Review: Limited Run
Baahubali: The Beginning | S.S. Rajamouli | India | 2015 | 159 min
Now Playing at Marcus Point Cinemas (in both Telugu and Tamil language screenings) through July 30»
Currently in its third week at Point Cinemas (at $20 a pop, no matinees), Baahubali: The Beginning has set box-office records for Telugu-language Indian cinema. This Tollywood epic has something for everyone—melodrama, romance, music and action—even if these elements are not distributed equally across the film. And those already missing Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings adaptations should enjoy its climactic 40-minute battle sequence.
Those who follow our Facebook page know that I’ve been posting several news and reviews links regarding Baahubali: The Beginning, encouraging everyone to go see it. It has become one of the top-grossing films of all time in India, and a significant international crossover hit for the Telugu-language film industry (“Tollywood”). I doubt that the film will have a fourth week in town, so your chance to see it on the big screen will likely end this Thursday. If you’re in need of a satisfying summer blockbuster, but are tired of men-in-tights and masks, Baahubali provides irony-free, large scale entertainment that Hollywood used to be able to deliver more consistently.
Part Myth, Part Pop
Baahubali is the kind of film that some people are compelled to laugh at because they have a hard time dealing with sincerity in popular culture. What sets Baahubali apart from other recent Indian-language films to play in Madison is that it is a historical drama, so in addition to tipping its hat to contemporary blockbuster genre films, it also draws more directly from mythological storytelling strategies. While American audiences might find some sequences derivative of films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Lord of the Rings, those sequences in Baahubali aspire to pure entertainment, rather than cueing knowing winks and ironic nudges from the audience. That sincerity carries through to the characters themselves, who must have faith in themselves and in their traditions for the story to work. This makes it easy for a modern cynic to dismiss the whole enterprise, but to do so would be to deny the pleasures of an epic melodrama.
A woman emerges from a cave at the base of a waterfall with a baby in her arms. She kills some soldiers who have injured her during her escape, but after falling into a river she knows that she cannot save herself. She raises the child above the water line as she drowns. Local villagers find the child, and a couple decide to raise him as their own. They realize that the child, whom they name Shivudu, came from the top of the mountain with the waterfall, so they seal the cave with a boulder to protect him from danger and to prevent him from attempting to return when he grows up.
Shivudu’s adoptive mother does everything she can to prevent him from climbing the mountain, but his curiosity is too strong. When a mysterious mask falls from the mountain, now-grown Shivudu (Prabhas) finds it and presses it against the sand to create an imprint of its owner—a beautiful girl. Led by visions of this beautiful girl, he finally climbs the mountain and begins an adventure which will change his life as he discovers his origins and his destiny.
The historical setting eliminates the need for more contemporary pop songs that tend to get repetitive in recent Indian films. While the eight songs are not evenly distributed throughout the film (the last third is dominated by action and violence), they do provide several memorable highlights. One of the best song sequences is “Dheevara,” during which Shivudu is led up the mountain by a vision very different than the actual owner of the mask, Avanthika (Tamannaah), a guerrilla warrior involved in a plot to free her queen from 25 years of captivity. The vision and Shivudu leap and bound up the mountain not unlike the treetop chase sequence in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, with every move well punctuated by the song. Overall, the film could have used more light, lyrical sequences like this one. But when Baahubali wants to be colorful, it is unmatched by anything else playing in town this summer. Another gorgeous sequence is for “Pacha Bottesi,” which can be seen in a condensed music video form on the T-Series YouTube channel. Note the more fleshed out orchestration not often heard in Bollywood Hindi-pop (these days), and keep in mind that the colors really pop on the big screen better than they do on your computer screen.
Many story elements work best if the narrative is taken as myth rather than realism. When Avanthika refuses to let Shivudu get close to her, he tattoos her hand while she sleeps near a river (you can see the results in the video embedded above). This kind of story detail is easier to accept in written and oral forms of storytelling as we accept the image we see in our imagination easier than in the photorealism of film. But if Scott Lang can improvise his own return from the quantum realm after Hank Pym failed to figure out a way for decades in Ant-Man, then I have no problem with Shivudu holding his breath and Avanthika not waking up.
From Flashback to Cliffhanger
As expected, after some initial tension Shivudu and Avanthika work together to free her captive Queen Devasena (Anushka Shetty) from the evil monarch Bhallala (Rana Daggubati). But as this plot unfolds, you might think that things are moving along too quickly to sustain a three-hour film. Worry not. After a key (and not particularly surprising) reveal, we see a flashback that sustains the second half of the film (almost a film in itself by Hollywood standards). The flashback explains the backstory for Shivudu and sets up the story for Baahubali: The Conclusion, set for a 2016 release. In a nutshell: we quickly realize that Bhallala gained his power illegitimately, but we don’t know how he did so. By the end of The Beginning, we know that he competed with his rival cousin Amarendra Baahubali (hint: also played by Prabhas) for the throne of the Mahishmati kingdom. While the cousins are equals on almost all fronts, when Mahishmati is threatened by an invading army, it is agreed that the one who brings back the head of the enemy ruler will be the new king.
The battle sequence is a real doozy. One almost gets exhausted just watching it. The production design, especially in regards to the enemy army, borrows quite a bit from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The army seems to be a mix between Orcs (it is unclear whether they are covered in warpaint or actually have black Orc-like skin) and the War Boys from Mad Max: Fury Road. At least a few battle strategies will be familiar to those who have seen the “Blackwater” episode of Game of Thrones. But again what is important here is the aspiration for pure entertainment and spectacle, and for the most part the battle sequence delivers both.
While the flashback doesn’t answer all the questions about the fall of Amarendra Baahubali and the rise of Bhallala, for the most part the writing is on the wall for what to expect in the first half of Baahubali: The Conclusion. I do have to admit, however, that I was surprised by one teasing detail about what is to come in part two, but I won’t elaborate other than to say it is literally the final important detail learn in part one. As with the initial flashback, the cliffhanger here is not so much about what will happen as how and why it will happen, which sometimes can be even more suspenseful, intriguing, and dramatic.
So far I’ve only convinced one other Madisonian to take a chance on Baahubali (that I know of) and it has been very entertaining to read her Facebook messages to convince others to see it too before it is too late. I admit that the $20 ticket price is a bit much, but if you go you’ll find a crowd of Telugu-speaking folks who know that this kind of film is worth supporting in this town. If we want diversity in Madison theaters, we have to support it when it does appear.