BAHUBALI – 2 – THE CONCLUSION – A SPECTACULAR CINAMTIC EXPERIENCE

First things First, Bahubali-2 The Conclusion (B-2) is not a cinema but a cinematic experience, a spectacular visual splendor with a matching gripping story line, dramatic scenes and stellar performances.  Made at something like 1/10^th of a Hollywood movie's budget to create such visual feast matching Hollywood standards is incredible.
Director S S Rajamouli visualised a Telugu movie to be an Indian movie but it turned out to be a successful International movie grossing over Rs. 1000 crores with national and international media hailing it as a fantastic superhero movie with a heart and soul (I may add song and dance too) which is missing in most of the Hollywood fantasy movies.   It is so hard to believe that almost the entire movie is shot in Ramouji Film city in Hyderabad and a 100 acre land in Nallore (predominantly for the battle  scenes).   Both production and post production work is done in AP/T and no part in any Hollywood studios. Many might have missed out that there can be no better campaign for PM Modi's `Make in India' Campaign than Bahubali 1&2.    It broke the glass ceilings and boundaries and the  entire Indian film industry including Hindi film industry giving it a free run in the second week also to pull on its full steam.  In Andhra and Telengana more than 95% theaters in the State were running only B-2 and it is so in most other parts of India with a  unprecedented release in whopping 9000 screens all over the world. 

The much anticipated concluding part B-2, has more than lived up to the  Himalayan like high expectations.    There were two most enduring questions in Indian film industry, people knew the answer for the first one (`kitne aadmi the’ by Gabbar Singh in Sholay) and the other one which kept everybody guessing for almost two years  is `Katappane ne Bahubali ko kyon maara’.   It was a master stroke by Rajamouli the way he ended the first installment, at the risk of it termed as abrupt, but succeeded in generating and keeping alive  so much curiosity.

Whether the revelation of the secret behind the much talked about question satisfied the audience or not, but the movie casts such a magical spell while it is on that the audience will be transported into a dream world and forget everything and start drowning themselves in the  spectacle unleashed by Rajamauli and his team of technicians. 

B1 vs B2 :  B-1 at that time was the most lavishly mounted movie with spectacular water fall scenes and breath taking battle scenes.   It has great computer generated locales, gloss, great songs and music apart from action scenes.  When coming to B-2 putting same ingredients in same measure would have become repetitive but it is very essential that it should atleast match the first one.   So Rajmouli cleverly chose to focus, besides the spectacles,  on a gripping narrative and very well conceived dramatic scenes with fantastic background music and sets to enhance the scenes.  Rajamouli has succeeded in extracting best out of all actors that were there in B-1, but the surprise

element of B-2 is Anushaka as younger Devasena.   She carried the role with such fineness and gave run for money to seasoned Ramya Krishna as Rajmata Shivagamini.   For Ramya krishana (one of the leading heroin of 80s in Telugu/Tamil), who is
pulled out of her retirement,  it is role of her life time and she delivered the best.   Like B-1, in B-2 too Prabhas has walked away with all kudos both as Amerendra and Mehendra Bahubali with a very restrained, measured performance showing Royalty in every frame.  He worked within his limitations and did not go for over-emoting dialogue-baazi which he is
not comfortable with in any case and which would not have helped the cause while dubbing in other languages specially in Hindi.   Rana, as Ballaldeva,  proved to be a formidable opponent to Prabhas, the seasoned Tamil Actors did great job -  Nasar, as Bijjaladeva,  was menacingly cunning (reminding Shakuni of Mahabharat), Satyaraj as Katappa is competent and added a bit of humour in this sequel.   In this magnum opus the technician team did fabulous job and made every Indian proud  – special mention due to VFX team headed RC Kamal Kannan, for the splendid special effects, Vijayendra Prasad for gripping story, KK Senthil Kumar for capturing each frame so beautifully,  Sabhu crysal for magnificent sets specially the Mahishmati kingdom and the queen’s court, MM Keeravani for excellent mood enhancing background music (though the songs were a bit of let down compared to B-1), Rama Rajamauli for very pleasing costumes  and expats King Soloman, Keecha & Peter heins for action scenes.   Two people need a special mention and appreciation.  Keeravani for very engaging back ground music.   Very rarely we find Indian music directors conducting back ground music specially.   Till very recently back ground was not treated as a work needing attention and left to assistants who used to play tapes of old music pieces without bothering whether they are going with the scene.   In this movie in each frame, specially dramatic scenes the back ground score did magic.  The other one is the costumes designed by Rama because hailing from Andhra/Telangana, and growing up on NTR fantasy movies of 60s, there was
always a danger of becoming a victim of fixation regarding
consumes of a King consisting of a stretchlan pant and a heavily embroidered skirt type of top, with a thin sword hanging on to a side which was used in hundreds of Telugu movies starring NTR and Kanta Rao.  When few of these movies were remade in hindi
(Gora aur Kala with Rajendra Kumar & Rajkumar with Shammi Kapoor, they could not carry these types of costumes and ultimately they used some consumes which were looking like what our Bandwalas wear at marriages.    The costumes used in B-2 were looking very ethnic and Prabhas carried on the very nicely drapped colourful dhoti very well even in high octane  Action scenes,  

The Magnificent Mouli (SS Rajamouli) : No words of praise is enough for SS Rajamouli for visualizing B-2 so big and his conviction that he can pull off a regional movies with Telugu and Tamil stars into an Indian movie breaking all the barriers of regionalism.    While making the movie (both  1 & 2) he very well knew that he cannot recover his cost unless it is a grand success at an all India level, but still did not bother to add any Hindi actor in the star cast.   Making a full length sequel movie with story inter-oven is not an easy task.

Even greats like K Asif and Ramesh Shippy could not recreate the magic of Maghal-e-azam and Sholay in their life time whereas Rajamouli has done it back to back.   His stamp of authority is there in every frame, the tight script, beautiful and well defined characterization, gripping scenes between the principal characters, stellar performance by every actor, dazzling special effects and splendid back ground score.   Even after stupendous success of B-1, he did not hurry the second part to encash on the popularity.  As has been his style of working, he took almost two years to get the second part ready.      Like in every walk of life, we are quite regionalised in movie going habits  and Telugu movies have very restricted market in Andhra, Telangana and few areas of TN and Karnataka beside US market with major migrated Telugu population.   Though almost all Telugu movies get dubbed in Hindi for telecasting in various Hindi channels, but Telugu movies never had successful direct release in Hindi.  With this sort of back ground he dared to conceive a movie as an Indian movie to appeal to all India market.

The dare devil Producers : Though all praise is showered on Rajamouli for his genius talent, but
equal credit should go to Raghavendra Rao, Shobu and Prasad, the producers of the movie for not compromising  on a mind blowing Budget  and backing this mega dream of Rajamouli.   Their decision to pump in over Rs. 250 crores per each installment for a Telugu movie defies all logic.   With no dubbed movie making any headway in theatrical releases and just relegated to screening by TV channels,  to think of making it big on an All India basis can be termed as a crazy wild dream.    Another pleasing and praise worthy thing about this successful trio is they allowed director Rajamouli to hog all limelight   Very rare to see such modesty

Box office Bonanza : Like the first instalment B–2 broke all Box office records leaving the highest grosser Hindi movie till date to a very distant  second and raised the bar many notches.    It crossed
the magical figure of over Rs. 1000 crores in first 8 days of its release and notched up a mind blowing Rs. 1230 crores in first 10 days of its release and still counting.  

  

It now holds the record for highest grosser for a Telugu Movie, Hindi movie, Dubbed movie, Indian movie in US, UK, UAE and many countries.   It also holds a unique distinction of collections of over Rs. 100 crores on 7 days out of the first 8 days as shown below:

Day                                  total collection

                                         (in crores)

1^st                                           121

2^nd                                          116

3^rd                                           147

4^th                                           108

5^th                                           116

6^th                                           124

7^th                                             98

8^th                                           103

If a Hindi movie with all India release crosses Rs. 100 crores mark it is declared as a hit movie, what  can one term movie with such mind-blowing collections.                                                     

What it means to Telugu/South Indian/Indian movies :  The Success of B-2 is going to change the dynamics of the Telugu and South Indian movie market that has suffered for over a half a century due stereo typing.   Great actors like NTR (with unbelievable variety of roles he essayed specially in mythological and fantasy movies which deserved all India/international recognition), SVR, Savitri singer Ghantasala from Telugu, Shivaji from Tamil, Rajkumar from Kannada and Prem Nazir from Malayalam industries never had any recognition beyond their respective States.   No more a Telugu/South Indian hero means a short, dusky, dhoti wearing pot bellied 50 plus hero emoting dramatic dialogues with heavy accent.   The tall, well built and handsome Prabhas and beefy Rana can stand up to any Hindi or Hollywood stars.   The Hindi movie goers are still to catch the charms of Mahesh Babu and fantastic dance moves of Allu Arjun.   Prabhas who stands 6^th to 8^th in rankings of Telugu popular heros (before Bahubali) and was not know beyond Andhra/Telangana has become a household name after both versions of Bahubali.    The same goes to Duggupati Rana (grandson of Telugu movie moghal D. Rama Naidu and nephew of well know Telugu star Venkatesh).   This will open flood gates for Telugu/Tamil movies, which are made with very high production values to have all India release.    Encouraged by the success of Bahubali, Mahesh

Babu (the most glamorous and stylish Telugu actor) next Telugu movie is being readied for simultaneous release in Tamil and Hindi.   Prabhas next social fantasy `Sahoo’ trailer is already tagged with B-2 in theatres.   Rajnikath (who has better brand on an all india basi) next Robo 0.2 is the next much awaited movie that too expected to shake the box office.

The international film world will take a serious look at the talent of Indian actors, directors and technicians and their ability to producer mega scale movies at 1/10^th of the budgets they spend on.   Till now Hong Kong and Chinese could make an impact on Hollywood (thanks to action stars like Bruce Lee and Jackey Chan and directors like John Woo).   First it was the doctors from Hyderabad then software engineers who stormed the West and it is now turn of the Telugu film industry to shake the West.

What next for Rajamouli?: B-2 is the tenth Successful movie for Rajamouli (including equally well and lavishly mounted fantasy  movie `Maghadheera’  starring Chirajeevi son Ram charan, which broke all records of collection for a Telugu movie at that time) which according to me was a sure shot candidate for an all India release, though the producers did not venture).   He announced that he may take ten years to make a mega budget movie on Mahabharat and reports suggest that even Amir Khan has expressed his interest to be picked up for Krishna or Karna role.    But it will be a punishment for his die hard fans to wait that long.  In the meantime he surely can think of making a fantasy movie in the lines of super success Vithalacharya-NTR combination with lot of black magic, mega sets, horse rides, sword fights, characters turning into various animals and reptiles, half human and half stone etc.  That should give a great scope for him to unleash his genius talent once again.

Had this movie been made in English under some Hollywood banner it would have swept Oscars.   If Hollywood has its Ben Hur, Ten Commandments, Lawrence of Arabia, Gone with the Wind and Titanic, we have our BAHUBALI 1 & 2

TAKE A BOW TO THE ENTIRE CAST AND CREW OF BAHUBALI-2 FOR MAKING EVERY INDIAN MOVIE GOER PROUD

S. Prabhakar

10.5.17

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