A “bigger-than-life and bolder-than-mainstream action-adventure epic” that is an “intoxicating celebration of cinematic excess” – this is how a recent review in the American publication Variety described S S Rajamouli’s RRR. Written by critic Joe Leydon, the review reflects the spectacular reception the Tollywood film is receiving worldwide. At the time of writing, the film has received two nominations at the Golden Globes, five at the 28th Annual Critics Choice awards and has won the Best Director award at New York Film Critics Circle. Though it is not India’s official entry for the Osars, there is talk that it might be nominated.
Following the massive success of the two Baahubali films, Rajamouli’s twelfth film, RRR, is also in the tradition of what is called a spectacle film. Spectacle films focus on well-choreographed set pieces that are enjoyable in themselves, which may or may not further the narrative. Across the world, with the decline of cinema theatres, it is spectacle films that often do well at the box office – Marvel films being the most successful example. Audiences feel that these films can be enjoyed fully only on the big screen. Other films can be watched at home.
Cinema’s beginnings too were in spectacle — film scholar Tom Gunning called it the “cinema of attractions”. This was a style of film interested in presenting a series of tricks, as opposed to telling a story. The magician-turned-filmmaker Georges Meliès, for example, was known to use film as spectacle, and many of the first films were about celebrating the illusion of the new medium. They were also often about its shock and awe. More than 100 years later, as cinema theatres decline, the success of spectacle films marks a return — perhaps a last-ditch, desperate reminder of the possibilities of cinematic projection.
RRR’s spectacle is centred on imaginatively choreographed action pieces set in 1920s British India, that have often been termed “audacious”. Even when you know the actions are improbable, you enjoy how they are executed. It is a film after all. It is not life. The pleasure is in that relief.
And yet, RRR is very rooted in life, and more specifically in a dangerous, myopic politics. Its technical audacity is not matched by a politics that is imaginative or egalitarian. As many critics had pointed out at the time of its release, it is regressive. The film recounts the anti-colonial struggle through a story said to be based on real-life figures Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem. To outsiders unaware of India’s history and politics, this could appear like an unproblematic, perhaps even subversive telling of the anti-colonial struggle privileging the local and the mythical. It is the exact opposite.
Popular Indian cinema used to emphasise the freedom struggle as a secular one. RRR reverses this. It narrates the anti-colonial struggle by using Hindu religious iconography. There are literal references to the mythic Ram, Hanuman and Bhima. Its gaze privileges an upper-caste Hindu nationalist imagination which is most evident in the dynamic between its two protagonists. Played by Ram Charan and N T Rama Rao Junior, the film makes it a point to emphasize their identities — the janeu-wearing, upper caste Raju, and the tribal Bheem (who also disguises himself as the Muslim Akhtar for a significant part of the plot). By the end of the film, both reaffirm their assigned place in the caste hierarchy. Bheem concedes that “he is such a tribal” that he did not understand that unlike his own, Raju’s struggle was for a larger good. Their coming together does not transcend their place assigned at birth — it celebrates it.
In fact towards its end, Raju becomes a visual embodiment of Ram – wearing saffron, carrying bow and arrows, and bizarrely, distributing guns. To romanticise the weaponisation of Hindu religious icons in current times can hardly be an innocent choice. When this is followed by the film’s closing song paying a tribute to freedom fighters like Bhagat Singh, it feels even more jarring and unsettling. It is like the film is trying to claim legitimacy for its conservative politics by building false connections. Propaganda can be this literal.
RRR’s success in the west is reminiscent of another time — though a low-key moment in comparison – 21 years ago. That was the successful nomination of Lagaan, in 2001, to the best foreign film category at the Oscars. Both films have an anti-colonial storyline. Lagaan’s narrative combines nationalism and cricket with a token representation of a Dalit character (“kachra”). RRR does not need cricket. It shrinks its nationalism to a majoritarian one, making it more specific to current times. If Lagaan reflected its time, RRR reflects post-2014 India. The imagery at its end where Ram is distributing guns to a group of people is haunting in present-day India. Unlike the relief of a spectacle, this is life.
The writer teaches film studies at Ashoka University and has recently co-edited ReFocus: The Films of Zoya Akhtar. The views expressed above are those of the writer alone and do not reflect those of Ashoka University
