Puri Jagannadh was one among many breakout directors that knocked the Telugu film industry a couple of years before and after the advent of the Millennium. Karunakaran (98), Teja (99), Srinu Vytla (99), SS Rajamouli (01), Sekhar Kammula (99), VV Vinayak (02), Trivikram Srinivas (02) were the others.
When we look at them, two decades later, each one has created a unique brand (one turning out to be the biggest), but only a few managed to continue giving success and stay relevant. Leaving aside SS Rajamouli, and Trivikram who has prolific only from the start of the current decade, Puri Jagannadh stands out among the rest.
Puri Jagannadh has been least reliant on a star. It has always been content first for him, and that is true until now with iSmart Shankar. Each one of the directors mentioned above barring one had gone through highs and lows and bounced back, but in the case of Puri Jagannadh, it has been different. Would you believe it if we say that, none of the director’s films barring Idiot and Pokiri started with a unanimous positive talk? Well, it is true.
It suggests that many of those films had initially taken aback the audience who later embraced it in the long run. The content and presentation are new, and that takes times to settle. What it does is build an influential director and audience relationship. In the process, stars have been created. It is the reason why he cannot be written off so quickly.
One can now understand why Superstar Mahesh Babu worked with the director even when he was going through a low phase. One also needs to remember that before Pokiri, Puri Jagannadh had more successes compared to “Prince” and it was Pokiri that made him “Superstar”. Same is the case with Businessman that was a crazy project much before Superstar came on board.
Ismart Shankar, the latest release of Puri Jagannadh is following the same patterns like many of his blockbusters. The collections are super steady on the first Monday, and the trade is expecting it to last strongly for a while.
A new lease of life has been breathed into Puri Jagannadh who gains the most out of iSmart Shankar’s success. Come 2020, and it will be twenty years in the industry for the director. With time it gets increasingly challenging to bounce back, and that looked like the case with Puri as well. But, now that he had a blockbuster, we hope, the director offers more substance via his writing to his “fresh ideas” , and don’t make movies with those ideas alone.
