Saagar K Chandra on what makes ‘Bheemla Nayak’ special

Hyderabad: Be it Koshy’s anger on Ayyappanam or say Bheemla’s on Daniel — there couldn’t be a more riveting on-screen drama than watching these characters on screen. As ‘Bheemla Nayak’ gets a rousing reception at the box office following its theatrical release, director Saagar K Chandra shares his experience of working with the stars and […]

Hyderabad: Be it Koshy’s anger on Ayyappanam or say Bheemla’s on Daniel — there couldn’t be a more riveting on-screen drama than watching these characters on screen. As ‘Bheemla Nayak’ gets a rousing reception at the box office following its theatrical release, director Saagar K Chandra shares his experience of working with the stars and what went behind making “a film that is similar to ‘Ayyappanum Koshiyum’.”

When the idea to remake the Malayalam film came to the table, Saagar says the idea was to make a fine balance between two imposing characters — Bheemla Nayak and Daniel Sekhar. “Because Biju Menon is a relatively smaller character actor, the complete weight drifts towards Prithviraj Sukumaran. But, how do we balance these two imposing heavy weights on the screen? So Trivikram Srinivas’s idea was to transform the original work by bringing our own flavour and tinge to ‘Bheemla Nayak’,” he says.

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“Malayalam films are all procedural flicks which have a detailed description in a story. There’s a sequence explaining almost everything like character goes to the court, signs on the register… but when it comes to the second half, what we call the emotions graph, it is different. The story is driven for over half-an-hour with the same emotion, the story just doesn’t move further. So, we didn’t want this, we never wanted to make a documentary or a procedural cinema, we didn’t want to miss the commerciality. In fact, Trivikram wanted ‘Bheemla Nayak’ to be similar to ‘Ayyappanum Koshiyum’. So, someone should buy remake rights of ‘Bheemla’ for its uniqueness,” he adds.

Recalling his formative days as a filmmaker when he first made the film ‘Ayyare’ 10 years ago, the Nalgonda-born director admits that he was “more of a rookie back then”. “I had no clue as to how the production department in Telugu cinema works, no knowledge of how the industry functions… I couldn’t meet anyone, no contacts,” he says.

The very news of Pawan Kalyan coming on board ‘Bheemla Nayak’ led to an unexpected stream of thoughts. “It was a surreal experience. And then another big star, Rana Daggubati, came on board. Hearing these names… I wasn’t intimidated as I had a great support system,” he says.

The director says there wasn’t any room for creative clashes with Trivikram Srinivas on the sets. “‘Bheemla’ wouldn’t have been what it is today without him. He is like a guiding light. Definitely a towering personality, a flawless technician for Telugu cinema. His style and the story that he conceives, I always looked up to him as a mentor,” he says.

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