It took me a lot of time to gather my thoughts for this movie. 

Beneath all the supposed 'vulgarity' our society accuses Arjun Reddy of having, beneath the 'bad words' that supposedly made it popular with Telugu speaking youth, beneath the straight to the point nature of the film, Arjun Reddy is a movie that is peerlessly honest. In all my years of watching Telugu cinema, which I admit took a backseat for a long time because the industry had begun to bore me with the same cliched storyline over and over again, I have never come across a movie so brutally honest, so down to earth with characters that talk, walk and behave like real people do. Arjun Reddy is a window to the life of another person, except this window is real and what you see before you on that screen is a story that could have really taken place in real life. 

At its core, Arjun Reddy is a story of the redemption of a man who has hit rock bottom and stayed there for so long, he made rock bottom his home, his palace and of course, his personal prison. It is the story of a man trapped in his own memories and looking for the next fix to keep his mind from the misery of his existence. It's the story of suffering, unapologetically honest and brutal suffering that all of us who have gone through a breakup can identify with, and although we may never hit rock bottom as hard as the titular character Arjun Reddy did, we can certainly identify the elements that took him there. 

Devarakonda Vijay Sai's performance as Arjun Reddy is easily the best in recent times, I could go on to say he is the best Telugu actor in the industry as of this moment. The pain and suffering he portrays on screen, central to Arjun's character, could not have been pulled off by anyone else except this actor who is barely 3 films old, with Arjun Reddy being his fourth venture. Indeed, any high praise that comes the way of Vijay from this movie would be an understatement considering his performance and the sheer iron will to stay committed and in character for the entire movie. In the words of a friend, Devarakonda Vijay seems to make suffering a poetry. Growing up in a privileged home, Arjun's isolation with the social injustices of society are made apparent as the movie progresses. His free spirited nature and his utter disregard for societal conventions is a microcosm of the movie itself, a point which I will return to momentarily. 

Shalini Pandey, the female lead who plays Preethi, is not one the industry would consider 'glamorous' and that is precisely what makes this movie so realistic and grounded. Unlike most Telugu films (or even Hindi films for that matter) where the 'heroines' look over glamorous, over sexualised and over reacting to everything around them, Shalini's portrayal of Preethi is, in the simplest form, real. Preethi looks like just another person you would see on their way to college, a normal woman who falls in love, makes love, studies and lives and breathes. 

It is difficult to believe that this is director Sandeep Reddy Vanga's first movie. Scenes are abruptly cut, there are close up shots that evoke the sense of intimacy and tenderness, there are even sequences shot without a single cut that left us absolutely enthralled, especially a scene in the second act of the movie which involves Arjun going to a hostel on his motorcycle. The entire hostel sequence was shot without a single scene cut, it is one continuously long shot that is gratuitously satisfying to watch. If Sandeep Reddy can do this with his first film, I cannot wait to see how he matures as a director going forward. 

Much like the rest of the movie, even the characters of the movie are as real as the leads themselves. Arjun's best friend Shiva and the rest of his gang are your friends, they talk and behave like yours would do in real life and that is precisely why this movie is so great. I know I've been repeating that for about all of this write-up, but that's just how amazed I am with the movie, and why it is so effective. 

This is a movie that breaks every cliche of the Telugu film industry, it laughs in the face of the cliches and has nothing but utter contempt at the prudes in our society. Arjun and Preethi celebrate their love like any other real couple does, there is no being coy, there is no beating around the bush. Arjun respects Preethi for who she is and the feeling of trust and respect is only reciprocated by Preethi when she finally opens up to him. Shalini does a wonderful job here, turning from a meek young girl to a woman who isn't afraid of being who she is around Arjun. She isn't just some damsel in distress, she has a life, a story of her own and a world of her own, which is more than I can say for other Telugu movies in which actresses exist only for a couple of songs and some eye candy. 

Even the final act of the movie, which has divided those who have watched the movie with a difference in opinion, was done in the same style as the rest of the movie. While the ending might seem too good to be true when you consider the larger scheme of things, the way it is handled is absolutely perfect. 

Baahubali 2 pushed the boundaries of what is possible in a Telugu movie but is Arjun Reddy that defines the future of the industry. Arjun Reddy has shown us that a debutant director with a fairly new lead actor and a completely new actress can break every known cliche and convention of the Telugu Film Industry and make a movie so raw, so unapologetically real and grounded, it becomes a benchmark. 

And benchmark it is, for after this every movie will be compared to Arjun Reddy. A new dawn rises for Telugu cinema where it has now been proven, without the shadow of a doubt, that truly great movies containing real people in them can be made, putting the products of nepotism that currently infest the industry and their fans to shame for once and for all. I simply cannot recommend this movie enough.