RRR as India’s ‘Crouching’ moment

Why wish for the hero driven by moralspurpose to have any flaws at allrdquo Screenwriter of S S Rajamoulirsquos RRR Vijayendra Prasad posed this to a live audience before whom I was interviewing him once He was referring to how western critics tired of realistically imperfect portrayals of their leading menwomen even superheroes had embraced this ldquounapologetic heroismrdquo in RRR firstWhich could explain the filmrsquos roaring absolutely unprecedented appeal among lay audiences in the West America FarEast Japan At least Irsquove heard the filmrsquos refreshing ldquolack of cynicismrdquo often cited as reason enough It helps that the desiforeign heroes display as much a Jackie Chanlike fortitude on screen as against an overconfident swag of the Rock if you mayThere is also of course the usual Interneteffect of everythingmdashchiefly water finding its levels no matter where in the world And we will progressively experience more and more of this intermingling and multicultural lsquotipping pointsrsquoRandomly online is how ChinaTurkey discovered 3 Idiots 2009mdashsetting off a craze for Aamir Khanrsquos movies with Dangalrsquos deadly pull thereafter This wasnrsquot possible beforeAlso Read SS Rajamouli shares picture with James Cameron says he analysed RRR with himA genuine female craze for Shah Rukh Khan in Germany by the late Noughties for instance was thanks to their top TV network condescending to K3G 2001 for an afternoon show once Mainstream audiences were in fact drawn to an lsquounapologetically emotional herorsquo this time who didnrsquot mind breaking into tears evenmdashthe expressive opposite of German men in life let alone moviesYou notice how Irsquom mixing in RRR with Dangal with K3G as if they were the same thing while Bollywood HindiBombay is different from Tollywood TeluguHyderabad isnrsquot it Itrsquos really popular Indian cinemaWe donrsquot have a better brandname for it Bollywood itself as a possible pejorative got coined sometime in the rsquo80s when mainstream Telugu pix getting copiedremade into Hindi flicks was the norm and vice versa The film that Vijayendra Prasad watches each time before starting a new script including RRR is Sholay 1975 by the way which is the kind of threehourplus song amp dance bromance the algo is likely to throw up if yoursquove watched RRR on NetflixFirst time on even I saw RRR as the great Manmohan Desai 193794 pulling off say Dharam Veer 1977mdashplaying with more modern toystech with a leap of faith so over the top of anything yoursquoll imagine for a period movie So there sometimes I canrsquot tell between Tollywood and BollywoodmdashlsquoLucknowHyderabadrsquo makes even less difference to someone whorsquos never tried biryani before namely nondesisWhich is to take away nothing from either filmmaking traditionhistory And that Indians themselves could do with experiencing more Indian cinemamdashan accessexposure that OTT platforms have finally made possibleI watched K V Reddyrsquos classic Mayabazar 1957 only intrigued by how highly both Prasad and Rajamouli recommend the film as textbook Telugu cinemaItrsquos based on a subplot of Mahabharat centred on Abhimanyu Lakshmana Savitri Ghatotkach children of Arjun Duryodhan Balram Bheem Few minutes into this movie and you can sense the original visualtemplate for Indian televisionrsquos Ramayan and Mahabharat of late 1980smdashdown to weaponsarrows kissing in the sky from opposite directions one of which disappears much to the frown on the loser who shot itAlso Prasad and Rajamouli publicly owe their storytelling to the two Indian epics which became problematic for the betterinformed who saw in RRR a cultural appropriation of the Gond tribal hero Bheem NTR Jr whorsquos seemingly savedcivilised by a brother from another mother the uppercaste Hindu Raju Ram Charan who in turn morphs into an image of Lord Ram in the final actRRR set in 1920 is about two revolutionaries fighting against British colonialists bloodsucking villains basically This is punching up of course Still hard to see how white male fans have not once called out this caricature Must be the white manrsquos guilt acting against what was once the despicable lsquowhite manrsquos burdenrsquoMaybe but itrsquos unimportant Where RRR comes from ismdasha lot of money to make it look and feel the way no Indian movie has Upping levels with each setpiece choreographed by the majestically named King Solomon thatrsquos taken months to execute This is because Rajamouli got to make and deliver Baahubali before thismdasha huge stepup from Magadheera that blooded him to boxoffice in the first placePrasad tells me Rajamouli kept breaching Baahubalirsquos budgetmdasheventually by a huge percentage of the planned investment that could secure a return given the filmrsquos established Tollywood leads Producer Shobu Yarlagadda Prasad recalls didnrsquot complain Knowing that if he cut back instead whatever had been spent would go waste toomdashmuch rather expensive than an unrealised dream Trust was complete Baahubali delivered beyond public imagination RRR followed Producers Yarlagadda Prasad Devineni were unsung starsSpeaking of dreams Prasadrsquos elder brother Siva Shakthi Datta an artistic polymath always wanted to make a film Their agricultural family betted on Dattarsquos debut The film got shelved midway The family became bankruptDecades later Dattarsquos melodic musician son M M Keeravani M M Kreem in Bollywood became the first Indian to win Golden Globes for RRR written by Dattarsquos brother Prasad directed by nephew Rajamouli Everyonersquos discussing if RRR is Indiarsquos lsquoCrouching Tiger Hidden Dragonrsquo global moment Keeravanirsquos song lsquoNaatu naatursquo is currently our DespacitoMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper