S.S. Rajamouli on "RRR" (Rajamouli, Rama & Ram) | From Studio 9
Born in India, S.S. Rajamouli presents a unique, distinct voice within the landscape of contemporary world cinema. With a wide-spanning oeuvre that includes 12 feature films, Rajamouli is known for his inventive style, epic scale, mythological and historical reference points, and films that evade genre-specificity.
Set in Colonial India of the 1920s, RRR mythologizes the friendship between the real-life Indian revolutionaries Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem (portrayed respectively by Ram Charan and Jr NTR). The two historical figures never met in recorded history, but what writer-director S.S. Rajamouli presupposes is… maybe they did? That maybe Bheem was at one point drawn to Delhi to rescue a child from the tyrannical British Raj (personified with magnificent sadism by Ray Stevenson and Alison Doody), and perhaps Raju became entangled with this quest while on an enigmatic mission of his own. With RRR, Rajamouli hasn’t just printed the legend — he has projected it across a barrage of sublime set pieces and with all the hyperbole of a comic-book epic.
A box office juggernaut in India, the film has also emerged as an International hit, garnering particularly rhapsodic critical and audience acclaim from the West, and with good reason. Rajamouli and his stars Rama and Ram — the three Rs of the title — have crafted a grand adventure that taps into a myriad of zeitgeists across film history, from stirring heroic bloodshed not seen since the heyday of John Woo, to an uproarious dance sequence as iconic as any by Fred Astaire or Chiranjeevi. With its meticulous form, striking style and charismatic performances alone, even the most skeptical viewer is guaranteed to be swept up by Rajamouli’s cinematic ecstasy; one which has united audiences across many borders in rapturous applause.
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