Opinion Story is the star: The global appeal of south Indian cinema

In 2022, south Indian films offered viewers greater substance — and were rewarded for it

By and large, the story is paramount in south Indian films and this is because their audiences have always sought substance. You can see this even in Tamil cinema, which is often high on glamour but also has a strong strain of political awareness. (Express/File)

Bina Paul

January 11, 2023 12:08 PM IST First published on: Jan 2, 2023 at 07:48 AM IST

One of the most remarkable developments in cinema in 2022 was how many people crowded to cinema halls across the country to watch films made in south India. The pan-Indian success of films like RRR, Kantara and KGF:2 reflected a country that was waking up to a kind of cinema that had been beyond its imagination and reach so far. And it wasn’t just the big “blockbusters” — smaller films, such as those made in Malayalam, also received a lot of audience attention.

Does this mean that Hindi cinema has, as lamented by many, lost its charm? Will the success of south Indian cinema keep getting bigger and bigger? This is hard to say definitively because audience tastes are not easy to gauge. However, there are certain factors which shed light on why movies made in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada have managed to go beyond their traditional audiences and capture the imagination of the nation in a way that Hindi films have not been able to recently.

A major factor is, of course, technology. The ability to watch films with multilingual subtitles and dubbing makes them more available to larger audiences. But it is the story that seems to be the key. Storytelling has been one of the great strengths of South Indian films – certainly much more than in Hindi cinema which has always focused far too much on “star value”, whether of the actors or the directors. Of course, all film industries have “stars” and several of 2022’s big south Indian hits had “regressive” content which subscribed to the general mood.

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By and large, however, the story is paramount in south Indian films and this is because their audiences have always sought substance. You can see this even in Tamil cinema, which is often high on glamour but also has a strong strain of political awareness. There is a rootedness in the stories, immersing the viewers in the specific culture and place in which a film is set. It is hard to imagine, for example, something like Kantara doing as well as it did even a few years ago if viewers hadn’t been willing to immerse themselves into the film’s particular world in the first place.

The ground for this was prepared when SS Rajamouli’s Baahubali was released in 2015. It gave viewers a glimpse of the kind of cinema that was being made in the south. Then, during the pandemic, when people were confined to their homes for months, they turned to OTT platforms, seeking out films of greater substance, in different languages. In a movie hall, you just want to enjoy the spectacle. But when you’re isolated at home, you’re looking for something more to hold on to. It’s like reading a book — there’s something in there that nourishes you, gives you something to think about.

The fact that south Indian film industries are able to produce films much faster than the Hindi film industry also plays a role in why south Indian films seem to offer more to their viewers. Think about how quickly the Malayalam film C U Soon by Mahesh Narayanan was made, right in the middle of the pandemic, in 2020. The average Hindi film is bogged down by heavy corporatisation — the multiple rounds of script readings, market research, etc — to the point where not much of the filmmaker’s vision remains.

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As 2023 begins, we might wonder whether this nationwide appreciation for south Indian films is a passing fad. Is it just a middle-class phenomenon? Does an 18-year-old in Bihar, for example, look forward to watching a Rajamouli film with as much anticipation as a Hindi film? And finally, has the success of films like RRR and Kantara changed the way we talk about “Indian” cinema, broadening the definition to include more than just Hindi films? I certainly hope so. It is fashionable now to rave about the latest south Indian hit, but I hope this appreciation endures because, during times of great rifts, cinema can cut across barriers and bridge divides.

The writer is Trivandrum-based former artistic director of the International Film Festival of Kerala and a National Award-winning film editor