Exclusive! Bimbisara director Vassishta: I want audiences to remember me as a fantasy specialist

Vassishta (earlier known as MVN Reddy), who shot to fame with Bimbisara, had to wait long to translate his directorial dream into reality. Being the son of a producer, distributor Mallidi Satyanarayana Reddy, he had access to creme-de-la-creme of the industry and yet, he couldn’t bring his ideas to fruition and destiny didn’t favour him for over a decade.

The thundering response for Bimbisara, born out of his love for the fantasy genre, more than anything else, is a testimony to his conviction and sheer determination. He waited for his time and made full use of his opportunity. The fantasy drama, starring Kalyan Ram, Samyuktha Menon and Catherine Tresa, was the surprise success story of the year, both in theatres and OTT (ZEE5).

In a chat with OTTplay.com, he takes us through his early inspirations, Bimbisara, the ideas for the sequel and more.

Embracing the film world right in my childhood years

There are two sides to every coin and my affiliation with the film world made me admire it all the more. I enjoyed going to sets and talking to film people. I felt cinema made the impossible possible and transported us to a world beyond our mundaneness. Stories are a powerful tool already and with audio and visuals, they become even more impactful.

While watching a film, I thought the actors were performing the scene behind our screen and I even went behind to check if they were here for real and to step into their world. When everyone around us only discusses cinema, we’re naturally drawn to it.

My father was associated with the likes of Kodandarami Reddy initially and turned into a producer and a distributor later. I was an avid reader of Chandamama stories and had a special liking for fantasy films. From watching Mahabharata to Ramayana to Chandrakantha on television, growing up with the films of Vithalacharya, NTR and Balakrishna garu later, I was obsessed with everything fantasy.

Creating a fantasy world from scratch - the efforts that go into it

When we watch fairy tale films from Disney, we don’t question or think logically even when a character has 4 legs or 12 legs - we’re conditioned to appreciate fantasy films that way. There’s an advantage when you set a story in a fictitious space. None of us is aware of how people dressed or spoke in 300 BC. When you convince crowds that an event is happening for real, there are no questions asked.

SS Rajamouli is a pioneer in that space, he transported us into Mahishmati and its allure and we wanted more of it. Films like Daana Veera Soora Karna achieved that many years ago, the distinction between each of the characters is established through their appearance - right from their bindis to crowns to their necklaces to the other ornaments. It’s very hard to achieve that even now.

Honestly, we’re not trying to create anything new with our films. We’re trying to reintroduce audiences to what was already done before and package it differently. Storytelling is no rocket science. All our love stories are born out of Ramayana and faction films are born out of Mahabharatha. What are fantasy films ultimately? They’re about kings, demons, the fight for our loved ones, for land. At best, the backdrops and the barriers between them may change.

Making fantasy my forte

There’s an additional excitement when we try to create a new world - it’s a space where magic precedes logic and you can have good fun with it. Everyone has their own identity in the industry today. If VV Vinayak is known for his action films, Srinu Vaitla and Puri Jagannadh are synonymous with their entertainers and commercial films. I want audiences to remember me as a fantasy specialist. This is my strength.

My inspirations in cinema

There’s a reason why we call Vithalacharya and NTR garu legends; they created something original without any reference points. Exposure to Hollywood can be ruled out because only a few international films released here and VHS cassettes would arrive many years later. They made films purely born out of their vision.

We talk of Dasavatharam now, use many cameras and VFX for double roles, but ANR managed to do 9 roles in Navarathri when nothing of this existed. Their imagination was so powerful that they could translate it into reality and we look upto them even today. We take inspiration from them but when people look at it from another tangent, they call it copying. There’s a thin line between the two.

Achieving top-notch VFX/CGI effects with Bimbisara

With Bimbisara, I must give credit to the entire team for pulling off such a feat, right from the VFX head Anil Paduri to his team members Srujan, Sridhar, Venkat and others. They were by my side throughout the project, working tirelessly even a day before the release.

Whenever I asked for something, they never said no, provided alternatives when things didn’t work and it gave me a lot of confidence. They were not satisfied easily even when I said yes to a few things and tried to better the result till the very last minute.

There were a lot of risks involved. I was a first-time director, we had a limited budget and we knew we’d be trolled if things don’t go right. Chota K Naidu garu was a source of great support as well. COVID-19 gave us the time and I had the right team; I couldn’t have asked for anything more.

Visualising Trigartala for Bimbisara

Trigartala is a kingdom that’s surrounded by water from three directions. It would take a lot of effort for any outsider to overpower it. I grew up with tales of kings having gone beyond the sapta samudras to expand their kingdoms and I wanted to build this world on similar lines. Through this region, I also wanted to showcase the significance of Ayurveda and why one shouldn’t neglect it.

The deeper meaning behind Bimbisara’s transformation in the film

There’s good and bad in each one of us but we learn to suppress our negative qualities in public. I may sound humble now because of my situation, values or upbringing but what if I was a monarch? When I am a monarch, I am above everything and I have the liberty to kill people to make people listen to me.

In the song Eeshwarude, the line ‘Raajabhogapu Laalasa Brathuke...Matti Vaasana Ruchi Choosinadhe’ emphasises how the king is forced to transform owing to his situation. Why did Kamsa turn into a monster? It’s because of his fear of being killed by his nephew. If two best friends are taken atop a tower and only one is given a chance to survive, you know their true character there.

The scene where Anthony Katta (as a priest) enlightens Bimbisara about destiny and karma when he kicks a beggar (who’s having food beside him) was inspired by Annamayya’s transformation. When Annamayya is having the time of his life, lost in the beauty of his wives, it takes the almighty to descend on earth and transform him into a staunch devotee (by showing him something even more beautiful than his wives - the idol of the Lord Venkateswara). It changes his perspective on life entirely.

On channelising Bimbisara’s transformation through a child

When two men fight on the street, you consider it normal and don’t pay heed to it much. If I do the same thing to a child, you’ll see me as a maniac. Why? It’s because children are innocent and they don’t mean harm to us. Bimbisara kills a child to please his ego and the same girl, many births later, saves his life.

This is how karma works. The girl, while saving Bimbisara, even smiles at him, as if she did it with all awareness. You pay for your sins in the same birth, we don’t know if hell, heaven or reincarnation exists for real. When you drive such thoughts through a child with innocence, it is more impactful.

The challenge of extracting good performances from the cast in VFX-heavy films

It all boils down to the actors you have and how well you narrate the scene to them. With Kalyan Ram garu, I could see only Bimbisara in him. The entire unit believed as if a king was heading to the set with his arrival. He wouldn’t even smile until we said pack up. While your narration is important, it’s about how actors draw inspiration from their life to imagine the ambience around them and perform accordingly.

Associating with three composers for Bimbisara - MM Keeravaani, Varikuppala Yadagiri and Chirantan Bhatt

When your script is right, everything else falls into place. Chirrantan garu liked the idea of ‘karma siddhantham’ and gave me a song like Eeshwarude almost immediately. The composition, if you notice, is ideally suited to provide an emotional high or to glorify a character, but we used it as a tool for realisation as a contrast. Shreemani completed writing the song in just two days and understood Bimbisara’s trajectory perfectly.

For the folk song Tene Palukula, we had very little time and wanted to finish it quickly. With films like Cinema Chupista Mama and Race Gurram, Varikuppala Yadagiri composed and wrote the song himself and I asked if he could come up with a folk song in two days. I had only told him the age-old ‘Thota lo rani..kota lo raja..’ idea and he wrapped it up in no time.

All said and done, MM Keeravani is a natural with historicals and fantasies and understands the pulse of Telugu audiences well and we wanted him to work on the background score. We weren’t sure if he would take it up but he owned the film after he saw the footage. The impact he created with Neetho Vunte Chaalu was mind-boggling and truly surprised our team.

The story being a driving force behind the result

The story was indeed the binding force that brought the team together. I didn’t even think of naming the king Bimbisara but when I came across his story, his ruthlessness and his efforts to spread Buddhism in the later part of his life, it fit into our world perfectly. There’s a treasure he’s hidden in the vicinity of Pune in real life too and we still haven’t found a way to unlock it.

There’s a Mahavir Jain statue in Hyderabad and I often remember, how, on his birth anniversary every year, his descendants come together to pay a tribute to him. I used that as an inspiration to conceive a sequence where Bimbisara’s descendants celebrate his life and legacy centuries after his death.

With ‘Maaya darpanam’ - the mysterious mirror - I imagined it as a device that separates two parallel worlds. It was quite common in our folklore films in the 60s. The inspiration is all around us. All we need to do is to go back in time to discover our culture and our stories.

The learnings from shelved projects in the past

Films being shelved or put under the backburner is the everyday reality of the industry and I am no exception to it. I needed to experience this because a film like Bimbisara wouldn’t have happened otherwise. Rising and falling is a part and parcel of every profession and you naturally learn from it. The truth of life is that no one changes and we react as per our situation.

If the backstories of a few characters in Bimbisara were hidden on purpose

More than not telling their story fully, I did what was necessary for the film and didn’t extend the scope of the character beyond necessity. Samyuktha Menon’s character was born out of the need to create a companion for Bimbisara as he returned to the present day - she was written as a female character because of the necessities of commercial cinema. With Catherine’s character, there are high chances that her part may return for the sequel too.

Plans for Bimbisara 2, the pressure of writing a second part to a hit film and the response to Bimbisara on OTT

The idea of Bimbisara 2 is still in the discussion stages. We are yet to take a call if it should be a franchise or a continuation of the first part. We haven’t finalised anything yet. I haven’t committed to any other film as a director and most of our heroes have their hands full till 2023. Kalyan Ram garu already has 2-3 films in the pipeline and he can’t take up any other project in between Bimbisara 2 owing to the look.

It’s not at all easy to write a sequel to a successful film; the pressure is something else and it’s scary. Bimbisara released without any expectations but when it crossed boundaries and appealed to people across languages, they’re eager to watch the second part and the expectations are huge.

The film’s response on OTT has been phenomenal, to say the least. People watched the film 3-4 times even if they saw it in theatres. The applause from Hindi and Malayalam audiences, in particular, has been huge.