Why Crazy Star V. Ravichandran's misfire 'Shanti Kranti' still stands as a model of audacity

"If Shanti Kranti had succeeded at the box office, our industry would have been in a different place," said actor-director S. Narayan in one of his more recent interviews. The 1991 film would come up in the discussion when S. Narayan, the interviewee, claimed that long before the pan-India phenomenon became a rage, a man named V. Ravichandran had conceived and executed a multilingual film of grand proportions. 

Shanti Kranti was written, produced and directed by Ravichandran who also starred in the lead role in the Kannada version of the film. He would simultaneously direct Akkineni Nagarjuna in the same role in the Telugu version and rope in superstar Rajinikanth to play the lead in the Tamil and Hindi versions of the film. Ravichandran would play the side role in all versions barring Kannada, with Juhi Chawla, Khushbu and Anant Nag reprising their parts in all four iterations.

On paper alone, it seems a taxing task to follow the makeup of this evidently ahead-of-time film. V. Ravichandran had begun his career as a director a couple of years prior with Premaloka and the success of that film, which was defined by his courage to dream big, propelled him as the next master-builder of south Indian cinema. The follow-up to Premaloka, Ranadheera, was even a bigger hit and the one after that (Kindara Jogi) was a success in its own right, as well. But it is said that Ravichandran, having been panned by local critics for the alleged vulgarity in his films, had a point to prove. So, he would finally decide to put his three-year plan into action and pull out all the stops in the making of Shanti Kranti. 

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Throwback: When Crazy Star Ravichandran declined Superstar Rajinikanth's offer to star in Ranadheera remake 

When films like Shanti Kranti work well commercially, their success is mostly attributed to the maker's conviction, their will to push the envelope. But when they end up failing miserably, they become etched permanently in the public consciousness as harsh reminders or cautionary tools against self-indulgence. It's the Heaven's Gate syndrome, in a way, but maybe not as damaging to the reputation of Ravichandran, as it was to Michael Cimino. And quite perhaps, contrary to the romanticized view of things, Shanti Kranti was a product of excess and of personal desires preceding practicality. At the same time, it also stands the test of time as a model for audacity and dreaming big.

In order to bring his lavish vision to life, Ravichandran is said to have borrowed a huge 50-acre empty land to shoot the climax. He also erected huge sets and recreated Bengaluru's MG Road so that he can blast out a few portions. In the same interview, S. Narayan reveals that separate cars, catering services and crew members were assigned for each version of Shanti Kranti. "Crew members would wear tags like 'Shanti Kranti, Kannada, Manager' and the catering team would wear gloves like in a star hotel. You wouldn't have seen an arrangement like that," he says. Shanti Kranti was the most expensive south Indian film of its time.  

Rajinikanth, who apparently first declined the Crazy Star's offer, accepted to lead both the Tamil and Hindi versions after listening to the story. Ravichandran, attempting to prove his naysayers wrong, wanted to make a film that was centred on children and a menacing organ transplant mafia, a story that he believed was highly relevant to those times.

But his mega efforts went in vain because the film failed to make any money at the box office. This occurred at a particularly bad time for him personally, he says, with his father, the legendary film producer N. Veeraswamy, bedridden and the entire family encountering financial troubles. 

Ravichandran would then be forced to take up Tamil remakes to breathe life back into his career but even then, he took matters into his own hands by remaining the director. Halli Meshtru, Gopi Krishna, Mane Devru, Putnanja and others were all big hits mainly because of his sense of nativity and Hamsalekha's score. However, once the two parted ways sometime in the early 2000s, the Crazy Star is said to have lost his mojo.

Since then, there have been sparks of his old charm in films like Ekangi, but with each film, his narrative became less cohesive and more self-indulgent. His most recent film, Ravi Bopanna, which is a remake of the Malayalam hit Joseph, borrows only the plot of the original but foregoes its nuance. Instead, Ravichandran tries to titillate his audience with disjointed and very 'pulpish' erotica. The audience, however, would reject the film completely.

As the likes of Prashanth Neel and others put Kannada cinema on the map, a mind like Ravichandran serves as a great example of being extravagant and also recklessly dreamy. Perhaps that is why, there is a special place in the hearts of Kannada film lovers for V. Ravichandran: the reason is his will to be different. He might have steadily grown to be inaccessible over the years but no one can deny the cultural impact he had for close to a decade-and-a-half during which he paved the way for actors who also wished to direct. Upendra, in many ways, can be seen as his spiritual successor but he, too, owing to the pressures of the business, found it tough to juggle both for a long period of time.