Blog Marathon - February 2023 - Day 13 - 18 pages - Movie review

Can you fall in love with a person you have never seen in flesh and blood?

Can you become one with a person who shares nothing in common with you?

Can you go out of your way to fulfill something the other person had dreamed of doing?

All these questions are answered in a Telugu movie called 18 Pages, and I am so under its spell even after a week has passed since I saw it! Here's a little background on why I watch Telugu movies in the first place: The scene at Bollywood is really very sad now, and I have no interest in watching the remakes of movies from the southern part of India churned into Hindi movies one after the other.

I speak Marathi at home with my husband and kid. I can also speak and understand Hindi, English, and German. I understand Gujrati very well and can speak it well too. My first contact with one of the languages in South India has been with the Kannada language. As I grew up in Dombivli, my next-door neighbors spoke Kannada, and I could understand everything that they said. After moving to Bangalore, I tried my hands at Spanish, which was a big disaster. I didn't pursue it with the same love and vigor as I had pursued learning German. Then I got introduced to my colleagues in HP, who hailed from Andhra Pradesh. The trio, Shankar, Vishnu, Anil, and Smita, spoke Telugu with one another, and I picked up a few words from them like "vastava," "teenu," and "chepu." Beyond that, I didn't make any efforts to improve the language. The language was not as sweet as Tamil as it had a lot of t and r sounds. But I could make out the difference between the four languages spoken in the southern part of India, thanks to my stint in Bangalore. After a few years, we all parted ways, and there was no way that I could remain close to this language.

After coming to Germany, the first Telugu movie that blew my mind was "Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo." My son became the biggest fan of this movie, especially of the fight sequences. And then RRR arrived. Oh my god! We must have watched the movie at least 10 times. My son knows the versions of Naatu Naatu in all the other languages that it has been dubbed into. It became a huge success and recently won a Golden Globe Award too. The next in line was Kartikeya 2, which was a well-made suspense thriller movie. The film's leading couple (Nikhil Siddhartha and Anupama Parmeshwaram) has reunited in the romantic thriller 18 Pages. Anupama lights up the screen with her presence, and Nikhil plays a smitten lover boy to the core.

A boy finds a diary of an unknown girl. She is a small town girl who is always trying to make others happy, has a golden heart, and always spreads sunshine wherever she is. She maintains all her life's chronicles in a diary, and after just writing 18 pages, a tragedy befalls her. The boy who finds her diary falls in love with her and wants to meet her and see her in person. The girl undergoes a lot of challenges in life and is unaware of the boy who is trying to reach her. The boy does everything in his power to find her, but in vain. He assumes that she is dead and tries to fulfill all the wishes she has written down in her diary, only to find her in the same compartment, on the same train, on her way to Kashi to commemorate the death anniversary of her parents, in the climax scene. When they both realize the other's presence in the compartment, there is nothing but pure joy and bliss finding its way through tears. She moves close to him on the opposite seat and just rests her head on his shoulders. The tears flow onto his shirt and wet the place where she places her head. That scene is my favorite. It's so simple—no kissing, touching, or displays of affection, no words, no questions—yet the most powerful emotion is conveyed through joyous tears. It's a well-shot and well-emoted scene, and the stupid romantic in you will definitely nudge you somewhere, and you will remember that pure love that you must have experienced sometime in your life.

I haven't even talked about the lingering, melodious music of this movie. Oh, I don't understand every word or the complete meaning, but I have been listening to it on loop since the time I watched the movie. My favorite is "Yedurangula Vaana," sung by Sid Sriram. It's soft and romantic, and your heart will definitely sway to the beautiful melody. 

The movie has just four songs. The playlist is available on YouTube:

18 pages Jukebox

This movie will definitely lighten up your mood, it will make you feel good and it will make you fall in love once again!