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'Thandel' Movie Review: Sai Pallavi Lights Up This Contrived, Meandering Love Story
Chandoo Mondeti's drama feels like a squandered opportunity that not only remains unsure of its central conflict, but also ends up treading a path too sentimentally contrived for its own good.
Director: Chandoo Mondeti
Writers: Chandoo Mondeti, Karthik Theeda (Story)
Cast: Sai Pallavi, Naga Chaitanya, Divya Pillai, Prakash Belawadi, Karunakaran, Babloo Prithiveeraj, Mahesh Achanta
Language: Telugu
In November 2018, 22 fishermen hailing from the Srikakulam and Vizianagaram districts of Andhra Pradesh were captured by Pakistan coast guards near Gujarat on charges of illegally venturing into foreign waters. The men were forced to spend nearly 13 months in a Karachi prison owing to diplomatic deliberations while, in the meantime, as several reports inform, their families endured emotionally and financially difficult times. The eventual resolution occurred in January 2020 when 20 of those men were released and safely transported back home.
The two most important aspects of this incident are the subjects of writer-director Chandoo Mondeti’s latest release Thandel (based on Karthik Theeda's story): the first and the obvious one being the apprehension of the fishermen, and the second being their familial ties which were kept intact through back-and-forth handwritten letters and postcards. Chandoo Mondeti allows himself a lot of creative liberty to bring the tale to life, and he injects his version with hyperboles that he deems essential for a mainstream Telugu film.
He utilises the services of actors Naga Chaitanya, who plays Raju, the leader of the fishermen pack (or their thandel) and Sai Pallavi, who plays his love interest and the fulcrum of the drama, Sathya, along with music composer Devi Sri Prasad’s score which attempt to elevate the material as much as possible. On paper, Mondeti’s idea brims with ambition and promise. Yet, the resulting film feels like a squandered opportunity that not only remains unsure of its central conflict, but also ends up treading a path too sentimentally contrived for its own good.
The unsureness, which largely surfaces in the writing, could be the primary reason for the film’s hotchpotch nature. Thandel opens in the tiny coastal village of D Matchilesam (Srikakulam district) where Sathya has resolutely decided to move on from her childhood love Raju to marry a complete stranger. Raju is the son of a deceased fisherman chieftain who has imbued his conscience with an undying love for the sea, the profession and also for sticking by his people no matter how tricky the situation is. The two are passionate lovers who spend every possible second in one another’s arms, but the perils of the roaring sea discourage her from letting him go off on another long voyage, while he feels that he cannot let his men down by simply staying back home. As determined as she is, Sathya is also defiantly stubborn meaning that Raju’s polite and pleading disapproval of her wish wouldn’t sit well with her.
Now, her decision to burn all bridges feels rather disproportionate (over a seemingly minor disagreement, given the context) to the love she has for him, but it wouldn’t have been so had the writing spent a lot more time etching out these central characters. Sai Pallavi and Naga Chaitanya were previously seen together in Sekhar Kammula’s Love Story (2021) as two individuals equipped with the task of overcoming difficulties to find love, respect and regard for one another. There, Sekhar Kammula is so keenly invested in his two starkly contrasting yet similar characters that they become recognisable and relatable without significant effort. Thandel, on the other hand, barely takes us close to Sathya and Raju let alone the passion, the dynamics and the servitude that bind them together, which eventually results in their love story appearing flouncy and a tad superficial.
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Sai Pallavi is vibrant and evocative, but she gets very little to play with except the semblance of an emotional arc that only outlines the plight of an unrelenting-yet-afflicted woman, instead of attempting to dig deep into her psyche. Naga Chaitanya, complementing her well, sheds his vanity but he too is bogged down by a narrative that is confused about what it wants to be (and what it wants him to be). Chandoo Mondeti lavishly uses Devi Sri Prasad’s melodramatic soundtrack that underlines the many highs and lows between Sathya and Raju, but his writing seldom crackles with the sparks that we expect from a story such as this.
Another valid reference in this case is Bharat Bala’s Maryan (2013), in which the setting plays a vital role in exemplifying the characters’ reality and dreams. Thandel, in this regard too, doesn’t fully succeed in taking us to an intimate proximity of the physical place where every participant, minor or major, has a personality derived from their home ground. So when Raju is suddenly elevated to the status of being the leader of the story, everyone else around him (except Sathya) is relegated to the backdrop as someone who must accept help or be in awe of him. That tonal shift from a stirring story to a mass hero fan service exercise is not only jarring, but also unwarranted.
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Similarly, when Thandel reaches Pakistan to develop the other important side of the story, the ineffectual world-building lets the film down once again. The writing resorts to cliches and paints a terribly caricaturist picture of a region that it hasn't strived to learn much of. It is highly likely that the real-life fishermen encountered extreme xenophobia in that volatile foreign land but Thandel isn’t interested in exploring the nuances of this crucial facet of the story, which could have also further enunciated the yearning and love that Raju and Sathya share. The Pakistani prisoners are vile and violent (in a kind of implicitly biased way) and the Indian lot is made to watch every step it takes — none of this is shown or expounded as much as exclaimed with a shrill voice, along with a few wishy-washy attempts to not go overboard. The decision to make Raju a patriot and a hero in these portions is understandable, given the scale at which the film is mounted, but one would have preferred a more measured approach to tie all the myriad threads together.
Thandel, ultimately, is a product of the choices it makes and considering that it lends itself a wide spread of them, the task of staying focused and coherent was always going to be a tough one. Should the film have remained a love story (like the other Sai Pallavi-starrer Amaran) all along to fare better? Certainly. Should it have employed a better agency to weave in the ancillary political and personal aspects? Another resounding yes. Fleetingly, it does offer bright moments played out between the two leads who offer their best, but the overall effort around them is underwhelming.