Sunday, July 26, 2015

Baahubali Review : From an audience perspective

To put it in a gist, this was a brilliant movie and I sure hope that it will set precedent for the Indian cinema, as a whole. To all the critics who say this is not original or we have seen it 300 or LOTR or Ben Hur, please give yourselves a break and stop being so miserable!!
Followers of Hollywood in India form only a small part of the population and Baahubali has introduced a whole new genre of cinema to a very large section of the population. So, sit back, and applaud the crew:)

To further analyse it, here's why I thought it should be classified as exceptional film-making.

What stands-out and is obvious, is the excellent cinematography. The thought is seamless from the beginning till the end, the effects and execution are on-par with any international, epic/war/period movie. You would not mind going back and watching the entire movie in mute, to be awed once again.

Next, is the fine choreography of the action sequences, be it the simple demonstration of a sword, a duel or a war strategy, there was drama and something theatrical for the audience. They were not just ordinary war sequences, nor were they something unreasonable or impossible. There was thought and innovation put into it, and definitely put me at the edge of my seat.

What is important for any period drama, is to get the art and fashion of that period right. Even while this movie was dealing with three different tribes, all the characters, their culture, language, fashion was quite well-sketched and spot-on. The element of surprise was of course, bringing in a new tribe and writing an entirely new language for them!! Well done!

Now, while this movie stood out in most obvious areas, there still are departments which warrant attention.

The plot line of the movie was really ordinary. You would expect that an epic or war movie to have more intricate sub-plots or characters analyses.The reason many international movies run into two or more parts are
1. There is lot more story to tell which cannot be captured in a 3 hour frame
2. There are new characters and/ or sub-plots to be revealed which usually play folly or add to the mystery of the first part.
3. They are a part of anthology series
Invariably all of these movies are adapted from books and hence have a good plot line to back them up, and also the reason why there was no need for two parts of the movie. So, the thin plot line, the slow paced first half and the predictability of the second part are the movie's Achilles Heel.

The soundtrack of the movie, the songs and the background score did not really match up to the cinematography. Also, a reason why I said, you would be equally awed, if you saw in mute.

The dialogues are not the strong point of the movie. For some reason, you think something, brilliant is going to be said or revealed, but there is no "punch".  This could be tied to the weak plot line. There are many Indian movies with exceptional dialogues that leave you brimming with emotion and chanting the dialogues for generations after. This movie does not do that. There is really nothing catchy, the movie sounds more like a boring narrative, if we were to forget the cinematography for a few seconds.

Closing, I would say this is overall a brilliant movie (at the cost of being repetitive), with areas of improvement, but for now there is a new feather in our caps and we should wear it proudly!!

Good Job Mr. Rajamouli!!