Two entirely dissimilar movies, challenging the tinsel town's dominant narrative, burst in upon public consciousness, representing a paradigm shift
India has seldom experienced a more chaotic or acrimonious phase than what it isgoing through at present. Stone pelting mobs, sectarian violence, widespread protests, temple versus mosque issues, reports of love jihad, etc., shook up the political landscape, becoming a regular feature of public discourse.All these disquieting developmentscame not long after prolonged and often frustrating bouts with Covid-19 pandemic, when the nation had barely settled down. Successive waves of the contagion, the most devastating since last bubonic plague between 1896 and 1914,ravaged the land,killing hundreds of thousands in India, besides driving the largest mass migration across the nation, disrupting life and the economy.
Even as the global scientific community racked its brains to track, pinpoint and tackle the elusive virus gone rogue, haunting images of homeward bound, tired and hungry mill hands, labourers and daily wagers, with families in tow, on foot and available modes of transport, shocked the nation. Entire cities and localities too, placed under a strict clampdown andshorn of human presencenever looked more deserted or forlorn. The silence of the dead settled over the landscape, resembling a huge dystopian world. The survivors who lived with impaired lungs and acute debilitation and the uninfected too, had to contend with the unprecedented shutdown of society, shops, cinemas, restaurants, transport,school, colleges and industries, whichvirtually brought the economyto a grinding halt.
Bollywood too, which served as an opiate of the masses, with its make-believethemes and visual extravaganzas, retreated behind a wall of silence, shamed by a welter of scandals, allegations of exploitation of women and involvement with the drug mafia or the underworld, charges of nepotism, which surfaced in the wake of Sushant Rajput and Disha Salian's mysterious deaths, etc. Big-budget movies suffered colossal disasters at the box office, one after the other, which production houses conveniently blamed on the pandemic, even though life gained some semblance of normality with its gradual retreat.A rehash of themes based on a staple of love, songs, dance, actionor those lifted from Hollywood,couldno longer hook the already jaded audience, which viewed with disgust several skeletons tumbling out of its cupboard.
Then something radically different happened to lift the pall of gloom that had settled over the nation. Two entirely dissimilar movies, challenging the Tinsel Town's dominant narrative of sex, sleaze, skin and violence, burst in upon public consciousness, representing a paradigm shift in the world of Indian cinema. One from a non-conforming, Bollywood side stream with its brutally raw content,highlighting atrocities on Kashmiri Pandits and their exodus, a story long buried by the mainstream media, but which needed to told viscerally, and another from theTelugu film industry,showcasing revolutionary fervour and its heroic resistance to British oppression, on a scale never attempted before. These bold newinitiatives,tied to Crown's occupation of the country, or the outcome of gross blunders committed by the country's first political dispensation,offereda welcome relief from mindless movies.
Post-pandemic, The Kashmir Files (TKF)turned into one of the biggest box office bonanzas unexpectedly, along with RRR and KGF-2,jolting the conscience of the nation as never before. Arthur Koestler, British essayist par excellence, had pertinently observed: "The most savage battles have always been fought for ideas." And so,a very vocal segment of the intelligentsia, never at ease with the idea of Bharat, jumped into the fray, questioning the harsh reality of half a million Kashmiri pundits being driven out at gunpoint, despite overwhelming evidence. Millions of moviegoers, who had practically abandoned cinema, floodedtheatres to watch TKF,giving it a huge shout out for content and thematic excellence!Sick and tired of the industry's belittling Indic values, culture and way of life, they dealt it a stinging slap.
Ram Gopal Varma, a veteran film-maker, had tweeted: "All present and future film makers will have to refer to Vivek Agnihotri's Kashmir Files as the new bench mark while making their next film, because the shock wave it has created will divide Bollywood into two eras which is Pre-Kashmir Files and Post Kashmir Files."Having won accolades for addressing highly disturbing issues regarding PM Shastri's death in The Tashkent Files, Agnihotri turned his attention to the factors behind the Kashmir exodus, something about which the nation has never been very comfortable.The director based his low budget venture on years of ground research and thousands of interviews with the actual victims, his sights fixed on setting higher norms of realism in movie making. He completed the shoot despite a thousand odds, buoyed up by the conviction of being on the right track.
If The Kashmir Files created history, then Rajamouli's RRR had a much bigger impact on public psyche, establishing benchmarks in excellence.Set in the British India of 1920s and shot on an epic scale,the movie rose to be one of the greatest hits in Indian cinema, earning in excess of Rs 1,100 crore worldwide. What is noteworthy is that the cinematic Tsunami is conquering hearts and minds not only in India, but globally as well.Scores of reviewersand audiences in the US and elsewhere, including Hollywood film makers and critics,are actually going bonkers over the insanely entertaining story, turning into overnight fans of Junior NTR, Ram Charan and Rajamouli. Some have even asserted that it has outclassed the Marvel series, which has nothing comparable to offer.
However, one of the most enduring and haunting images from the RRR is the song 'KomuramBheemudo,' which for the first time ever, makes the audiences feel the agonizing pain of revolutionaries undergoing horrific tortures, even for the most trifling transgressions.The valiant band withstood extreme privations at the notorious Cellular Jail in the Andamans and elsewhere. Barindra Ghosh, an accused in the Alipore Bomb Case and Sri Aurobindo's younger sibling, had detailed these experiencesin The Tale of My Exile. NTR's iconic smile in Bheemudo, even after being mercilessly whiplashed at the rack, at the instigation of the British governor and his evil wife (Alison Doody), reminds you of the unparalleled sacrifice of Khudiram Bose, the youngest and the most fearless of revolutionaries, who died laughing, undaunted by the prospect of imminent hanging. The movie and the song have sparked a massive patriotic fervour.Both Bheem and Ram, the fictional characters' namesakes,are an integral part of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.
A section of reviewers in India and the US, have however dismissedthe British characters in RRR as 'cartoonish,' completely missing the director's point of view, projecting them as inherently vicious, cruel, racist and overbearing, which is what they were as oppressors, treating Indians as low life.Incidentally, Doody played the second lead opposite Harrison Ford in Steven Spielberg's landmark movie, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, betraying him for the sake of Nazis. Rajamouli firmly rejects the British notions of superiority even in cultural matters, which he powerfully highlightsin 'Naatu-Naatu.' On the very verge of being thrown out of the venue, both Ram and Bheem rise to the occasion, challenging the occupiers in their own stronghold, with a mesmeric display of their perfectly synchronised moves, which is a huge hit with the ladies!
(The writer is strategic affairs analyst and author. The views expressed are personal.)