Taking back to good ol’ cinema

The juggernaut of the frenzy over ‘Baahubali’ hasn’t stopped yet and is growing by the day. Among other things, the film brings back the drama genre back on the silver screen

The dust over ‘Why Kattappa Killed Baahubali?’ has settled. We are now clear that ‘Baahubali’ will probably be the blockbuster to beat for years to come. SS Rajamouli's magnum opus had captured the minds of Indians and Indian media like no other cinema in the last 30 odd years.

Even ‘Sholay’ grew as a cult film over the weeks and months. In that sense ‘Baahubali’ is a phenomenon like never seen before. All this are not the reasons that I am happy as a cinema buff. Frankly, I do not care how many crores this movie will add to the kitty of its producers, even more frankly put they are not going to share the profits with me.

‘Baahubali’ should be celebrated by Indian cinema buffs for so many reasons.The first one is that ‘Baahubali’ has brought the ‘D’ word back into our movies in full force -- ‘D’ for Drama. Ever since the multiplex boom came, most of our creative makers went the "realistic" cinema way.

Initially, these movies felt good and some of them were supremely entertaining like ‘Khosla ka Ghosla’ and ‘Gangs of Wasseypur’ redefined how acting could be done in mainstream Bollywood. Realistic cinema, in fact, started moving in a big way in impacting how our regular “masala” movies were made; all Neeraj Pandey movies like ‘A Wednesday’ and ‘Special26’ were influenced by the realistic movie genre.

Somewhere the drama started disappearing from our movies. The fact that we were still hungry for big drama was proved again and again by surprise winners at the box office like ‘Agneepath’ (2012) and ‘Kaabil’ yet the leading lights of Bollywood were busy on the road to realism.

In that sense ‘Baahubali’ has shaken us to the value of drama as the pulling content factor for audiences. Shivagami, holding the baby high with one hand even while sacrificing herself remains one such scene that impacted our psyche so much that it remains one of the highest recalled visual of ‘Baahubali. The other epic moments are Kattappa killing Baahubali, blood flowing over the third eye of Shiva as well as Mahendra Baahubali in the epic final clash.

‘Baahubali’ movies are an ocean of high drama moments. There is nothing subtle in Rajamouli's approach. The reason it worked is director shot these scenes with conviction and touched our emotional chord. This should wake up some of our future showmen directors to attempt more such drama in different kind of stories and situations.

Realistic cinema is good, but trust me drama is the big daddy of memorable moments. The success of ‘Baahubali’ will now make our makers relook at good drama presentation and sure we will get a lot of loud zilch stuff but the good that will come out from this will far outweigh the “me too” content makers brigade.

‘Baahubali's second biggest contribution could be bringing back the mythical, and kings and queens stories back to celluloid. Else for some of our mainstream makers, even Akbar and Baajirao were used only for love triangles.

In fact, the first step is already done, We have heard an announcement of a grand movie which will be made on Shivaji. I have always been surprised why Bollywood chose to forget this genre when Hollywood has made some epic stuff in this genre. I am not sure but the last epic drama stuff that Bollywood attempted in king and queen genre was ‘Dharam-Veer’.

The third contribution of ‘Baahubali’ could be that it wakes us up to the simple fact that we need not copy characters out of ‘Marvel's Avengers’ or make a movie on borrowed Hollywood superheroes. We can dig deep into our Amar Chitra Kathas and Chandamamas and create characters, which probably, one day Hollywood might want to copy. ‘Baahubali's success will make the intelligent makers dig deeper into Indian content, which frankly is good news.

‘Baahubali's impact should not be measured in the crores that it is making. My bet is the impact of ‘Baahubali’ will be seen in years to come when our makers will attempt high drama with guts. That is the biggest good news for all of us from ‘Baahubali's smashing success.