India passed RRR over for the Oscars, and Rajamouli took it to Los Angeles himself
In September 2022 the Film Federation of India chose the country’s entry for the best international feature Oscar. It picked Chhello Show, a Gujarati film about a boy and a projectionist, and it did not pick RRR.
Six months later Chhello Show had not been nominated and RRR had won an Academy Award.
His own country’s committee did not think it was the Indian film worth sending. It went anyway, on its own money.
Raichur
S.S. Rajamouli was born in Raichur in October 1973 and grew up on Amar Chitra Katha and Chandamama, the comics and story magazines that carry Indian myth to children in short instalments. He has never really left that form.
His father, V. Vijayendra Prasad, is a screenwriter and has written nearly every film his son has directed, which is an unusual arrangement to sustain for twenty-five years. Rajamouli came up through a Telugu television serial and an apprenticeship with the director K. Raghavendra Rao, and made his first film, Student No. 1, in 2001.
By the time anyone outside India had heard of him he had been the biggest director in Telugu cinema for a decade, through Simhadri, Chatrapathi, Vikramarkudu and Magadheera, each of which reset what a Telugu film could cost and take.
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Eega
The film that explains his method is not one of the big ones. Eega, in 2012, is a revenge story in which the murdered man is reincarnated as a housefly and sets about destroying his killer.
Described in a sentence it is ridiculous. On screen it works, because he shoots the fly’s grief and the fly’s planning with exactly the seriousness he would give a human lead. That is the whole trick, and it is what people miss when they call his films spectacle.
He does not take the audience’s disbelief as an obstacle. He takes it as the thing he has been hired to remove.
Two years of a question
Baahubali: The Beginning came out in 2015 and ended with a loyal retainer stabbing the king he had raised. The sequel was two years away.
For those two years, why Kattappa killed Baahubali was a running question across the country, on the backs of autorickshaws, in exam answers, in political speeches. When Baahubali 2 arrived in 2017 it took more money than any Indian film before it.
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Los Angeles
RRR opened in March 2022. It is a three-hour story that invents a friendship between two real anti-colonial fighters, Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem, and it built an audience in America slowly, through streaming and packed repertory screenings, with James Cameron among the people publicly praising it.
When the Federation went elsewhere, the film’s producers and its American distributor ran a full awards campaign instead, submitting it for best picture, director, original screenplay, both lead actors, supporting actor and actress, score and song. Rajamouli spent months in the United States doing screenings and question sessions.
This is not how Indian films had approached the Academy. The convention was to be selected, submitted and then to wait, and to treat the whole thing as an honour that either arrived or did not. Campaigning is what American studios do, at considerable expense, and the reported spend on this one ran into millions of dollars.
It got one nomination out of all that. In January 2023 the song took the Golden Globe, the first win there for an Indian film, and in March the Academy Award for best original song went to M.M. Keeravani, who wrote the music, and Chandrabose, who wrote the words.
What the award was
It is worth being exact about it. Rajamouli did not win an Oscar. His composer and his lyricist did, for a song, in one category, from a campaign he ran because nobody else was going to.
What changed was smaller than the celebrations suggested and larger than the category implies. For decades the Indian trade called Telugu cinema regional, meaning secondary, and the film that finally got an Academy Award for an Indian feature was in Telugu and had been passed over at home.
He is now making a film with Mahesh Babu, announced as Varanasi, on a scale that assumes the audience he acquired in 2022 is still there.
The country did not send it. The audience that had found it on streaming and in American cinemas sent it instead.
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If you think you have remembered everything about this topic take this QUIZ
Results
#1. What was S.S. Rajamouli’s early career nickname, reflecting his relentless dedication during his time in television?
#2. Which 2009 fantasy-action epic served as the ‘proof of concept’ for Rajamouli’s future high-budget mythological themes?
#3. What historic milestone did ‘Baahubali 2: The Conclusion’ achieve in the context of the Indian film industry?
#4. The song ‘Naatu Naatu’ from the film ‘RRR’ achieved a landmark cultural prestige by winning which international award?
#5. What does Rajamouli cite as a major influence on his perspective on ‘individualism’?
#6. Rajamouli’s storytelling often relies on a traditional Indian concept involving nine emotions. What is this concept called?
#7. Which of these is a unique personal characteristic of Rajamouli mentioned in his philosophy?
#8. Which family member of Rajamouli is his frequent collaborator and the composer for all his films?
What was SS Rajamouli’s first movie?
His first film as a director was the college drama Student No. 1 (2001), starring Jr. NTR.
Has any Rajamouli film won an Oscar?
While Rajamouli himself has not won an Oscar for direction yet, his film RRR won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for “Naatu Naatu” in 2023.
Why are his films called “Pan-Indian”?
The term was coined to describe his films (starting with Baahubali) that are made in one language but marketed and released simultaneously in multiple languages across India to achieve national success.
Is SS Rajamouli related to M.M. Keeravani?
Yes, the Oscar-winning music composer M.M. Keeravani is S.S. Rajamouli’s cousin.
Read More: https://curiousindian.in/d-ramanaidu-june-1936-february-2015/
Sources & References
Variety (September 2022) — the Film Federation of India’s selection of Chhello Show and the independent campaign launched for RRR.
Al Jazeera (25 January 2023) — the nomination for Naatu Naatu despite the film not being India’s official entry, and Chhello Show’s failure to be nominated.
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (95th Academy Awards) — the award for best original song to M.M. Keeravani and Chandrabose.
IndieWire (March 2023) — the win and the way the film built its following among American audiences.
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