Why RRR’s success frustrates as much as it… | Little White Lies

Why RRR’s suc­cess frus­trates as much as it excites me

13 Feb 2023

Words by Rehana Nurmahi

Two men in casual attire walking together, one carrying a sack over his shoulder.
Two men in casual attire walking together, one carrying a sack over his shoulder.
The Tol­ly­wood block­buster has won over glob­al audi­ences, but I hope west­ern view­ers won’t lim­it their con­sump­tion of Indi­an cin­e­ma to one break­out title.

As a British Indi­an, I have this game that I like to play when­ev­er a white friend tells me that they watched a real­ly good Indi­an movie. The game is sim­ple: I guess whether the film they are about to say is Lagaan or 3 Idiots. As of Sum­mer 2022, the game has changed slight­ly, because now there is a third, more like­ly, option: RRR.

S.S. Rajamouli’s epic, bro­man­tic, musi­cal, peri­od melo­dra­ma has well earned its spot in the cul­tur­al zeit­geist. With two Gold­en Globes, an abun­dance of awards from region­al crit­ics cir­cles, and now a his­to­ry-mak­ing Oscar nom­i­na­tion under its belt, RRR has rede­fined the way that West­ern crit­ics talk about Indi­an cin­e­ma. The film was no.7 on The Guardian’s top films of 2022 list, whilst The Hol­ly­wood Reporter called it wild­ly enter­tain­ing for every minute of its three-hour-plus run­ning time”.

There is no doubt about it that the suc­cess of RRR is utter­ly mon­u­men­tal, for both mak­ers and fans of Indi­an cin­e­ma. Each new round of crit­ics’ cir­cle nom­i­na­tions would see peo­ple refer­ring to it as a snub every time that RRR was miss­ing from a list. Viral clips have cir­cu­lat­ed of audi­ence mem­bers in US cin­e­mas get­ting up and danc­ing along to Naatu Naatu”. There is a fond­ness and appeal to this film that has tran­scend­ed the usu­al audi­ences of Tol­ly­wood (the nick­name giv­en to Tel­ugu cin­e­ma) to become a glob­al phenomenon.

I am not the first writer of Indi­an ori­gin to note that this glob­al suc­cess is com­plete­ly unprece­dent­ed. In fact, even the team behind the film have expressed that they are unsure as to why this is the one that has crossed over. Upon watch­ing the film last sum­mer, I was cer­tain­ly left some­what con­fused. Not, as expect­ed, by the sheer enor­mi­ty of its ridicu­lous con­cepts or their max­i­mal­ist exe­cu­tion. Rather, I was con­fused by the fact that this film – whilst as epic and fun as every­one says – felt like very stan­dard fare for Indi­an com­mer­cial cinema.

From the way it had been talked about in the West, I was led to believe that this would be a diver­gent piece of film­mak­ing that defied the tropes of Indi­an cin­e­ma. Instead, I was pre­sent­ed with a 3‑hour block­buster that rein­forced and epit­o­mised every­thing that I already loved about the nation’s films. And yet, despite this embod­i­ment, West­ern praise of the film has con­tin­ued to talk about it as an excep­tion to the rule, rather than as a glar­ing neon sign to watch more Indi­an cin­e­ma. As the con­ver­sa­tion and acclaim sur­round­ing RRR have grown, as has my frus­tra­tion at the way in which it’s discussed.

When Par­a­site won its host of awards at the start of 2020, there was imme­di­ate­ly a boom in West­ern con­sump­tion of Kore­an cin­e­ma. Shows like Squid Game were able to gain the recog­ni­tion and sta­tus that it did, in part because of the fact audi­ences were already famil­iar with, and par­tial to, the sen­si­bil­i­ties of Kore­an film­mak­ing. It was also seen in film fans’ (and crit­ics’) eager­ness to seek out Bong Joon-ho’s pre­vi­ous work, as well as the work of sim­i­lar Kore­an film­mak­ers. In con­trast, the con­ver­sa­tion around RRR has felt more lim­it­ed: rather than open­ing a door, it feels as if the film is block­ing the door­way, with audi­ences unable to look past it, instead fix­at­ing on what is in front of them currently.

A man gifting a red flower to a smiling woman wearing a red dress and colourful scarf in a lush, green outdoor setting.

In their review of the film, Empire her­ald­ed RRR as a riot of out­ra­geous spec­ta­cle, grav­i­ty-defy­ing stunts, colour, song and dance, big emo­tion and a menagerie of CG ani­mals.” Aside from that final ele­ment, every sin­gle fac­tor has been present through­out the his­to­ry of Indi­an cin­e­ma. There are the elab­o­rate and vibrant musi­cal num­bers from Bol­ly­wood films such as Dil­wale Dul­ha­nia Le Jayenge; the intense stunt chore­og­ra­phy of Rajamouli’s pre­vi­ous Baahubali movies; the tear-jerk­ing emo­tion of Dev­das. Aside from these more vague char­ac­ter­is­tics, even the more spe­cif­ic sto­ry beats of RRR tread famil­iar territory.

The depth of broth­er­ly love was explored in Sholay while Lagaan pre­vi­ous­ly explored rela­tions with colo­nial­ism, although that film used a crick­et match rather than a dance bat­tle to demon­strate the ten­sion. Malay­alam film Drishyam demon­strat­ed the extreme lengths Indi­an men will go to for their loved ones. RRR is every­thing that it is, because of Rajamouli’s rev­er­ence for a nation­al cin­e­mat­ic iden­ti­ty that is an amal­ga­ma­tion of all these things. While it is excit­ing to see audi­ences heart-eyed at this spe­cif­ic type of film­mak­ing, I wish that they were able to revere where it comes from in the same way its direc­tor does.

The frus­tra­tion is exac­er­bat­ed by wider con­ver­sa­tions about Indi­an cin­e­ma in the West­ern cul­tur­al canon – main­ly in the fact that there has nev­er tru­ly been a place for it. RRR marks the first time that an orig­i­nal song from an Indi­an fea­ture film has been nom­i­nat­ed for Best Orig­i­nal Song at the Oscars, despite the fact that the major­i­ty of Indi­an fea­tures con­tain songs. In the Best For­eign Lan­guage Film cat­e­go­ry, only three films from India have ever been nom­i­nat­ed: Moth­er India (1957), Salaam Bom­bay! (1989), and Lagaan (2002).

Only one Indi­an film cur­rent­ly sits on the Sight and Sound Great­est 100 Films of All Time, and that is Pather Pan­chali. In fact, The Apu Tril­o­gy and the fur­ther works of Satya­jit Ray, are often the only Indi­an films seen as crit­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant. It is telling that Ray’s work is more euro­cen­tric in style, deriv­ing from Ital­ian neo­re­al­ist pic­tures like Bicy­cle Thieves, and this is what the West con­sid­ers tru­ly great.

It is true that part of this may come from the sep­a­ra­tion of high and low art, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the crit­i­cal space. Through­out his­to­ry, block­busters and more com­mer­cial­ly pop­u­lar cin­e­ma have fared worse in awards sea­son than cin­e­ma deemed more seri­ous and dra­mat­ic. This would exclude a sig­nif­i­cant chunk of Indi­an cin­e­ma. How­ev­er, this year has marked a case for these films in awards con­ver­sa­tions, with both Top Gun: Mav­er­ick and Avatar: The Way of Water earn­ing Best Pic­ture Nom­i­na­tions. Addi­tion­al­ly, with such wide­spread love for RRR, maybe a time has final­ly come for Indi­an block­busters to find their way onto West­ern audi­ences’ radars (Pathaan is cur­rent­ly play­ing in UK cin­e­mas, by the way).

How­ev­er, it still sad­dens me that I am yet to see West­ern crit­ics who loved RRR delve into explor­ing the cin­e­mat­ic his­to­ry that birthed it. If a film like this, whose musi­cal diver­sions, unre­al­is­tic CGI, and melo­dra­mat­ic nar­ra­tive ten­den­cies can be accept­ed with open arms, I see no rea­son why the thou­sands of films to set this prece­dent, should not receive the same warmth.

Along­side my fel­low Indi­ans, I am 100% root­ing for Naatu Naatu” on Oscars night. I also, how­ev­er, sit with bat­ed breath, hop­ing that its poten­tial win will not just be a suc­cess sto­ry for S.S. Rajamouli, but a gate­way for Eng­lish-speak­ing audi­ences into the delight, audac­i­ty, and vivac­i­ty of Indi­an cinema.

You might like