screen is Big B himself.

Wishing the Megastar an eventful third innings as an actor and hope he explores more roles and treats the audience with the actor in him after a three-decade hiatus.
#Syeraa