Eli Staub 4/27/23 Eli Staub 4/27/23

RRR: Throwing Tigers and Touching Hearts

Rajamouli’s historical epic balances spectacle and heart with masterful balance.

A speedy drone shot rushing over the expansive north Indian forest begins to turn upside down, as we see and hear the trees pass overhead. All of the sudden, the shot turns upside down yet again, but only as we realize we’ve been looking through the reflective surface of a lake, and in actuality, we are right-side up. As we approach the end of the lake, we notice a hairy, hulkish man without a shirt grab a bowl full of presumed animal blood and pour it over his head. He whispers to himself: “The trap is set,” as a wolf creeps out from the brush and jumps at him – kickstarting an adrenaline-filled chase scene as this man sprints through the jungle away from this wolf. Mere minutes later, he’s wrestling a tiger. A few more minutes in and he grabs a moving motorcycle, swings it around his head, and throws it at a British colonial soldier; a motorcycle that will shortly launch into the air and land directly onto a stack of TNT, kickstarting a chain reaction that disintegrates an entire palace into scattered rubble.

This is the world of S.S. Rajamouli’s historical epic RRR (Roar, Rise, Revolt!). Set during Britain’s colonial rule over India, it follows two men at polar odds – Bheem, a man trying to break into the British colony to rescue a girl stolen from his village, and Ram, a soldier for the empire who will stop at nothing to stop him; except he doesn’t know it’s him, and the two are best friends. Maximalism is utilized to the utmost degree – explosions, dance battles, musical numbers – so much so, that one could discuss the film for an hour after watching it and completely forget the scene where Bheem wrestles a tiger (the tiger-wrestling is really a “filler” scene). Yet despite all the chaos and absurdity present in the film, it has managed to reach and entertain audiences globally – as evidenced by one of the greatest experiences of my life, in a packed 1600 seat screening this past March during which a slough of security guards sprinted from backstage to break apart the mosh pits formed in the front of the audience.

RRR’s global reach, at a first glance, may seem a natural effect of this maximalism. After all, who doesn’t love a little tiger-wrestling? But a more holistic view of Indian cinema proves that RRR is the first of its kind to truly break the domestic barrier. RRR is a “Tollywood” film, referencing a specific South Indian region that speaks Telugu (hence the “T”), which is largely characterized by films with massive fight sequences, elaborate chases, and absurdly high stakes. RRR is not the first Tollywood film with these, nor is it Rajamouli’s first. The poster for his previous film Baahubali involves a man carrying an entire boulder over his back. This is far from his first rodeo.

RRR, then, couldn’t have been successful from maximalism alone – but thanks to a compelling script, stellar acting, an evocative visual style, and most importantly, universal themes that resonate with anybody living the human experience. Sometimes you must fight for the greater good – as evidenced by the reveal that Ram has only become a ruthless colonial soldier in order to get access to the armory and deliver ammunition to the Indian people. You can’t go through life alone – as seen with the recurring theme of “Dosti,” or friendship, that Ram and Bheem embody when Ram fakes losing the dance battle to help Bheem win over the girl, or when Bheem carries Ram on his shoulders to help him escape a prison. True love is eternal – as seen in the empowered Seetha, Ram’s lost love who remains true despite his disappearance years ago. And one of the most compelling themes, that you must sacrifice yourself for the ones you love – is seen within Ajay Devgn’s Oscar worthy portrayal of young Ram’s father who blows himself up in order to save his son and protect his village. The maximalism is what lures audiences into RRR – “A guy just did that with a motorcycle?” But it’s the heart of the film that makes audiences lean in their seats, remember it long after watching, and ultimately come back for more (Note: at the screening, the woman with the stuffed tiger next to me proudly admitted to watching it twenty-four times). The maximalism and heart of RRR play into each other in a way that has launched the film into the stratosphere. I love it for both.

The film, however, is not without critique. Film critic Tanul Thakur of India’s paper The Wire wrote an article titled: “After a While, RRR’s Blockbuster, Over-The-Top Style Begins to Feel Hollow and Hurts the Story,” wherein he writes some fair critiques of the film’s potential casteist sentiments, and also criticizes its leniency on spectacle: “...aesthetic spectacles can start to feel hollow if they mostly serve the spectacle itself” (Thakur 5). There’s certainly an argument to be made about RRR’s spectacle seeming excessive, especially for Indian audiences already familiar with Telugu cinema; spectacle is not novel for an avid Tollywood audience. Subhro Das, a young filmmaker and friend, took to Instagram to express his frustration regarding RRR’s mainstream success, citing its over-the-top approach and maximalism as a “cheap tactic” of entertaining an audience; and that its appeal is largely undeserved (Das 1).

The use of the phrase “cheap tactic” reveals another perspective from which naysayers may be coming from – the perspective of the filmmaker. Filmmakers, of course, care about tactic. It’s how a filmmaker gets an audience to their desired effect. But from the audience’s perspective, effect is the only thing that matters. An audience does not care about if the film they watched was shot on an Alexa or on a Red. They may think they care if their film contains clichés – but they will only point out a cliché if it made them feel stupid, shallow, or elicit any other negative reaction. It’s the effect the audience cares about. Tactic is for filmmakers.

Films are not for filmmakers. Films are not for critics. Films are for people. Cinema began in nickelodeons, where working and middle class folks packed themselves together to be moved to laughter or to tears – and over a hundred years later, film has the same effect. In that packed theater, I saw this effect at work. Sitting in the front row, I had the delight of turning around and beholding a mixture of first-timers and RRR veterans laughing, crying, screaming, standing ovation-ing, dancing, fist-pumping – all of the things that would make the world a better place if we felt comfortable doing them out in the open. RRR, like all great films, has the power to speak directly to us and ignite our most impassioned responses – but only if for three hours we can forgo our appearances, our theory, our desire to sound intelligent, our film degrees, and our review-reading. RRR is a film where even the most fervent spectacle scoffers can be touched – as long as they find the courage to strap themselves into the ride. “Vande Mataram!”

Works Cited

Das, Subhro [@subhrodas123]. “Story Post Critiquing RRR.” Instagram, January.

Poster for Baahubali: The Beginning. IMDB, 2015, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2631186/

RRR. Directed by S.S. Rajamouli, DVV Entertainments, 2022.

Thakur, Tanul. “After a While, RRR’s Blockbuster, Over-The-Top Style Begins to Feel Hollow and Hurts the Story” The Wire, March 25th, 2022. https://thewire.in/film/rrr-review-rajamouli-prabhas

Eli Staub 3/15/23 Eli Staub 3/15/23

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters

Schrader’s biopic perfectly translates Mishima’s intimate writing style to screen.

“Glory, as anyone knows, is bitter stuff.”
- The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea, Yukio Mishima

I remember the moment I finished reading Yukio Mishima’s The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea. I was immediately overwhelmed by the thrilling, provocative, and personal rush that had overcome my mind and heart. It led me to read more and more of his novels, to the point where he undoubtedly became my favorite author. Not just because his stories were so incredible - but also because his story was so incredible.

On every page of Mishima’s writings, you gain insight into one of the most troubled souls throughout human history - one who, as we see in Confessions of a Mask, hides his true self away and replaces it with a facade... or in The Temple of the Golden Pavilion grapples with understanding the concept of beauty... or in The Sound of Waves where true love is overcome by man’s desire to be independent... Yukio Mishima had a way of achieving a certain insight into the human mind like no other.

Paul Schrader took everything I love and pity about Mishima’s life and put it on the screen the way Mishima would have wanted. A display of beauty, pure as poetry with “a splash of blood,” and powerful like thunder reverberating across distant waves, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters was able to represent in cinematic form what Mishima did to prose, poetry, and performance.

And the score. Oh the score. Philip Glass elevated the film with the same melancholic beauty that was so present in Mishima’s life. Here’s how Mishima would put it:

“Yet how strange a thing is the beauty of music! The brief beauty that the player brings into being transforms a given period of time into pure continuance; it is certain never to be repeated; like the existence of dayflies and other such short-lived creatures, beauty is a perfect abstraction and creation of life itself. Nothing is so similar to life as music.”
- The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

The film humanizes Mishima and makes it clear that the storytellers have a deep respect and love for his life and legacy. His story is wild, and wildly controversial - but his art humanized him. The creators of this film used that to their advantage, humanizing Mishima’s troubled soul by incorporating his own stories and combining it with his own life. As is discussed in the film, art has the power to last longer than human life - and if that weren’t the case, I wouldn’t be so moved by this story about a man who I’ve always felt a strange, uncomfortable, distant kinship with. Mishima is my favorite author because he can portray the most intimate thoughts we fail to articulate, and Schrader executed his with the same ease and beauty.

From The Sound of Waves:

“Even so, when that day’s fishing was almost done, the sight of a white freighter sailing against the evening clouds on the horizon filled the boy’s heart with strange emotions. From far away the world came pressing in upon him with a hugeness he had never before apprehended. The realization of this unknown world came to him like distant thunder, now pealing from afar, now dying away to nothingness.”