[“RRR” -“Rise Roar Revolt”- turns history into legend by
way of heightened visual rhetoric. It’s based very loosely on the
real-life stories of two Indian revolutionaries of the early twentieth
century, Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem, who joined forces and
contested the oppression of British colonial power. The film is
currently streaming on Netflix and will be theatrically released again
in March 2023. The Oscar-Nominated Song "Naatu Naatu" from "RRR" will
be performed at the Academy Awards.]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

THE NETFLIX HIT “RRR” IS A POLITICAL SCREED, AN ACTION BONANZA,
AND AN EXHILARATING MUSICAL  
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Richard Brody
June 2, 2022
The NewYorker
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_ “RRR” -“Rise Roar Revolt”- turns history into legend by way
of heightened visual rhetoric. It’s based very loosely on the
real-life stories of two Indian revolutionaries of the early twentieth
century, Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem, who joined forces and
contested the oppression of British colonial power. The film is
currently streaming on Netflix and will be theatrically released again
in March 2023. The Oscar-Nominated Song "Naatu Naatu" from "RRR" will
be performed at the Academy Awards. _

Rise - Roar - Revolt,

 

When it comes to cinematic propaganda, blatant is better than
insidious. Overt advocacy has the virtue of candor and the vigor of
fervent emotion. A movie such as “Top Gun: Maverick
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hides its messages under the guise of unexceptionable realities,
whereas another new, high-energy, political action spectacle, the
Indian film “RRR” (which was released theatrically in March and is
now streaming on Netflix, where it’s in the top five), makes its
statements explicit. It thrusts its imaginative artistry thrillingly
and gleefully to the fore.

“RRR”—the title stands for “Rise Roar Revolt”—turns
history into legend by way of heightened visual rhetoric. It’s based
very loosely on the real-life stories of two Indian revolutionaries of
the early twentieth century, Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem,
who contested the oppression of British colonial power. There’s no
record of their having met, let alone joining forces. The
director, S. S. Rajamouli
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also wrote the screenplay, based on a story by V. Vijayendra Prasad
(his father)—derives a magnificent outpouring of creative energy
from the inspiring fantasy of their volatile connection. (The
movie’s original language is Telugu; the version shown on Netflix is
dubbed into Hindi.)

On a motor trip through the Indian countryside, Catherine Buxton
(Alison Doody), the high-handed wife of the British colonial governor,
buys an Indian girl named Malli (Twinkle Sharma) as one might buy a
pet. The governor’s party carts the child away over the protests of
her mother, Loki (Ahmareen Anjum), who is brutalized by British
guards. Malli is from the Gond tribe, which is said to hold fast
together, and its so-called shepherd, Bheem (N. T. Rama Rao, Jr.), a
fierce warrior, heads to Delhi to find her, disguising himself as a
Muslim mechanic named Akhtar. The British governor, Scott Buxton (Ray
Stevenson), is warned by an Indian police officer about the shepherd
and his ferocity; Buxton orders his officers to find and capture the
shepherd. One of his Indian police officers, Raju (Ram Charan),
volunteers for the mission, planning to infiltrate the city’s
revolutionary Indian circles. In Delhi, two Indian strangers see a boy
drowning in the river and team up to rescue him; the two men, Raju and
“Akhtar,” become fast friends. Raju is unaware that Akhtar is the
warrior he’s looking for, and Akhtar is unaware that Raju works for
the man whose household he aims to raid. The drama of their secrets,
and the circuitous path of their ultimate collaboration (it’s no
spoiler), involve scenes of moral and emotional horror that are
redeemed in the high purpose of their historic mission.

The similarity in tone to other Indian action films is matched by what
it shares with Hollywood blockbusters, too. The drama is built around
action, stints on character, features very little dialogue that
doesn’t advance the plot, and offers neither psychology nor history
nor social context to enrich the historical framework. It’s a movie
of shortcuts and elisions no less relentless than those of American
superhero or superstar vehicles, but Rajamouli is an artist of a
distinctive temperament and talent. He spotlights the halo of legend
in an extended scene that introduces Raju, at a prison where Indian
people are storming the gates to free a prisoner. There, Raju takes on
the entire surging crowd by way of impossible acrobatics and eruptive
martial artistry (highlighted by a madly rotating camera) that plays
like a live-action cartoon. The element of fantasy is intensified by a
sequence of Bheem’s rigorous self-imposed training, which involves
single-handed battle with a wolf and a tiger.

There’s an overt element of exaggeration that bends the story into
the substance and the tone of legend—the effect is of an onscreen
tall tale. It’s a film of giddy, exhilarating hyperbole in which
physical action pierces the barrier of impossibility but stops short
of the supernatural or superheroic. And there’s a dashing graphic
sense of composition and an assertively precise sense of rapid action
that owes nothing to the generic jumble with which most Hollywood
action scenes are filmed and edited. “RRR” is also filled with
gore: streaming blood, spurting blood, bodies beaten and pierced and
torn. Yet the combination of sharply determined political purpose and
compositional artistry lends the horror an air of abstraction that
stokes a sense of indignation or of justice without physical disgust
or titillation.

The plot has twists and turns, hidden byways and surprising
connections, that have the dazzle of magic tricks. The story’s
omissions and truncations—an odd thing to refer to in a movie that
runs to nearly three hours—contribute to the air of wonder and lend
a jolt of astonishment to an extensive flashback that’s dropped in
midway through. The drama is rooted in the absolute sadism, the
monstrous and indeed genocidal racism of the British, the governmental
terrorism with which Buxton reigns, the pathological bloodlust of
power that Catherine flaunts, the dehumanizing prejudices of
subordinate officers, and the vile politics of hiring indigenous
people to do their dirty work. The story’s view of colonial
despotism involves not only grievous economic inequality but also
relentless political repression—and a sense of fear that’s nearly
a sense of doom, signalled by the absolute ban on Indian people owning
firearms and the tumult that results when even a single rifle falls
into the hands of one of them.

For all its political determination, “RRR” is also a musical, and
an electrifying one. The movie is filled with music and with
characters singing at moments of grand political import; when Raju and
Bheem manage to attend a high British social gathering, they convert a
moment of cultural chauvinism into a spectacular dance-off. The
frenetically athletic choreography involves gestures of a rapid-fire
sculptural majesty to match the geometric flair of the images that
capture it. Where the movie’s central dance is pugnaciously
competitive, the fight scenes are dance-like, featuring moments of
phantasmagorical splendor. One won’t soon forget the vision of a
warrior carrying another on his back, with the one on top bearing two
rifles and shooting them with deadly accuracy in opposite directions
while the bearer breaks on the run through a brick wall. Or a runaway
motorcycle being stopped with one foot as if it were a soccer ball,
caught in midair, and hurled with the devastating force of a
cannonball. Or a single flaming arrow igniting the entire countryside
and yielding Wagnerian images of sublime destruction.

The drama of political unity that song lyrics characterize as
“friendship between an erupting volcano and a wild storm” is also
a flag-waving spectacle of patriotic pomp. The movie’s powerful
sense of revolutionary virtue and collective purpose yields to
nationalistic pride that’s danced and sung with uninhibited joy. The
concluding production number, with militaristic bravado, spotlights
the present-day purposes of this quasi-historical tale.

* Film
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* Film Review
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* RRR
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* India
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* British Colonial Rule
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* (20117)
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* anti-colonial
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* S.S. Rajamouli
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