In this retrospective series on SS Rajamouli’s career, we try to understand what makes him tick as a storyteller. We are hoping that this exercise will reveal certain recurring patterns, themes, tropes and cinematic elements which Rajamouli has perfected over the last 20 years to reach where he is today.
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SS Rajamouli got everything a new filmmaker would ever ask for during the early days of his career. Being the son of one of the celebrated screenplay writers of the country, V. Vijayendra Prasad, comes with its own perks. And Rajamouli benefited from his family background as he was treated with great kindness by the industry, which is otherwise uncompromising and unforgiving. He had the opportunity to be mentored by industry giants such as his own father and veteran filmmaker K. Raghavendra Rao. Before coming to the movies, he honed his skills as a director in television.
Rajamouli directed the television series Santhi Nivasam under the supervision of Raghavendra Rao, who would later give him his first feature film, Student No 1. Raghavendra handed Rajamouli a bounded script and asked him to direct with Jr NTR, who had just made an unsuccessful debut as a leading man with Ninnu Choodalani, in the lead role. Student No 1 became the film school that allowed Rajamouli to acquaint himself with the pains and pleasures of mounting the production of a feature film. The movie was a success. But, Rajamouli’s first big break in his career came with his second feature Simhadri, for which he also wrote his debut screenplay based on his father Vijayendra Prasad’s story.
While re-watching the 2003 action film, one can see that SS Rajamouli was still trying to find his voice. He hadn’t developed a distinct style of his own yet and he leaned hard on the ideas, themes and narration techniques from several mainstream movies. To put it differently, Rajamouli was working from the memory of his favourite movies while making Simhadri.
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Simhadri is an unapologetic rehash of Superstar Rajinikanth’s iconic movie Baasha. The film blatantly reuses every narrative jolt which was first perfected by director Suresh Krissna in Baasha (1995). The film tells the story of a young man Simhaadri (Jr NTR), and his unconditional loyalty towards his master Ram Bhupal Varma (Nassar). In the beginning, Simhaadri comes across as a naive person, whose world begins and ends with Varma. But there is more to him and we find out that through the little glimpses of flashbacks that pop up in the narration, which prepares us for an explosive backstory. It’s a classic Baasha technique.
In a scene in Baasha, Manikam’s (Rajinikanth) brother Shiva questions him. Shiva tells Manikam that the doctors were “shaken” while treating those who had taken a beating from him. “This is no ordinary man. Only the man whose whole nervous system is soaked in violence can give such a beating (it sounds more punchy in Tamil),” Shiva tells Manikam.
Similarly, the first time we get a hint about the hero’s unknown past is when a doctor almost gives himself a heart attack by looking at the medical reports of a man, who had the misfortune of crossing paths with Simhaadri. Looking at the damage that the beating had caused to the patient, the doctor concludes this must be him, “Singhamalai”.
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The film then goes off on a predetermined trajectory of explaining to us how Andhra Pradesh’s Simhaadri became Kerala’s Singhamalai. Rajamouli creates a lawless land in God’s own country. The criminal brothers Bhai Saab and Bala Nair are terrorising the people of Thiruvananthapuram. So much so that the police department feels impotent in front of the brothers’ political connections. Top cop Namboothri, played by Sharat Saxena, can’t help but watch helplessly as Bala forcefully drags a woman across a busy street and gang-rapes her inside a car with everyone watching. When all systems fail, the common people look for some divine intervention. Enter, Simhaadri. He’s there on a personal mission but with a twist of fate, he ends up gloriously butchering Bala and his gang members with the blessings of every common man. The scene ends with people pouring milk on Simhaadri to cool him off and cleanse him as he’s soaked in the blood of the modern-day demon.
Talking to Empire magazine recently, SS Rajamouli claimed that he thinks ‘unapologetic heroism’ was the reason behind the success of his latest film RRR. And if you have followed Rajamouli’s career, you know ‘unapologetic heroism’ is the default mode of all his movies. When it comes to overplaying the strengths of his heroes, Rajamouli knows no bounds. For example, in Simhadri, you have a scene where the hero twirls his moustache to create a concentrated tornado of sorts that sucks away one of the bad guys. In another scene, the villain, Bhai Saab, is so blatant that he televises him torturing the whole city to draw Simhaadri out of hiding.
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In Simhadri, Rajamouli also accommodated other mainstream requirements of Telugu cinema at the time, including a generous amount of navel-gazing and obligatory dance numbers. Like Rajamouli, even Tarak was yet to find his mojo as an actor. His acting was not-so-refined at the time as he fed off his stardom, which he inherited from his family, to compensate for the shortcomings in his performance. Tarak has come a long way as an actor since Simhadri. So much so that he is the favourite of many western audiences for the best actor award at the upcoming Oscars for his performance as Bheem in RRR.
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SS Rajamouli was still learning the ropes as a storyteller with Simhadri. But the film has all the signs of a filmmaker, who inherently knows how to daringly impose his artistic will with great conviction and confidence.