Baahubali: The
Beginning (BBB) – a Telugu movie with a potential to redefine Indian Cinema.
BBB the dream and labour of love of director SS Rajamouli for over last three years
has hit theaters all across India and abroad like a tsunami. Made at a mind boggling budget of Rs. 250
crores and released simultaneously in Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi in over
4200 screens, it has re-written box office records (reaping about Rs. 268
crores in first week itself) not only for
a Telugu movie but an India movie.
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| SS Rajamouli |
First things first
it is writer and Director Rajamouli, all the way with each frame of the movie
bearing his stamp of authority. He has not compromised on any thing time, money and efforts. Spending more than one year on pre production work on the script and conceiving every frame before shoot, preparing the actors (specially Prabhas and Rana to build that fantastic toned bodies). It is reported that he took more than 109 days for the waterfall scene and 130 days for the war scenes spent Rs. 95 crores on VFX. He also exhibited his unique marketing style of relying more on internet rather than talks show, pre-release functions. BBB tailor on youtube got 4.05 million hits in just 24 hours and had been a major contributor for the success.
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| Prabhas |
The spending of more than one year in planning
and another two years in production is fully justified by the awesome results
with such minute details and putting life in to each frame. Kudos to producers Shobu yarlagadda and
Prasad Devineni for reposing so much of trust on SSR and dare to pump in Rs.
250 crores for a Telugu movie as against average budget of about 25 to 35 crores
even with top stars like Mahesh Babu. Ultimately
it turned out to be the most expensive film in the history of Indian cinema. With 9 out 9 blockbusters including
Maghadheera and Eega under his belt, SSR, has conceived the most ambitious
movie - a visual splendour. Like all
his earlier movies, he started not only with very strong and well defined
principle characters but also each frame in his mind and picked up a team of
actors and more importantly technicians who can translate his thoughts and dreams into a reality SSR took a big
gamble by picking up Prabhas (Shiva/Bahubali) and Rana (Bhallal Deva) for the main leads, both of whom are not top notch stars in Telugu industry and almost
unknown at all India level.
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| Rana |
It is the
mastery of director SSR who molded them and extracted superlative
performances. Both of them pulled off performance of their life time. Prabhas
has not acted in any other movie for the last 3 years (and reported to have been paid Rs. 20 crores against maximum Rs, 8 crores which a No. 1 star Mahesh Babu commands) Though lot was written about the way they
worked to get muscled and toned bodies, one should not miss their restrained
performances matching frame for frame.
They are well supported by Satya Raj as Katappa, Ramyakrishna as
Shivagami, Nassar as Bijjaladeva, Tamanna as Avantika and Anushka as
Devasena.
The story is very
simple and woven around very strong characters.
Within few minutes into the movie we are transported into spectacle world
of the waterfall, the mystical forests and water
bodies above the cliffs which are spellbound.
Chasing the petite Avanthika (Tamanna) Shiva (Prabhas) lands up in to
Mahishmati kingdom ruled by Bhallal Deva (Rana), a tyrant ruler who keeps
princess Devasena (Anushka) under captive for 25 years. Through flash-backs Shiva traces back to his
identity being the son of Mahedra Bahubali (also played by Prabhas). Whereas Bahubali is kind hearted and every
move of his has tacit approval of the Maharani, Bhallal Deva, on the other hand is crooked, tyrant
and over ambitious. Without much
twists and turns the film moves to the war strategies and war zone with Bahubali
and Bhallal Deva taking on Kalakeya warloards.
With the announcement that whosoever between Bahubali and Bhallal Deva
kills Kalakeya warloard will be the heir apparent for the crown, the War become
fearsome with ahubali and Bhallal Deva competing with each other for getting the prize scalp. The war scenes are lavishly
mounted, craftily executed with imaginary arms and ammunition. Having
planned the movie in two parts not much story line has been covered in the first
part and the first part has been ended giving a critical twist like a TV
serial. That makes viewing of the
sequel a compulsory and to the advantage of the producers. Though while leaving theater one may be a wee
bit disappointed not so much for the movie but that one has to wait for a year
for the sequel. But with half of the second part ready and seeing the success i am sure the producers and director will be tempted to finish the sequel fast though such word is not there in the dictionary of Rajamauli.
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| Srinivas Mohan |
The Real Bahubalis
- The Technicians : The VFX team headed by national award winning
VFX expert Srinivas Mohan and his team are the real Heros/Bahubalis who have
taken India VFX to the next level and at par with any Hollywood movies that too
at 1/4th of Hollywood movie’s budget and the best part is 90% of the
VFX of this movie are done in India.
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| Ramoji film city Hyderabad |
And the entire shooting including the battle
scenes were picturised at Ramoji Film City, Hyderabad (over 100 acres of land) and
Karnool. Most of the post production work was done at Annpurna Studios at HyderabadThe VFX efforts are ably complemented
by the marvellous Art work by four time national award winner Sabu Cyril in
creating the setting like in a period epic.
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| MM Keeravani |
The visual effects
created by VFX team and Sabu Cyril have been made absorbing and made the
audience get involved by the fantastic back ground score by MM Keeravani elder brother of Rajamouli (who
scored music of few Mahesh Bhat hindi movies like `Criminal' in the name of Kareem).
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| Peter Hains |
The lavishly
mounted battle scenes and other combative scenes were well choreographed by
stunt director Peter Hains (the Thai stunt director settled in south working in
many Telugu and Tamil movies) employing more than one thousand artists using imaginative and innovative war fare tools
Positives of Bahabali:
Without a shred of doubt
Bahubali is going to be the game changer for Telugu cinema and also Indian
cinema. Before Bahubali if anyone said
that a Telugu film is being planned at Rs. 100 crores that person might have
been treated as crazy (because the highest grosser in Telugu till date was Attarintiki Daredi clocking at Rs.
80 cores). Secondly a Telugu movie/south
indian movie having a simultaneous release in Hindi over 4200 screens and to be
accepted by all India audience and making ripples abroad in countries like US, UK,
Australia, Canada and Malaysia is heartening. The box office bonanza of making more than Rs. 100 crores in first 3 days, Rs, 268 crores in the first week, selling satellite right for a whopping Rs. 25 crores will redefine the power of Telugu/India cinema
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| ANR in devadass |
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| NTR in DVS Karna |
Greatest South
Indian actors like NTR, ANR, SV Ranga Rao Shivaji Ganeshan, Kannada Rajkumar,
Malayalee Prem Nazir were hardly known at all Indian level so also many producers/directors and music
directors. But with Bahubali,
Rajamouli, Prabhas, Rana, Keeravani have become house hold names. It will be a shame if IIFT Awards continue to show-case only Bollywood movies and continue to do the mistake of ignoring Telugu,
Tamil and Malayalam movies and also other Indian languages. Bahubali has
left Hindi movies way behind and claimed its stake to be the first really globally accepted Indian movie.
Return of glorious `Janapadam'(folklore) Movies
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| NTR in `Kanchukota' |
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| NTR & Kantarao in `Chikkadu Dorakadu' |
With Bahubali there is a glimmer of hope that the glorious `Janapadam/folklore' movies may come back. In my child hood the folklore stories of Chandama and Janapadam movies of NTR (and many of his poor cousins like Kantarao) by the great director ` B Vithalacharya' (who was fondly and with reverence called Janapada Brahma) kept us captivated and entertained for decades together. NTR with his well built personality and glowing face used the carry with ease the peculiar consumes of short frocks type of tops and stretchlon tight pyjamas (i doubt if any king in India every wore such dress). For almost each scene he used to change the designer tops with consume designers showing their great creativity. NTR has acted in such movies in equal number as Mythological movies (with no parallel in the world cinema to his adaptability to these role and developed a massive and faithful fan base. Though few of them were remade in Hindi (like Gora aur Kala and Rajkumar), the heros (like Rajendra Kumar and Shammi kapoor) never could replicate the costumes used in the original movies or or aura of NTR. In these movies there used to be lot of scope for twists turns, massive settings, trick photography (VFX used to called so in those days and was pioneered by Babu bhai Bai Mistry) horse ride chases, swords fights (even in this the art director used to show lot of talent in coming up with a unique sword for every sword fight scene), black magic, many character turning into animals, birds, reptiles and combative duel of hero with all kinds of animals and aliens. Many should realise that all these were there (alas at very low budget and black and white) in 1950s and 1960s much before spellburg hit international reputation with `Back to the Future' series, Aliens followed by all sorts of supermen series hitting the market till date. I really wish that SSR takes up NTR type of janapadam movie with the like budget VFX effects of Bahubali. It will be so entertaining and refreshing from the overkill of Car/motor cycle chases, guns and girls.
Director will be back to be captain of the ship : There was a time the great directors Nagi Reddy, Chakrapani, Kamlakar Kameswara Rao, who worked for banners like Vijaya, Vahini, AVM, and Shanta Ram, K Asif in hindi used to command great respect to the extent that stars like NTR, ANR, Shivaji used to stand up when they used to walk into sets and used to surrender themselves into hands of Directors. SSR has proved that whether it is animated character like `Eega/Makhi', Comedian turned hero for the first time in `Maryada Ramanna' or Prabhas and Rana, he can extract superlative performance from anyone. SSR , i am sure, will bring back the golden era and elevate the position of director to dizzy heights.
Whether other
Industries have lapped up `MAKE IN INDIA’ call of our Prime Minister or not, but the producers of Bahubali and SSR have done so, they made a movie
at Hyderabad and Karnool in Telangana/Andhra which is at par with any Hollywood
movie. With the global success of this
movie, I am sure director SSR not only will bag few Bollywood assignments, but many
of the Hollywood studios may outsource
movie making to Telugu/indian directors and technicians to make them cost
effective.
For the first time
in the history, a Telugu movie got very positive and encouraging reviews not only from all papers/channels in
India but many leading papers/channels abroad like The Guardian, CNN, The
Hollywood Reporter, BBC, Forbes, CBC, MBCTV, Deadlineline and Daily Mail. It is the first Indian movie to get 9.4 ranking on IMDB. The stupendous success and acceptance of
Bahubali all over India and abroad and the unanimity in superlative reviews by
print and electronic media placing it technically at par with Beh Hur, Ten
Commandments, Avtar and Lord of Rings will boost Telugu/south Indian/Indian
producers, directors and technicians set their sight firmly on the
international markets. Besides many
Hindi actors, producers and directors are lavish in their praise for the
efforts of Rajamouli and it is the first movie after Sholay which was released in 1975
that a movie could manage such all India acceptance.
Take a bow to
Rajamouli, producers, technicians and actors of BAHUBALI
