Filmmaker Venkatesh Maha leans into a rich tapestry of memories, social themes, and his intuitive understanding of life to create his latest Telugu magical realist drama, Rao Bahadur.
Through Ramappa Rao Bahadur (Satyadev in a dazzling performance), a maverick aristocrat in the nineties, Maha unpacks the ways class, colour, and lineage shape social conditioning. The message might be simple, but the treatment is audacious, inventive, and unlike anything Telugu cinema has ever seen before.
From being inspired by a character in his debut film C/O Kancharapalem (2018) to drawing on the styles of magical realism as explored by authors such as Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez and Telugu writer Tripuraneni Gopichand, Maha taps into the labyrinthine corners of his brain to craft a deeply effective drama.
"I really want to stop thinking like that; otherwise I'll become like Ramappa very soon," he says with a laugh in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter India.
Can you take us through the starting point of Rao Bahadur? You said a character in Kancharapalem had inspired you..
The man who played Ghantasala in C/O Kancharapalem is this actor called Apparao. He has such a Telugu name and is a proper Kancharapalem guy. But he doesn't look like us and has different features. I asked him how he ended up here, and he told me he came to Kancharapalem when he was a boy during the Burma war.
He speaks pure Telugu, but his features define him as someone else. That instantly triggered the idea of how mixed the human race is, and also made me think about how conditioning works on us. This was the seed of the idea.
Did you always envision Rao Bahadur to be this big in scale?
Back then, someone kind of challenged me. They said I was able to make a film like C/O Kancharapalem because I knew those people and those lives. "If at all you had to make a millionaire's film, would you be able to make it? No, you can't... because you don't know a millionaire's life," they told me.
Our job as a writer-director is not just to direct something we know; it is to understand different milieus. It was then that I got the idea to place the film in an aristocrat's setup. I took it as a challenge to tell a story about a rich person's life. That statement triggered me to challenge myself.
You had ended the film beautifully by emphasising that it is 'Telugu cinema'. Can you talk about the thought behind that?
The film took five and a half years to reach audiences. I have been working as an actor and producer, travelling to Chennai, Kochi, and Mumbai, and attending pitch meetings with studios. A lot of the time, we were told that Telugu audiences wouldn't watch these kind of stories. They would tell me they were ready to make a film with me... but only a story that audiences would watch. I felt bad.
I wasn't sure why they were generalising every filmmaker. ‘Maha Chithram’ is a tag that I've been using since my short film days. So when we decided to roll the credits, one of my ADs suggested that we add 'Maha Telugu Chithram' to it. I wanted to end it this way and show that Telugu films can be like this, and that our audience has proven their theories wrong.
When you're making a film as audacious and inventive as this, are you also thinking about the audiences going, 'Will they be ready?'
We cannot align with audiences at all because they're not one entity sitting in one box. Audiences make up crores of entities. Instead, you align with yourself, your worldview, and understanding of life to tell a story.
Audiences will interpret the story in their own way. We don't realise that every audience has its own intellect; we assume that they are collectively one.
We follow statistics to see which film makes a lot of money and then infer that the audience watches only those kinds of films. But it's not that; these are just statistics, that's it. They can be created for any kind of film if you work on it properly. Human life relatability is the only thing I focus on.
Most of the time, we think audiences don't understand things, but we have to cancel the thought process. How you make a film defines whether they will understand it or not.
What do you make of the responses from fans and the box-office?
The response was tremendous. The theatres were erupting with laughter. The word of mouth grew from the morning show, and by evening, people were discussing intricate details of the film. The audience is so intelligent. They made me win!
The next day, Satyadev started sending me screenshots from Letterboxd. This is the highest form of appreciation. In the last three days, the film has collected ₹8.2 crore gross. People didn't think it was going to collect this much either.
Tell us about Satyadev and your experience with him. What made him the perfect Bahadur? Did you write the film with him in mind?
I don't write any films with actors in mind. But I will say that I can make any film I write with Satya, unless it's a female-centric role. That is my confidence in the creative connection we share.
I tried to make the film with a few other actors, and it wasn't happening. Satya was aware of this idea, and he was actually trying to mediate between me and other actors. He would actually call other actors and ask them not to waste this opportunity. Finally, destiny made him act in the film (laughs).
Did you grow up watching a lot of films in the magical realism genre?
This culture of cinema in Telugu is very vast and dense. We had KV Reddy garu, Singeetam Srinivasa Rao garu, SV Krishna Reddy garu, and Dasari Naryana Rao garu who did a lot of social commentary. If you take Ghatothkachudu (the 1995 Telugu film directed by SV Krishna Reddy), characters from mythology and scientists' inventions come together in human conflicts... it is a magical realism film.
I made C/O Kancharapalem and Uma Maheswara Ugra Roopasya because back then, these kinds of films were not happening. I wanted to make these films to also prove myself and get more opportunities. Going forward, you’re going to be a wide variety of stories from me, including fantasy, sci-fi, action and everything. But Rao Bahadur comes from a rich history and a life that I have led.
The initial days of my life were pretty rough. At the very young age of 16, I had to come out of my house and build everything independently. My learnings, observations, and my understanding of the world through these times have been the foundation for my stories.
What was it like for you to present the film under Mahesh Babu's banner?
When someone like Mahesh Babu sir presents a film, there is a lot of responsibility. I have to make a great film as there is no other choice.
It positioned my film in a very good way, just like how Rana Daggubati positioned C/O Kancharapalem well when he presented it. It is difficult to attract audiences to the theatres today due to various reasons. So when Mahesh Babu sir says it is a never-before-seen experience in Telugu cinema, there will be value in it, right? Apart from the business and the monetary aspect, which they are involved in, the validation that he brought in was so important.
What's next? Are you going to take a break before your next film?
If people are there to provide me with resources, I'm set to work every day for the next 20 years. A lot of it has occurred to me in the form of ideas and treatment. Whenever ideas occur, I am not lazy and instead note them down somewhere and keep a record of them. I also keep thinking about ideas consistently, so when I start writing, it takes less time for me to document them.