For those of us who had given up on hearing the genuine sound of laughter in movie theatres, here is hope. Subham is a farm-fresh, funny free-fall on the pitfalls of television-serial obsession circa the 1990s, when Ekta Kapoor was the queen of home entertainment.
Subham could be seen as a slanted homage to Ekta Kapoor’s stronghold on television audiences at one time. I remember how addicted my 9-year-old daughter was to Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki (8:30 p.m. weekdays), followed by Kyunki…Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi at 9 p.m. She would throw a fit if, God and Ekta Kapoor (which were one and the same when it came to televised offerings) frowned on the satellite space and if, gulp, the telecast of the nation’s hope-dope soap was affected.
This is the world director Praveen Kandregula and writer Vasanth Maringanti inhabit with liberating insouciance. There is an unsettling and yet reassuring casualness in the way the writer-director merge the serial obsession among ladies in the 1990s with a flippant horror-dom which is supremely giggle-gorged and never dumb.
Smart writing makes these small-town characters in Subham feel real and likeable. The newcomers and semi-newcomers are so into it, it feels like they belonged in the sleepy Andhra town long before the camera caught them.
Our “hero”, if we may call him that, is Srinivas, played by Harshith Reddy, who has the most sincere face on this side of Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub. You know from the start, this guy will believe his newly married wife Srivalli (Shriya Kontham, sweet and spontaneous) is “possessed” by her favourite serial and will go with her mood swings.
Partly a satire on the killer serials of the 1990s and partly a homage to the hyphenated hilarity of humour and horror at its most basic (you know, the Stree structure), Subham is a delightful mélange of mirth and madness.
My favourite chunks in the narrative are those where the timid Srinivas and his aggressive buddies Shah Jehan (Charan Peri) and Venkatesh (Gavireddy Srinivas) discuss their views on an alpha male and how to apply their concept of ideal malehood into their marriages. In the naïve folds of masculine kinship, the tongue-in-cheek plot implodes with peals of laughter.
Besides the vivacious cast who have a blast, Subham leans into the 1990s easily, not over-explaining the periodicity. There is an element of treading on untrodden territory here, not quite achieving the pathbreaking heights of the director’s earlier film Cinema Bandi, but still providing ample evidence of originality and freshness.
My favourite character in Subham is the mysterious godwoman Maya, played by the film’s producer Samantha, who seems halfway clairvoyant, halfway money-hungry, and fully wacked out. A full movie on this character? This, I have got to see.
