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Kubang
Celebrity Bewarse
Username: Kubang
Post Number: 34164
Registered: 09-2011
Posted From: 50.66.0.62
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, May 06, 2017 - 5:29 pm: |
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Yes it's not a movie, it's a phenomenon..
Ignorance is bliss
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Gotcha
Pilla Bewarse
Username: Gotcha
Post Number: 744
Registered: 01-2007
Posted From: 73.45.2.79
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, May 06, 2017 - 11:20 am: |
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Keka kummesadu, nice write up |
Diviseema
Pilla Bewarse
Username: Diviseema
Post Number: 60
Registered: 04-2017
Posted From: 36.255.85.147
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, May 06, 2017 - 9:58 am: |
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THIS IS NOT THAT MOVIE
As you read this, a ticket would be being bought somewhere that would make Bahubali 2 cross the box office landmark of Rs1000 crores. Decades hence, it will continue to be a surprise to people and film critics how a Telugu movie dubbed into Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam became the largest ever grosser in movie history in each of these languages apart from the home market in the Telugu speaking states, beating their own respective superstars� movies and became the first movie to cross the 1000 crore box office number. It is impossible to even comprehend. It beseeches a lot of careful analysis and academic research and might even churn out a bunch of business school case studies and sociological theorising. I will attempt to do my two bit here.
The last two decades saw a steep increase in spending power and the rise of a significant section of audience who are aspirational. This has consequently led to a change in the mindset of most filmmakers, especially in Bollywood. Once filmmakers realised that big bucks could be made by peddling movies made by People Like Us to People Like Us (or who want to be Like Us), they stopped making movies that appeal pan India. They got lazy and stopped even trying to analyse the broad market needs and requirements. Bollywood, in summary, become a victim of its own success. 15 years later, people in this set tend to snigger and forget that Gadar was the biggest industry box office hit for years.
Instead of viewing their target audience as a 1 Bn + market, they started satisfying themselves with a 5% population that resides in South Mumbai or South Delhi or aspires to. Even if their movie appeals to a subset of this 5%, then the movie would be a good enough blockbuster grossing over 100 cr. Whether it is a Dil Chahta Hai to a Befikre, it appeals to a very narrow audience across India, leaving aside the merits of each movie. While one may say that emotions are universal and cuts across social barriers � it is a narcissistic view again written by critics bred on the same grammar. Take a look at the body language of the actors in many of the Hindi movies of late � it is very Western in the way they cry, laugh, their gestures, their reactions to other characters and events etc. Once you start seeing a lot of Western movies, TV programs etc � one unconsciously starts adopting Western body language. There is an illuminating bit in the fascinating book on Mani Ratnam by Baradwaj Rangan describing a scene in Nayagan where Kamal Haasan is asked to react to a particular situation. Mani had to cut Kamal off mid-way saying that his body language was very Western. Kamal slapped his forehead and had to consciously emote the Indian way. This is just a small instance of the creeping Westernisation of our cinematic language.
To Bollywood�s credit � there have been lots of wonderful new directors who have come up over the past decade and they have told beautiful stories. But there is a reason why Indra � the Tiger (Hindi dubbing version of Indra from Telugu) is probably the most screened movie on satellite TV. There is a reason there are so many South Indian dubbing movies shown on Set Max getting a lot of loyal audience. It is not just because they are cheap to dub. They are saying something that the filmmakers are ignoring to their own peril. They are speaking the language of the masses.
Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam movies, though quite large, because of their smaller home markets, have had to make movies that appeal to everyone. They can�t just make movies that appeal to folks in Jubilee Hills or Boat Club. Because of these market based requirements, the Southern filmmakers have to tell stories that are more universal in content and their grammar. And because of this need, the directors too came from backgrounds that are more rooted � SS Rajamouli or AR Murugadoss come from very humble, lower middle class backgrounds and small towns in Andhra and Tamil Nadu.
A significant portion of Bollywoodâ��•••••• over the past decade have been remakes of South Indian movies because of this precise reason. Even if they wanted to they canâ��t make these big mass market movies as that cinematic language has been lost. It is like a language that is gasping for breath and canâ��t be easily resuscitated. You have to import that language.
The usual criticism about South Indian movie language and made about Bahubali too is that they are over the top, too loud and garish. I bracket this as arguments made by People Like Us who fail to see beyond their blinkered view of what a movie should be. Just because you want subtlety does not mean that 95% of the population want subtlety. Just because you are against capital punishment does not mean that 95% should be. There is a reason why the scene Bahubali chops a molester�s head off gets standing ovation and whistles in a hall. If left to critics, there would be no revenge dramas itself. They are succumbing to the crime of seeing a movie as what they want it to be, rather than what it is. Within the genre of a fantasy movie - anything is possible. The same critics would gush over an X-Men Apocalypse or an Avengers.
Unfortunately most filmmakers take the critics and themselves too seriously in their need for subtlety, need for greyness and moral ambiguity etc. Of course those movies also need to be told and can be great movies in themselves, but big screen glory was meant for visual wonders and grand emotions like Bahubali I can see a Masaan or a Dev D on TV too without losing a beat.
Here is a hero with an unrelenting retributive valour, conventional notions of right and wrong, fierce moral certainty rather than ambiguity which a post-modern movie might be needed to be. But this is not that movie. At the same time the movie does raise interesting questions about justice versus law, about an anointed leader versus a democratic leader, dharma etc.
One unique prism to view the grammar of a mass masala movie is the familiar trope of an �interval bang�. As a cinematic flourish, its usage is unparalleled in South Indian movies and SS Rajamouli is a master at this. Bahubali2 beats even his earlier greatest interval bangs in movies like Chatrapathi. The pre-interval scene is one of the greatest 10-15 minutes in Indian movie history and it takes sheer directorial genius, of someone with his pulse on the audience, who knows what buttons to press and knobs to turn to create the right audience response. The scene was first storyboarded, then music was scored and then shot along with the help of a choreographer. It involved massive amount of logistics, animals, people, right editing and music cues to take the audience to the peaks of euphoria. At the interval of Bahubali2, the entire audience stood up for a standing ovation. That is the ultimate test of a director�s success. Nothing else matters.
There are some simple learnings from the movie � aspire huge, spend on VFX not big stars, look within ourselves for stories, grandeur is not bad and above all � ignore what the critics want, look at what the audiences want.
Most critics have gushed about Bahubali � including respected critics like Baradwaj Rangan and in the Guardian and RogerEbert.com. It can be a watershed in India movies like Jaws was when it first released in the US. The few Indian critics who have criticised the movie whine about themes of valour, retributive justice, religious overtones (one half wit cribbed that there were no Muslims in the movie). They fall into the trap that Roger Ebert warned against � �It�s not what the movie is about, it�s how it is about it�.
In a nutshell � �this is not that movie�
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