Karthik Gattamneni interview: ‘Eagle’ is in the ‘Rashomon’-meets-‘Vikram’ narrative style

Karthik Gattamneni interview: ‘Eagle’ is in the ‘Rashomon’-meets-‘Vikram’ narrative style. The Ravi Teja starrer is an action drama that will release in Telugu on February 9

The portfolios of writing, direction, cinematography and editing sit easily in on the shoulders of Karthik Gattamneni. For his new Telugu film Eagle, which he has directed, he has also handled all these portfolios along with collaborators. “I have a good team; my associates and assistants are intuitive and know what I require, which eases the workflow,” he says. Days before the release of the Ravi Teja starrer, which is scheduled for February 9, he is a picture of calm at his office in Manikonda, Hyderabad, as the postproduction has reached the finish line.

Eagle was initially poised to release during Sankranti and later postponed on the request of the Telugu Film Chamber of Commerce and Telugu Film Producers Council. “The good part is that we got more time to enhance the sound and visual effects. However, I got more anxious since I have been working on the same footage for six to seven months,” says the director.

Karthik describes Eagle as a point-of-view film in which different characters present their views about the central character played by Ravi Teja. While the larger inspiration for this style of narration comes from Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Karthik points out a key difference: “In Rashomon, the audience has to decipher the situation after being presented with different viewpoints. In our film, Anupama Parameswaran plays a reporter who listens to all the views and pieces together the puzzle. She meets all kinds of people — the ignorant, the intellectual, the tech savvy, etc. In addition, I would say Eagle is in the zone of Rashomon style of narrative meeting Lokesh Kanagaraj’s Vikram.”

Karthik says it is fascinating how different people tell the same story. “The soul of a story remains the same, but imagine a grandmother narrating it versus a child narrating it. I find that interesting.”

In Eagle, Ravi Teja plays a middle-aged man whose character has an air of intrigue. He has gone through certain experiences, which dictates his approach to a global issue. “This issue will be a key point in the story.” The film gets its title from the protagonist’s sharp vision. Karthik stumbled upon a real story of a man living in a remote location in South America. Later it turned out that he was a drug lord,” laughs Karthik, adding that Eagle does not follow such a trajectory. “Sometimes we make assumptions about people and they turn out to be completely different.” 

Karthik wrote the story and screenplay along with Manibabu Karanam during the pandemic, when film shootings were paused for months. Then, he was the cinematographer for Karthikeya and Dhamaka. “At the time neither me nor Mani knew who would star in the film.” Two drafts were written and Karthik was open to suggestions and improvisations from his team. “Writing is a continuous evolution. Even now, I wonder how it would have been had we written certain portions differently.”

Talking about the changes that happened on set, he explains that there were occasions when he realised that lengthy dialogues were not required since the actors conveyed more than expected through their body language. “The reverse also happens. After watching a few scenes my co-editor (Uthura) would ask what I was trying to convey. In such situations, we would look at the rest of the footage to see if the intent comes through and decide what to cut.”