Director Mahi V Raghav's Jiiva and Mammootty-starrer Yatra 2, the sequel to the 2019 film Yatra, released on Thursday. The film is a biopic on the life of the current Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, while the previous film was based on his father, ex-CM YS Rajasekhara Reddy's life. A monsoon night. The then chief minister of undivided Andhra Pradesh, the late YS Rajasekhara Reddy (Mammootty), stirs out of bed earlier than usual and walks to the foyer to find his son YS Jagan Mohan Reddy (Jiiva) also unable to sleep. They are unable to express their feeling of unease in words. At YSR's request, Jagan hands him a glass of water, and, as he begins to walk away, he turns to look at him, unaware that this would be the last time. YSR takes a sip of the water. The thunder sounds louder and he grimaces for a fleeting second. In director Mahi V Raghav's Telugu film Yatra 2, this scene is a crucial one.
The scene envelops within it the brief interaction between the father and the son against the ominous weather conditions and makes us wonder what if YSR had lent an ear to his wife Vijayalakshmi or Vijayamma's (Ashrita Vemuganti) apprehensions and deferred his chopper ride? The sequel to the 2019 YSR biopic, Yatra, narrates the events leading up to the rise of YS Jagan. Its eulogising tone and the timing of the film's release, months before the elections, makes its intentions clear. While YSR and Jagan are depicted as leaders who do not err, the opponents are all wily and crooked. Within that framework, it also tries to be a compelling story of a father and a son. It finds that groove in a few scenes such as this interaction on the rainy night, before it becomes an increasingly one-sided political drama.
