Last night I went to watch RRR. I called the Frida Cinema from the bar next door to see if they still had tickets available 12 minutes before the movie started. They did; plenty.
Now this isn’t the first time I’ve gone to see an Indian film in theaters. We lived in Cypress when I was in 1st grade and my parents took me to see Lagaan in a theater filled with brown people. I remember being surprised with how many other Indian people were in California. A theater usually filled with ball caps, cargo shorts, and striped polos was now consumed with that particularly Indian blend of musky cologne and BO. Always smells like garam masala.
But I remember the movie. Well, parts of it. Lagaan was huge and long. 44 minutes more than RRR without any fantasy. Having seen it since, I can tell you that nearly 4 hours is worth it to watch something so bare. Bare in the sense that it doesn’t do anything more than entertain fiction that resembles life. For Indians, I assume it was a cathartic movie to watch. For Americans and Europeans, a spectacle of injustice and will. For others, hey there’s good music and sports, what’s not to like. But the movie was huge, it quickly became the highest grossing film in India and went on to be nominated for an Oscar.
I bring up Lagaan because it felt like the older brother of RRR. From the colonial commentary to the pathotic (involving pathos) action that makes you root for the underdog, both movies did similar things in their rhetoric and I’m sure there’s a uni student somewhere working on their paper comparing the two right now.
Back to watching RRR. The Frida cinema is known for playing independent, classic, foreign, and just weird cult films that nobody would think could ever be playing in theaters. I’ve seen the weirdest movies there and I will forever love that place for what it does for film culture.
Naturally, with such a light comes moths.
These moths wear sports sweatshirts ironically and use the word “subtext” a lot. There was an intermission during RRR and I sat in my seat eavesdropping. There was a couple that I think were on like their first date, they definitely haven’t seen each other naked I can tell you that. But the guy was clearly like a film student or something that talked about how he doesn’t like LA and only likes cities like Austin and NYC but he thought the movie was incredible so I’ll give him that. And the girl was so excited about it and saying things like “I had no clue what was happening but it was like so much and then they danced and I was like where did they get those moves?!” To which the guy had nothing more to say because yeah, he’s from here, it’s bizarre, what can you say? But it was so cute to see people being so involved in the movie and clapping and cheering, what a thing film is huh?
For a casual movie goer this movie was a lot to take in, for a film kid from Chapman, this was heaven. It’s like film school with training wheels.
Indian movies do this. They tend to make all actions and intentions so obvious, but obviously obvious, that you feel like you’re doing some work.
Lemme give you an example. Man A is fighting to save Girl A with Man B. Man A does some crazy moves and fights through a large crowd while Man B is distracting the guard who has Girl A. You’ll see Man B sneaking toward the guard, but right before he saves her, you see that Man B has some ulterior motive and is eyeing some alternate escape route that Man A doesn’t know about. So when Man A finally lands on the plane that Girl A was trapped in, you see Man B running off with the girl and Man A is left to seek his revenge.
That’s like literally the whole thing. They’re wholly involved in the scene just like you should be. Take it this way. There’s billions of Indian people. Meaning, every movie that is shown can potentially be seen by millions of people. You’ve gotta make things accessible for everyone, and a majority of them are uneducated meaning they’re not tryna sit around for 3 hours to watch one character finally complete his arc. We need many arcs, baby.
Now I’m not saying that it’s dumbed down, it’s just easy. It’s easy to watch and it’s easy to care. It’s also easy to get swept away in it and think there’s some big metaphor playing out like in European or American films; film language is colloquial.
Indian films are so close to propaganda that you have to wonder what else they wanted you to think. But the funny part is that Indian propaganda is just fun because we don’t have any overly antagonistic qualities. Like who is India fighting? Nobody! So the propaganda is self-involved and goes over viewers’ heads.
Here’s what I’m talking about.
This movie was made in Telugu, a language I had no clue about until literally last night. I knew Tamal, I knew how much people clowned it and how the Southern parts of India are sometimes discriminated against. Most Northern Indians subscribe to Western ideologies, live in metropolitan cities, and work for companies that might be based in the US or marketed toward the US.
In the South, it’s different. Not underdeveloped, just different. Their people make better food, they have a more diverse population, and they generally don’t involve themselves in the banter of North India.
Now, as a kid who’s made memories in places like Orange County and Queens, I certainly know there’s more to this than I can fathom but I am Indian. I do speak Hindi and Punjabi. I do hang with older Indian people. They can be racist.
Like any geopolitically torn place, it’s got tension. There’s deep history rooted in the land of India and there’s no book or documentary that’ll tell you everything. But movies like RRR can help you get it if you’ve got a brown guy like me to explain why.
There’s a famous actor in RRR, who could be seen as playing a token role for publicities sake. Ajay Devgn, he’s been making movies since I was a kid and everyone loves him. Typically, he’s made Hindi, Bollywood films that sometimes reach the States.
But he played a Telugu-speaking role in this and I found that to be special. It told me that Telugu films are here to be taken seriously. Something he himself somehow doesn’t see.
Debates surrounding the national language in India have been happening for centuries. It’s ironic that this film is spurring those debates as the nemesis in this film is the British Raj, who arguably began these sorts of debates back when they dumped India. In reclaiming our Independence, we also claimed a mixed bag of communities that haven’t worked symbiotically since, well, ever. India was always a hodgepodge of communities and languages that was never intended to be some unified faction. When the British left and India had to move forward, the preeminent language was left as Hindi, a semi-anglicanized language. But the South held their mother tongue.
The argument today hits on principles of nationalism and independence. There’s a whole twitter battle I’m not gonna get into between Ajay Devgn and South Indian actor Kiccha Sudeep that really goes nowhere but points to the issues I mentioned. But I did feel it summed itself up well when Sudeep said, “north stars are insecure and jealous of the south stars.” Juvenile, but sorta gets the point across pretty well.
For an Indian in the States, this movie was long as fuck. I ain’t got 4 hours like that but fuck it, once a year couldn’t hurt. Also I loved how animals were used as weapons, that’s gotta happen more. Avengers? Where’s your animal guy huh??