Why is Ram Gopal Varma’s Siva a trendsetter?

We hardly come across any film-maker or a technician in the current generation of Tollywood who hasn’t been influenced by the movie Siva, a movie that shook the entire Tollywood movie fraternity and audience alike with its technical finesse and storytelling prowess. Be it technically or emotionally, Siva dwells deep into the minds of the audience leaving a long-lasting impact on them. It’s no exaggeration to say that has revamped the face of Tollywood and the industry catapulted into the phrase “New Age Indian Cinema”. There were so many references to Siva ever since this movie was released by many then and contemporary filmmakers. Kudos to RGV for this phenomenal contribution to Tollywood, in fact, the Indian film industry.

Here is my understanding of why it is hailed as a trendsetter.

Those were the days when a Telugu movie had regular storylines, thunderous background scores, over-the-top action sequences, predictable screenplay, melodramatic scenes. The directors then were conventional and were heavily dependent on a formulaic concoction to make their movies work at the box office. The then audience too hardly had the acumen to define or judge a movie and mostly saw cinema as a recreational avenue, rather than an artistic medium. Few directors like K. Viswanath, K. Balachander can be quarantined from this for their hemes and storytelling but again their films were more or less meant for an elite set of audience and were built on parallel lines with the mainstream commercial cinema and never attempted to smack the conventional movie-making methodology.

Amidst a plethora of such kinds of movies, came a game-changer Siva. Just like any other regular movie, Siva was also based on a hero-villain moral conflict with an underlying love story but what made it stand out from other movies was its technical expertise. Right from the title cards scrolling, the movie immerses us into the world of the film. Instead of flashy title cards with overtly dramatic sound effects, as in other films then, Siva’s title cards scroll, shows principal cast and crew, complemented by a thematic and hard-hitting soundtrack. The logo Siva, in the title cards, was novel in design, showing the protagonist’s face with a cycle chain wrapped around the wrist, that started the rise of a rebellion in him.

RGV used steady cam for this movie, for the first time by any director in Tollywood, which was instrumental in revolutionizing the art of filmmaking in Tollywood. The kind of camera angles RGV used were something the audience was never exposed to. The camera pans and tilts were very meticulous in building up tension and suspense. Instead of building close-up shots portraying dramatic expressions, the filmmaker chose to shoot close-up shots only to unbosom the emotional state and ambiguity of the characters and used unusual handheld & tracking shots camera angles to shoot the gritty chase and action sequences.

The low camera angle in Siva’s introduction scene — entering inside the college on the first day-, casting him under sun rays depicts him as the savior or of the college, which was too intricate for the then audience to interpret considering their movie watching sensibility. The enlarging and diminishing of shadows of Chinna, on a building wall in a chase sequence and when Chinna runs into a pole accidentally, were innovative. RGV manages to build up tension through close shots in the chase sequence (where Siva rides a bicycle) and dutch angle hand-held tracking shots in the narrow bylanes of the roads.

The red hue shots used in fight scenes in the rain sequence at night and when Bhavani catches Brahmaji of cheating in a bar elucidates the spirit of the characters and mood of the violent atmosphere. The fog effect in night scenes. also adds sinisterness to the gritty atmosphere.

In a scene at a hotel, Siva and goons stare at each other before they proceed for a stand-off. Here, the foreground of Siva has stove flames metaphorically showing the rage and anger in him. The characters in the shot standstill but communicate the spat between them through the camera close-ups, effectively. The climax episode only portrays Siva killing Bhavani in the quench of his volcanic anger and has no inessential room for dialogues between them. RGV chose to keep dialogues colloquial, contextual, more direct, conveying the characters’ emotions and intentions. Also, he chooses to bypass the family melodrama, although the story had that wiggle room.

The action sequences you see in Siva were composed by RGV himself. Heavily inspired by Bruce Lee, he composed the fights for the movie replacing action director Raju Master who was supposed to compose fights for the movie. as his stunts were not in line with the filmmaker’s vision. If you see Siva, you will see mostly only stomach punches and hooks to the jaws and the reason for that is because RGV knows only these two moves which he learned in his martial arts classes (in his own words)

“Action speaks more than words,” RGV tweaked this idiom to his convenience using BGM to tell more story than dialogues. The dialogues in the movie are said only when characters were put to and the rest of the time BGM compensates for the inner turmoil of the characters. Maestro Ilaiyaraja’s music is undoubtedly the cornerstone of the movie. The BGM elevates the movie to a whole new level of cinematic experience. Be it emotional scenes, or gripping action sequences, Ilaiyaraja’s BGM simultaneously tells a story. The title soundtrack introduces us to the action world of Siva. The violin interludes while Siva interacts with Asha, about the untoward encounter with Bhavani shows us their emotional state of skepticism about future happenings. The violin theme at the pre-climax, when Siva stands in front of his niece’s corpse, renders the character’s state of anger and a sense of remorse. The soundtrack, while Siva is being chased by goons, keeps the entire chase episode engaging, suspenseful and gritty. The silence in the scenes was used sporadically to render the emotional transition the characters undergo. The edits in the scenes were crisp keeping the flow of the story fluid. The tight narrative keeps the audience hooked and glued. The cuts and transitions were creative, for the time it was released. The movie used Foley Effects to optimal use. Instead of using conventional sound effects in fights, Foley Effects were used to make the scenes look real (the thuds, punches, kicks, and footsteps). RGV used shock value tactics (with the help of Foley Effects) to thrill the audience with unpredictability. Scenes like Siva thrashing JD when provoked, Bhavani murdering Viswanadham & Machiraju are examples of that. Siva appearing in jail when Ganesh is about to be murdered. Siva’s soundtrack was one of the best in Tollywood and RGV liked it so much that he reused it in his 2014 movie Rowdy.

The characters in the movie were very organic and identifiable. Most of the actors were fresh faces which convinced the audience to bind to the story. The sweaty faces of Bhavani’s goons worked out to add natural flavor to the movie. RGV in an interview told that he had selected most of the actors believing in his inner vibe as a filmmaker that they would suit the roles they were given. The goons that you see in Siva were handpicked by him on the roadside, and they were not auditioned formally. Need to mention, his conviction is commendable as his conviction worked out to a more significant extent.

Siva has gained the reputation of introducing scores of actors, technicians, directors and inspired a ton of them in Tollywood. Among the directors, Poori Jagannath, Guna Shekhar, Krishna Vamsi, Siva Nageswara are some of them to name a few who carved a niche for themselves and are commonly known as Ram Gopal Varma’s protégés. Among the technicians, Teja, Rasool Ellore is a couple of them who made it big in the cinematography department later.

The movie has inspired a lot of aspiring & ambitious filmmakers to come to the industry and prove their mettle. The movie gave stardom to Nagarjuna as a hero and launched RGV as a trendsetting filmmaker. The movie introduced a slew of actors — Chinna, JD, Brahmaji, Uttej, the goons of Bhavani. It gave memorable roles for Nagarjuna, Amala, JD, Raghuvaran, Bharani.

Siva was the first film to use Steadicam for shooting the film. Though Steadicams had been available in India for some time, no one had used them till then. RGV defied the norm and achieved phenomenal results with the Steadicam.

RGV never assisted anyone before making Siva, nor he had any formal training from a film school. Whatever he made, was a knowledge base of his experiences laced with his film-watching experience over his teenage years. One cannot deny the fact that Ram Gopal Varma turned out into a maverick filmmaker for his eccentric genius has rendered so much of an artistic contribution to the Indian movie industry and a trailblazer.

Siva went on to become a blockbuster hit at the box office. The movie initially was released in a limited number of theaters, later the number of prints increased as the film fared well. Collections of Nizam were Rs.1 crore & Ceeded Rs.50 lakhs. On the whole, the movie’s full run grossed over Rs.4 crores. Siva also was made in Hindi, the next year with the almost same star cast. It got a large response from the Bollywood fraternity and audience too.

Here are few quotes from film-makers about Siva:

RGV (himself) : I just came up with his urgent script, as my first script Raathri was not encouraged by the producers as they wanted something mainstream for Nagarjuna, who was then a budding actor. So, I literally copied scenes and characters from films like Kaalicharan, Arjun, and a host of other films of that time. All in all Siva for me was more of an entry point into the industry and to establish a certain position of strength.”

No one believed in Siva, including me. We just gave our 100%, without bothering about the movie’s result. I broke the rules in the movie, people say but the fact is that I don’t know the rules as this is my first movie. No one intended to make this movie a cult classic. If you ask if no one intended, how did this happen?, for which I want to quote George Bernard Shaw who said — “Great things happen, they cannot be made“.

The movie also introduced us to the epic rebellious cycle -chain action sequence which set a new trend among college-going youth during those days. RGV said “Throughout the shooting, I wasn’t too sure how that would be received because after Venkat liked it very much I went home and tried to break the cycle chain and realized the impossibility of it, But I told myself that since nobody would have tried it, it just might look believable. But now after all these years the sheer number of people who come and claim to me that they broke a cycle chain after watching ‘Shiva’ is the ultimate example of how imagination can take over and become a reality in time.”