Indian director S.S. Rajamouli’s films are all-singing, all-dancing spectacles — and he is now a favourite to secure the first ever Oscar for an all-Indian film.
His three-hour extravaganza “RRR” is a fictionalised story of two colonial-era revolutionaries, filled with large-scale, visual effects-laden action sequences and musical numbers.
It has smashed box offices in India, wowed audiences from the United States to Japan, and is a front runner for the Best Original Song award at next month’s Oscars, having already beaten out Taylor Swift and Rihanna for the same prize at the Golden Globes.
“When I’m going to a movie, I would like to see larger-than-life characters, larger-than-life situations, larger-than-life drama,” Rajamouli told AFP.
“And that’s what I like to make,” he said at his office in the southern city of Hyderabad.
“Nothing holds the heroes back in delivering their action sequences.”
A word-of-mouth hit that has seen moviegoers dancing in cinema aisles, Telugu-language “RRR” has become one of the highest-grossing Indian movies ever.
It has also introduced the country’s lesser-known but prolific southern cinema industry to a worldwide audience.
India’s Hindi-language Bollywood cinema industry has long been known as the world’s most productive, but international film awards beyond the festival circuit have largely remained the preserve of English-language movies.
That changed when Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite” swept four Oscars in 2020, including Best Film and Best Director, after decades when the plaudits for Korean cinema were confined to the critics.
The only previous Indian Oscars won were for English-language films — the 1982 British-Indian co-production “Gandhi” and 2008’s Mumbai-set British drama “Slumdog Millionaire”.
Now Rajamouli hopes a statuette for the dance number “Naatu Naatu” will pave the way for Indian auteurs to do the same.
Shot in front of Ukraine’s turquoise presidential palace — before the war — it features high-energy performances from the two leads as they confront their antagonist.
“We are breaking ground, but I think we are in very, very initial, initial steps,” said the 49-year-old.
“If you see (South) Korea, for example, the kind of inroads that they have made… we should aspire to do that, all Indian film-makers.”
– ‘Unprecedented’ –
Rajamouli was born in the southern state of Karnataka. His father was a scriptwriter who exposed him to the industry.
His early influences included prominent Telugu directors but he found himself drawn to epic Hollywood films such as “Ben Hur” and “Braveheart”, and is a fan of Steven Spielberg and James Cameron.
Rajamouli’s 2015 historical action-drama “Baahubali” — then the most expensive film made in India — made him a household name domestically, leading a wave of southern films to the top of the multilingual country’s box office.
The 2017 sequel was well-received, with both movies among the highest-grossing of all…
