Almost every line in the latest Telugu musical Sing Geetham is sung. But it isn’t a creative choice, as producer Nag Ashwin discerned in an earlier interview with THR India. A few minutes into the film, it is clear that it is a storytelling choice; the fury of a tree lover (Ahilya Bamroo) sets off a series of inexplicable events in a mining village. Through the course of the film, you also realise that music is deeply intentional in Sing Geetham. A choice that doesn’t only give it a technical edge, but gives it meaning and life.
Pratap (Ayaan) has freshly returned from Bhopal jail, having served time for financial fraud. Seconds after freedom, he’s drawn to money like a moth to a flame. Greed for ancestral wealth takes him to Kuberapuram, a mining village where the only form of life is human. The dry, arid patches of land, a result of years worth of illegal mining, aren’t conducive to vegetation. But the land is favourable for one other thing: gold. This forms the premise of the Telugu film legend’s musical. But how can it not have the Singeetam touch? Singeetam Srinivasa Rao takes this land drama and infuses it with characteristic childlike wonderment, bringing us a frothy musical that’s also an effective environmental piece.
A main driver of the fun is the band of incredibly admirable characters that make up the village. Of course, there are heroes and villains in the traditional sense of the word. Ahilya Bamroo is lovely as Gowri, a highly intelligent firebrand who refuses to take no for an answer. A patron of the environment, she clings to the last standing tree in her village as her life depends on it. Standing in her way is Renu (Shalini Kondepudi), the daughter of a mining overlord, who doesn’t mind razing down trees and feelings if that means she can make a quick buck. In the middle of this is Ayaan, who is sort of a placeholder for the audience in the film, an outsider navigating his way through Kuberapuram, one character at a time.
The endless supply of secondary characters — a Singeetam stamp that any fan of his cinema might instantly recognise — provide ample mirth. A quack of a doctor whose first solution to the ‘singing flu’ in the village is a three-day dose of fever medicine, a man who is physically repulsed by music, and a local barber who side-quests hard as a broadcaster of high-quality gossip. Rao’s characters are inherently funny, and the performances keep things light, without making it seem like a stretch.
It also works to its favour that the film is designed like an engrossing children’s fantasy. There’s a sense of innocent humour that pervades the film; clear moral lessons are packed in, characters come of age to superbly written emotional payoffs, and there is a neat little ecological lesson at the end of it all. A cave forms a big part of the film’s lore, and it’s beautiful how the story shrinks and grows around it. It makes sense that the youngest nonagenarian is put to the task to tell the story.
The film loses pace towards the end, but the music keeps things going at a brisk speed. Devi Sri Prasad’s score and the lyrical dialogue (keeping the wordsmith director’s wit intact) provide us not a single dull moment in the theatre, working overtime to make the filmmaker’s dream come true. It’s smart how the film melds the musical aspect of the story in the screenplay. At the heart of the film is a cause; a cause to remind us never to lose our voice. And never to take the world for granted. And who said you can't burst into song and an occasional laugh while fighting for a cause?