First off, please don't come to the theater with any narrow American conceptions of genre. I have given it much thought, and I have no clue what to call this film. Somebody at Wikipedia called it a "supernatural family drama film". Good enough for me, but it's probably best to not even try.
Better to just lay down the facts: Bangaru Raju (Akkineni Nagarjuna) was an aristocrat and landowner in a village called Sivapuram. He died in a suspicious accident, and perhaps justly, for while living, he brought nothing but grief to his poor wife Satya (Ramya Krishnan).
Bangaru Raju, you see, is a player. A seduction king. A kind of Hindu demi-god gifted with a preternatural ability to drive women absolutely crazy. I'm talking better than Leonardo DiCaprio. He's so good, his insulted widow still keeps an almost life-size portrait of him in their marital chamber. Forget the cover of People magazine. Bangaru Raju deserves a shrine.
But love has grown cold in the next generation. Disgraced by Bangaru Raju's philandering ways, she raises their son, Dr. Ram Mohan (also Akkineni Nagarjuna), to become the precise opposite of a Hindu seduction god. Instead, he is bound to become a doctor in the United States. Sounds about right.
With such a lifestyle, Ram has, of course, an utterly loveless marriage to his wife Sita (Lavanya Tripathi), who has come back to India with him to tell Satya and the family that they are to be divorced.
At this point, Sita prays to her Bangaru Raju shrine. Though a "top 5 doctor in the USA", Ram must now learn relearn the basic masculine bearing his Western lifestyle has taken away.
Thankfully, the Hindu god of the underworld, Yama (Nagendra Babu), intercedes, and is willing to allow the spirit of Bangaru Raju to return to the land of the living and inhabit the body of his son. In his time on earth, he will attempt to resolve his son's marital woes, as well as better understand the circumstances of his mysterious death.
If you've made it this far and accepted such a totally uninhibited, outlandish premise, you would probably enjoy Soggade. Overall, the film is essentially comedic, with hilarious cases of mistaken identity between Bangaru Raju and Ram. However, this doesn't exclude serious conflict, and the comedy also contributes to a serious commentary.
Beneath the laughter, we see what happens to people when they become Americans. In one generation, they lose their innate attractiveness, their very sense of what it means to be a man (or a woman). They lose the very blood in their veins and their capacity for enjoyment, instead finding all their meaning in the new god of Work. They can't solve their problems, and can't even love their wives. Their answer to all of life's questions: "I'll Google it!" (See 0.30 in the trailer below.)
Granted, Ram is a top surgeon, and he is not considered entirely pathetic. But the wide scope and immersive quality of this film captures us in its world of fantasy, where it's still much cooler to be a man than a professional.
Final Word: Kulturkampf as outlandish farce...
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