What Rana Daggubati says he looks for before he chooses to work on a film, is whether it explores a new world or new characters
“If it’s a character I haven’t seen before, or it’s set in a world or a terrain that people haven’t seen in celluloid before then I go for it,” says the actor who was in town to promote his latest film, Nene Raju Nene Mantri, his first venture with his producer-father D.Suresh Babu, which releases today.
Rana describes the film as the story of a moneylender who lives in a dry town on the Andhra border, whose life takes a drastic turn and places him in a ‘crazy world of wealth and power.’
“His life follows a big graph and his story is told from the perspective of a husband-wife relationship. What I keep in mind is never to repeat what I have done before or that is being done around me. This leads me to a few stories and these are the stories I like to tell.”
This is his first release post the stupendous success of Baahubali: The Conclusion, in which, as is well-known around the country, he plays the role of the main antagonist, the evil king Bhallala Deva.
And Rana is not pressurised to aim higher than the country’s second largest grosser.
“For me, it’s never about crossing a high, ultimately, it’s a movie story that I decide to tell. After Baahubali:The Beginning, I did Ghazi, which is a submarine-based warm film and after Baahubali:The Conclusion, I am doing a political film. Each film is different, we are simply calling audiences to the cinema hall, shutting the lights and showing them a story. There’s no comparision between two films. Having said that, the Baahubali series is almost like an armour that has given me a license to explore newer kinds of films, which wasn’t possible earlier.”
That’s what really keeps him going, says the 31-year old actor, playing different people and exploring different places and lifestyles.
“I’m not really even an award-zone type of actor. I just like to tell different stories.”
Does he take a particular stand on the message sent out by the industry, which in case of Telugu cinema, seems more male-centric?
“I’m not a pro or an anti guy in this format. Ultimately, cinema is a form of storytelling, whether you are telling a boy’s story, a girl’s story or a couple’s story. And Nene Raju Nene Mantri is a woman-centric story, about a husband and a wife. If you ask me who’s the most important character in the film, I would say it’s Radha, played by Kajal Aggarwal. Why anything happens in the film is because of her. She becomes the trigger point for Jogendra, the lead character in the film. It’s really her story. But then in Ghazi, where there is no female protagonist as such, Taapsee plays a Bangladeshi refugee. I don’t think that a film must be made a certain way.”
He believes it is important for every kind of perspective to coexist in the industry, to produce different kinds of movies.
“I have no complaints about Telugu films. In a country like India where cinema’s on a thin red line, it’s only Telugu cinema that has survived and kept growing steadily. Every year there has been a film that is out-doing itself in terms of box office numbers. This is the only regional film indsutry in India that is showing an upward trend in this direction. We are constantly making big, bold, experimental cinema, whether it’s films like Arundhati, which stars Anushka Shetty or Eega, which stars a fly or even Baahubali. I don’t think any other industry experiments more. These are daring experiments. We are bunch of gutsy people who love cinema.”
Having worked on a variety of genres from spy-thrillers like Baby to action dramas like Krishnam Vande Jagadgurum and crime thrillers like Dum Maaro Dum, he still doesn’t prefer a certain genre.
“I grew up in a filmmaking family, watching the best of world cinema since I was five. That’s probably why as an actor I like to many kinds of things. When I was young, I liked sci-fi, action and classic hero films. And somewhere I think this reflects in my films. Most films I do, as a friend of mine observed, are the kind of films I have liked watching while growing up.”
So, he points out, is his latest film.
“ Nene Raju..., in its essence, not in its story, is inspired by a contemporary classic like The Wolf of Wall Street. As such, it is a sad story, because it is about a guy with a simple life who becomes successful and takes to substance abuse, which ruins his life. But they didn’t tell the story like that, they presented it in such an upbeat manner that you enjoy watching the madness of the lead character,” he explains.
“We have tried to present this concept in an Indian context, where a good man walks among wealth and politics and it takes him into a crescendo. You enjoy watching him be the bad guy. We have tried making a commercial tale with an artistic form. You would probably have met a couple like Jogendra and Radha, who have experienced the same kind of circumstances.”
His ‘philosophy’ as an actor is simple and it’s all about art.
“I keep the art form, which cinema originated from, and cinema is nothing but a collaboration between various kinds of artistes, before everything else. I do the TV shows and the endorsements to make money so when I come back to a film, it still retains the pure sense of art.”