Golden Globe Awards 2023: Infectious energy of 'Naatu Naatu' is central to the RRR universe

S.S. Rajamouli’s prospects to pick up an Academy Award look more promising than ever, with RRR bagging a nomination for the Golden Globe for Best Non-English Film, and Naatu Naatu winning Best Original Song.

The 80th Golden Globe Awards ceremony concluded earlier today (January 11, 2023).

Rajamouli was also declared Best Director at the New York Film Critics Circle a few weeks ago. Though India did not nominate the grandiloquent historical fiction film as its official entry for Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards, RRR is still in the race for Best Picture. The buzz is that with the splash it has created in Hollywood, the film has a great chance to finally transform India’s lacklustre track record at the Academy Awards.

Also read: 'RRR' highest grossing Indian film at Japanese box office

Though the film was a commercial blockbuster, RRR’s international success is viewed with a fair amount of scepticism and condescension by a certain section of Indian filmmakers and critics for the same reason. Can something so unapologetically mainstream be considered great cinema?

There’s also the discomfort with the film’s politics that the international audience seems to have entirely missed. RRR is based on two real-life activists in pre-independent India – Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem. While both fought for the rights of the Adivasi people, there’s no record of them ever meeting. The film creates a fictional friendship between the two, and places it in a narrative where they become deified as mythological heroes Ram and Bheem.

Much has been written about RRR’s problematic appropriation of the Adivasi community, and its reimagination of the freedom struggle with overtones of Hindu nationalism. This is indeed valid criticism, but beyond this, what is it about the film that has managed to capture the imagination of so many people across the globe?

It’s not just the scale – there are many lavishly mounted Indian films that have failed at home and in the worldwide market. It has to do with S.S. Rajamouli’s ability to stir the audience’s love for old-world cinema where the emotions were simple but bold, and the actors performed larger-than-life roles with conviction and without any irony. His world building happens in the glorified past rather than the unknown future, making the audience believe that they’re inheritors of such a heroic culture. It is this sense of belonging that makes up the emotional pulse of his films.

RRR begins with the ‘Komma Uyyala’ song. Malli (Twinkle Sharma), a little girl from the Gond tribal community, is applying a design on the hand of Catherine Buxton (Alison Doody), wife of Governor Scott Buxton (Ray Stevenson). One of the lines of the song translates to, “I should be on my mother’s lap every day.” This is the child’s ardent desire – and it is a simple but effective way into the audience’s hearts. But what happens next? Catherine and Governor Scott cruelly separate the child from her mother and community, throwing a few coins for her “purchase”.

We immediately pick a side. There can only be one in such a brutal situation – and it’s through Malli’s story that we travel through the rest of the film. Rajamouli pulls no punches in staging the sequence. Governor Scott enters with barking dogs and the corpses of deer that he has hunted; even before he utters a word, we know that this is a man who doesn’t respect Malli’s world, her sacred bond with nature. Then, when an officer is about to shoot Malli’s mother for obstructing the path of the vehicles, Scott explains why an English bullet shouldn’t be wasted on “brown rubbish” (a line that will come back to haunt him at the end). The officer takes a log of wood and smashes Malli’s mother’s head with it. The anger we feel about the mother-daughter tragedy now speaks to our collective history of colonialism and its barbarism.

Within minutes, Rajamouli, who co-wrote the film with his father Vijayendra Prasad, manages to break the distance between the screen and the audience because we’re emotionally invested in Malli’s rescue and the revenge that must come. This is why the director titles this chapter of the film as ‘The Story’ – it is what will bring his two heroes together.

From the forests of Adilabad and Malli, we move to another part of the country – Anangpur in Haryana, where an agitated mob is threatening to take over a police station. Officer Rama Raju (Ram Charan) is introduced as a burning torch falls to the ground in front of him. The fire is reflected in his eyes, and he doesn’t flinch at the sight of the angry crowd. When he springs to action to obey an impossible order – to arrest a protestor in that sea of angry, twisting bodies – he does so in an almost robotic fashion. It is a hyperbolic and mind-boggling sequence but Rajamouli and his crew make it work.

Rama Raju goes through the crowd like a flame that grows into a bonfire, not letting anything stop him. When he brings the man back to the station, he splashes his face with water from a fire bucket and the shot is framed such that we see the word FIRE. Rajamouli’s style is to reiterate the most important elements in his storytelling, and you will find such underlining and echoes all through the script.

Another trick that Rajamouli uses is to focus on the crowd’s reaction to whatever his main characters are doing. He did so effectively in the Baahubali films, too. These scenes act as cues for how we, as the audience, are supposed to respond to the characters and their actions. If the crowd looks devastated, we feel devastated too. If the crowd looks enraged, we feel enraged too. The crowd isn’t passive in his films, it’s an organism that’s alive with feeling.

In RRR, the crowd plays a significant role in how we look at Ram’s character – with fear and terror – and later, in the scene where Ram is whipping an undaunted Bheem (Jr NTR), the fear for Ram transforms to compassion for Bheem and then inspiration to stand up to authority. A comparable scene in Baahubali 2: The Conclusion is the coronation ceremony. The crowd cheers for Amarendra Baahubali, and his first few words draw out a warcry from the watching people. They’re sad he isn’t their ruler, but their faces show defiance rather than resignation. M.M. Keeravani’s background score also plays a major role in elevating these moments and dictating how we must feel about what’s happening.

Bheem’s story is the chapter on water, and the film shifts location to the forests in the outskirts of Delhi. He’s introduced standing by a pool in the forest, the still water reflecting his masculine form. He then pours a pot of blood on himself to attract predators. But what precedes this introduction is a conversation between a British officer with an Indian official of the Nizam. The Indian official compares Bheem to a shepherd who will break even the jaws of a tiger to get back a lamb belonging to his herd. And that’s literally what happens – Bheem is trying to lure a wolf but a tiger catches the scent and chases him. In a heart-stopping moment, Bheem and the tiger are face-to-face and they roar at each other (like Baahubali and Bhallaladeva).

Bheem finally captures the tiger but there’s so much tension packed into the sequence. We see the wolf’s gleaming eyes, Bheem runs and the wolf follows, and on the way he spots the pug marks of a tiger. In Jurassic Park style, the alpha predator eliminates the beta, giving our hero time to escape. He almost manages to trap the tiger in a net but the ropes snap, and he has to use a herbal tranquilliser to quieten the beast.

The sequence ends with Bheem apologising to the tiger for using him for his own purpose – it’s a hint towards that jaw-dropping interval block that people cannot get enough of; but notice how despite dropping this clue, we’re still taken aback by that scene when it eventually comes. When Bheem storms into Governor Scott’s residence, many of us may have connected the tiger to the scene. But did we expect the man to jump out of the truck with a zoo? Definitely not. It is with such extravagant creative liberties, designed with conviction, that Rajamouli turns film watching into such an exhilarating experience.

After we know Malli’s story, and identify Ram with fire and Bheem with water, Rajamouli makes the connection between his two heroes. Suitably, the bridging happens…on a bridge!  They’re being told by others that they won’t succeed in their respective missions, but you hear the sound of an approaching train even as the lines are being spoken. The train catches fire and one of the bogeys falls into the water – the elements meet and so do Ram and Bheem. Again, is the sequence realistic? Not at all. But you buy the high drama because you’re invested in these characters. Amid the swirling flames and water and the Vande Mataram flag, a friendship is forged in an impossible handshake.

The image of Ram and Bheem clasping each other’s hand is a visual that Rajamouli uses later in the film, too. For instance, there is a visual from Ram’s childhood that’s placed before us well ahead of the flashback in the second half unravelling what it means. A promise – two clasped hands. Will Ram honour the promise to his father or save his dear friend? When Ram and Bheem go up against each other in the interval block, too, we see clasped hands – except this time, it’s because Ram wants to capture Bheem and the latter wants to attack him. The fire and water make a comeback here – the scene looks chaotic with animals and humans running everywhere, but there is a design to the confusion.

Naatu Naatu song

The first half is transparent about what Bheem wants to achieve, and the second half uncovers the mystery behind Ram’s mentality. By not revealing all the secrets in the story upfront, Rajamouli keeps the audience’s interest agog. Why is Ram – who is depicted like a good man – so violent towards his own people? Who is Sita (Alia Bhatt) and why is she waiting for him? What was the promise that Ram made? Why does he get emotional when he sees Bheem eating with his left hand?

RRR’s second half isn’t as strong as its first, especially because the two heroes seem invincible and we stop worrying about whether they will make it. While we’re willing to suspend disbelief for the amazing and totally unrealistic action sequences in the first half, it becomes difficult to do so in the second because we’re not as emotionally involved. Ram perched on Bheem’s shoulders (in an inversion of what follows after the ‘Naatu Naatu’ song) and fighting the British, therefore, is more of a spectacle – we watch it like we would watch marvellous acrobats in a circus. The roles of the women leads (Alia Bhatt and Olivia Morris) too are quite disappointing; they have precious little to do other than play the “love interest”.

Still, with all its warts, RRR manages to more or less meet the massive expectations set up by the phenomenal success of the Baahubali films. Though it has actors from other industries, it has a distinctly Telugu sensibility and doesn’t try in obvious ways to be “pan Indian”.

Its success in the domestic market is not surprising, but perhaps not even Rajamouli would have thought the film would appeal so widely in the West. The answer for why it clicked probably lies somewhere between the white guilt that was triggered by its premise, and the immersive sincerity of its storytelling. At a time when Hollywood is being criticised for becoming too “woke”, Rajamouli’s film presents superheroes who wear their powers (and masculinity) on their sleeve with no sign of fatigue or embarrassment.

Will the excitement around RRR be enough for Rajamouli to pick up the coveted Oscar? We will know soon enough. For now, the film is roaring towards a goal post that nobody would have dreamed of a few years ago. But well, it was made by a man who came up with the batshit crazy zoo idea, so we shouldn’t be surprised it’s happening.