Resource: Simon Abrams, “The Man Behind India’s Controversial Global Blockbuster RRR” – The New Yorker (interview with S. S. Rajamouli) https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/the-man-behind-indias-controversial-global-blockbuster-rrr-s-s-rajamouli
For my Searcher post, I chose a New Yorker interview with S. S. Rajamouli, the director of RRR. I like this piece because it goes way beyond the usual “wow, what a fun action movie” take and really sits in the tension between RRR as a joyful, maximalist anti-colonial fantasy and RRR as a film loaded with uncomfortable politics. The interviewer brings up criticisms from Indian writers who see the movie as a kind of Hindu-nationalist, caste-flattening rewrite of history, especially in how it elevates Raju (from a dominant caste) over Bheem (an Adivasi leader) and in who gets celebrated in the patriotic finale. Rajamouli, meanwhile, keeps insisting he’s “just” making entertainment, distancing himself from ideology, and framing himself as someone who cares mostly about audience emotion and spectacle.What makes the resource especially worthwhile is that it kind of exposes the gap between what a filmmaker thinks they are doing and what their film actually ends up doing in the world. Rajamouli talks a lot about craft—how he builds action set pieces from emotional stakes, his love of epics like the Mahabharata and Ramayana, his admiration for Braveheart, Ayn Rand, and James Cameron, and his obsession with watching his movies repeatedly with audiences to read their reactions. At the same time, the article refuses to let him off the hook: it reminds us of his father’s work on an R.S.S.-commissioned film, the selective use of nationalist icons in RRR, and the way some viewers see Bheem as a “noble savage” figure. I think that tension—between Rajamouli’s self-image as an apolitical entertainer and the very political ways people read his films—is what makes this interview so useful. It’s not just a fan piece; it’s a reminder that style, myth, and spectacle are never neutral, especially when a movie is as massive and globally visible as RRR.
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