The Storyteller's Lens

The Wizard of Words — and the Trouble with Too Much Magic

Trivikram Srinivas is a filmmaker who prefers words over weapons.

In his world, dialogues don’t merely support a scene — they define it. They either land softly, like lived wisdom, or strike hard, like a punch delivered with precision. His philosophy of life is never hidden; it stares back at us through his lines.

“Tegipoyetappude daaram balam telustundi… Vellipoyetappude bandham viluva telustundi.”
“Manam baagunnappudu lekkalu maatladi, baalenappudu vilvalu maatladakoodadu, sir.”

These aren’t just dialogues. They are Trivikram’s moral coordinates.

For a long time, he didn’t just score boundaries — he hit sixers in almost every film. And not with gimmicks. With writing. With rhythm. With an instinctive understanding of how language works when placed in the right mouth, at the right moment.

His humour, especially, belongs to a rare breed. The kind that refuses to age. The kind that makes us laugh even after hearing the same line for the fiftieth time. Because the humour isn’t in the joke — it’s in the delivery.

Take “Vaadu magaadu ra bujji.”

On paper, it’s ordinary. Almost throwaway. But when Tanikella Bharani delivers it in Athadu — with that pause, that authority, that understated pride — it becomes immortal. Two decades later, it still lives on in memes. That’s not accidental writing. That’s command over performance.

Story-wise, Trivikram’s films often revolve around families. If Rajamouli places the mother–son bond at the emotional core of his narratives, Trivikram consistently excels at father–son and father–daughter relationships. And he does it without melodrama.

The Prakash Raj–Shreya equation in Nuvve Nuvve.
Nassar–Mahesh Babu in Athadu.
Prakash Raj–Allu Arjun in Son of Satyamurthy.

The love here isn’t loud. It’s steady. Restrained. Confident.
A hand that hovers before blessing a head.
A glance that lingers just a second longer than necessary.
A camera that pans a room instead of announcing emotion through dialogue.

He understands paternal affection deeply — how men love without always saying it.

And yet, that sensitivity falters when the emotional centre shifts toward motherhood and women.

This is where Trivikram’s cinema begins to feel… off. Not wrong in an obvious way. Not aggressively problematic. But like a grain of sand stuck between the teeth — small, persistent, impossible to ignore once noticed.

Films like Agnatavaasi, Ala Vaikunta Puramuloo, and Guntur Kaaram expose this imbalance more clearly. Trivikram seems far more comfortable navigating patriarchy than interrogating it. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. But the lack of balance shows. 

Women in his films often speak ideology instead of breathing emotion. They are written as positions, not people. Strength, when given to them, comes wrapped in explanation — rarely in quiet contradiction. Men, on the other hand, get the best lines irrespective of whom they’re speaking to. Father, son, friend, rival — their dialogues carry authority, wit, and moral weight.

This disparity often slips by unnoticed because the stories are engaging and the dialogues feel like life lessons. Unless one is actively looking for it, the imbalance remains under the surface.

But sometimes, it surfaces sharply.

That infamous dialogue in AVP — “Aadaallu vere inti nunchi vachhina vaadini bharta ga oppukuntaaru kaani, tana ninchi raani vaadini bidda ga oppukoru.”

With that single line, the entire concept of adoption is dismissed. Not questioned. Not challenged. Declared.
Which is jarring — because mythology, history, and lived reality repeatedly contradict it. Kaikeyi and Rama. Yashoda and Krishna. Kunti and Nakul–Sahadev. Draupadi and Abhimanyu.

This wasn’t a character’s flawed belief. It felt like an authorial assertion. And that’s why it grated.

To be fair, Trivikram does try to change it. A Aa. Agnatavaasi. ASVR. Guntur Kaaram. The intent is visible. The execution isn’t.

From A Aa onward, something began slipping. Perhaps it was because the story was adapted from the Telugu novel Meena. Perhaps creative indulgence crept in. Perhaps star pressures diluted restraint. Whatever the reason, the balance between subtext and sermon began to tilt.

Then came Agnatavaasi — a film even the most loyal fan base struggled to defend.

There is, however, one film that sits uncomfortably at the centre of this decline — Aravinda Sametha Veera Raghava.

A film that raises a fundamental question: why is “Aravinda” even in the title?

Despite being named after her, Aravinda has no real narrative agency. She doesn’t influence the conflict, alter the protagonist’s worldview in any meaningful way, or anchor the emotional arc. The story belongs entirely to Raghava — and even that ownership comes with a caveat.

Gone was Trivikram’s trademark humour. Gone were the conversational sparks that once balanced philosophy with playfulness. What remained was a heavy, sermon-driven narrative where Raghava came across less as a conflicted man evolving through experience and more like a preacher holding an axe.

Aravinda, who could have been the emotional counterweight, instead feels like a narrative device — a mouthpiece for ideals rather than a lived-in character. If the intention was to present a strong, grounding woman, it never fully translates on screen. What emerges instead is a character that feels immature, preachy, and strangely detached from the consequences unfolding around her.

It feels as though Trivikram wanted to give Aravinda weight — perhaps even intended her to be the moral anchor — but couldn’t reconcile that intent with the film’s aggressively male-centric arc. The result is a title that promises balance, and a story that never delivers it.

In hindsight, ASVR marks a critical shift. It is the film where Trivikram’s words stop conversing and start declaring. Where ideology overtakes intimacy. Where the silence that once carried meaning is replaced by speeches meant to convince.

And finally, Guntur Kaaram.

That film felt so disconnected from Trivikram’s voice that it raised an uncomfortable question — was Guruji really the one who made it? The dialogues were flat. The emotional spine was missing. The relationships lacked nuance. Apart from Mahesh Babu — who, in many of his films now, becomes the karta, karma, and kriya — there was very little to hold on to.

For the first time, it became easy to actively avoid a Trivikram film after the initial watch.

And yet, despite all of this, it’s difficult to write him off completely.

Because once upon a time, he showed us how powerful restraint could be.
How silence could speak.
How words, when used sparingly, could wound or heal. 

One can only hope that Guruji finds his way back to that balance — trusting subtext again, allowing women to exist beyond ideology, and remembering that sometimes, the strongest dialogue is the one left unsaid.