Baahubali Telugu Movie Review

A tight script navigated with sincerity is the fulcrum of good cinema. The need is to stay true to it is the challenge. Somewhere Baahubali is perceived more as a Rajamouli film then just a Prabhas film and this pleasant shift from hero centric films to a director is welcome. Paradoxically it happens with a film that celebrates heroics of a level hitherto not witnessed. Loiter on any road in the city, initiate any discussion, part take in any conversation and the frenzy generated for the film is all too obvious. Fireworks outside the many theatres, the dust and din, the moolah the film is likely to generate all tell a tale of their own. Rarely if ever has the excitement captured the audience as this before the first reel rolls out! The film is contextually a milestone and for other reasons could be a archive pride. The expectations match the promise of grandeur that Raj Kapoor carried with Joker or Yash Chopra with Silsilla. Surely Rajamouli would like the similarities to end there.
The film is a full throated celebration of grandeur. Sixty nano seconds into the film and you know that this is about magnificence, about the traditional battle between good and evil- albeit in a period – costume backdrop. The first few moments sets the trend and announces that the only way you are to deal with the next two and half hours of your life is to completely suspend reasoning and be on a hitherto ride of unbelievable stunts, physics defying heroics hitherto unimagined in Tollywood (though still no match to classics like Ben Hur).
The victim of a vicious arrow (Ramya Krishna) is on the run with an infant in her hand with a commitment to save the infant that challenges Nature’s fury. The child Shivudu grows up in a hilly area ignorant of lineage as we are for a long while though we guess. His foster Mom (Rohini) is scared of he returning to the world he came from. He is agile and crazy. Shivudu (Prabhas) is our own Sylvester Stallone in the next couple of hours is going to reveal that he is imagination gone haywire. He is Phantom, Spiderman, Superman, Rajnikanth and the Khans all rolled in one. And enough beef to accommodate them too!! Even as you fall in love with the locales (graphics!) he falls in love with Avantika (Tamanaah) as surreal as the locales. Love blooms amidst sword fights, fantasy forests torrential waterfalls and rocky terrain. However Avantika is part of a revolutionary group that is planning to kidnap and ‘bring back’ Devasena. Shividu has a sneak preview of the revolt and pledges his support to his Love. After many reels of waterfalls and fountains, scuba tattoos and sub aerial graffiti the conflict is brewing to erupt.
And the story is waiting to be told. Let’s get there. Shivagami (Ramya Krishna) is a tough yet benevolent ruler of Mahisshmati with a Mahabharat edition for baggage. Her physically challenged son (Nassar) is ruled out by default from being the emperor and thus in him is kindled the fire to avenge. His son Bhalla Deva (Rana) and nephew Baahubali (Prabhas). Palace intrigue and villainy is written all over in the road on to who will be the next king. Living in captivity is a vendetta thirsty Devasena (Anushka Shetty) who is collecting twigs to burn the destroyers of her family. Years take a quantum leap and we are now in this slave stricken kingdom is Kattappa (Satyaraj) who would do anything to save King Bhalla Deva, even trade his life but at the same time would desperately hope the King is dead. He has his sympathies with the royal wing that has been done with namely Baahubali. You guessed it right while Bahu is the do gooder statesman in the making till death had other ideas while Bhalla is the crafty cousin who has inherited the throne by his villainy. Detailed war scenes have the audience go delirious when Baahubali does the impossible. We have our tryst with mythology and a collective psyche that identifies with it. When heads are chopped and men killed the audience goes delirious with hope, anger and approval; when the slave turned elder statesman bows to the Prince we immediately identify with it. Our societal norms, our historic tales are all wound together with modern graphics in this magnum opus with a take it, don’t leave it passion.
The crew gets the better of the cast. The polished cinematography is reminiscent of Mani Ratnam’s Raavan. KK Senthil Kumar (cinematography) is a statement in himself and awesome. Visuals (V Srinivas Mohan) and Art (Sabu Cyril) are so so good that they make every shot look like a canvas rather than a slice of life and that could clearly point to the fact that Rajamouli may well have lost the plot!! Tamanaah is woefully miscast – unless you believe that casting her any which way is a mistake. The brawl guys are at it with a vengeance – Prabhas, Rana and Satyaraj. In a short punch packed role Ramya Krishna is restrained. The rest are genuinely inconsequential.
It some where fails to connect. I suspect that the film maker’s reliance on technology is its undoing. The film is soul less, the romance insipid, the heroics overdone, the music strained, the audience unruly, the atmosphere frenzied beyond compare, the hype self-defeatist, the narration tardy, the expectations too too high to meet. Farcical romance and copious war scenes occupy too large a slice of the narration and rob you of those magical moments that make for good cinema.
The film celebrates the Veda Vyasa take. It reiterates that WE THE PEOPLE will swallow with glee anything and exploitation is the stable diet. However we live on hope. The Messiah is coming. Baahubali. Baahubali II. Wait on.
Rating: 2.5 stars
+ Great watch
– No feel. L. Ravichander.