Why “RRR” and its viral hit song struck a unique chord with western audiences.
At Sunday’s Academy Awards, many South Asian viewers will be anxiously awaiting “Naatu Naatu,” the musical sequence from blockbuster movie “RRR” that’s both being performed at the ceremony and is a favorite for best original song.
Coming off a Golden Globe win, “Naatu Naatu’s” acknowledgement this weekend will be one of the first times a film from the subcontinent is recognized on the Oscars stage, experts said. It marks a significant moment for Indians all over the world, representing a changing tide in how the West views their cinema.
For decades, Indian movies have been regarded by Western film enthusiasts as not much more than song, dance and melodrama, said Sangita Gopal, an associate professor at the University of Oregon who studies Indian cinema.
“That one factor that made Indian cinema exotically bad before is exotically good now,” she said.
On top of that, Indian film industries haven’t necessarily cared to cater their craft to the Western eye anyway.
“Indian cinema is made for Indian audiences,” she said. “This is true of [director S. S. Rajamouli] too. I don’t think he was thinking, ‘I’m going to make a crossover film.’ He was like, ‘I’ll just keep doing what I did so successfully.’”
But the overwhelming love for “Naatu Naatu” and “RRR” might mean American tastes are changing, she said. Unlike the song-dance numbers of its predecessors, “RRR’s” “Naatu Naatu” seemed to strike a chord. Besides being an earworm, the song isn’t an interruption to the movie’s storyline, but rather something that drives the story forward, Gopal said.
“Even within Indian cinema, song and dance sequences are basically disappearing,” she said. “‘RRR’ has a traditional song and dance sequence, but used less traditionally. This is very much an integrated song within the story. And that helps create the acceptance.”
The global excitement over Indian films isn’t confined to the diaspora anymore, she said, and, in a way, “RRR” was perfectly poised to be the one to break out. “RRR” came at the right time for audiences, Gopal said, and it entered the American zeitgeist at a very specific cultural moment.
The anti-colonialist tale of two freedom fighters railing against the British Raj perfectly lined up with conversations about racism, imperialism and the establishment that have burgeoned in the Western world over the last few years.
“There’s an anti-establishment mood that the film was able to tap into,” she said. “Even though Indian critics, myself included, have rightly seen the film’s potential to be problematic, from the perspective of an audience member that is not really aware of the caste politics, or Hindu nationalist ideology, this is a film about fighting colonialism.”
Unlike films that come out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which feature similar fantastical fight sequences and a good versus evil struggle, “RRR’s” villains and heroes are real and concrete.
“Even though it’s very ahistorical and fantastical and mythical, these two people were real and the British did colonize India,” she said. “It has that kind of historical realism.”
When it was originally released in early 2022, American audiences had already developed a taste for international productions on a large scale, with hit shows like “Squid Game” priming them for things like reading subtitles, Gopal said.
But some Indian viewers say they can recognize casteism and Hindu nationalism playing out beneath the spectacle of the film’s surface. To Gopal, the story portrays its caste oppressed characters as weak and in need of a dominant caste hero to save them. In addition, Muslim characters are all but absent in the film, though they were heavily involved in India’s fight for freedom.
“It’s very clear that there is a hierarchy at work,” Gopal said.
Writer and director Rajamouli did not respond to a request for comment, but he has previously said there isn’t any ideological bent to “RRR.” In a Q&A session at a Los Angeles screening of the film, he spoke about the representation of Hinduism in the story.
“In the film, what I’m portraying is actually a way of life that existed for many many centuries or eons,” he said.
“RRR” feels to many like the solidification of Tollywood — the South Indian Telugu-language film industry — as a global force. Rini Bhattacharya Mehta, an associate professor at the University Of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, said Telugu cinema specifically has exploded in popularity over the last decade.
“RRR” largely came on the tails of 2015’s “Bahubali,” another Telugu epic directed by Rajamouli. Now with “RRR,” experts see a change on the subcontinent, where South Indian films are rising to meet what many feel is lacking in Bollywood, which refers to the Mumbai-based Hindi-language film industry.
“Bollywood has melodrama, and then Telugu cinema just took it to a whole other level,” Bhattacharya Mehta said.
For a South Indian audience who rarely sees itself represented in the films coming out of Mumbai, these movies can scratch the itch for representation, she said.
They present “a uniquely South Indian aesthetic,” she noted.
Gopal said “Naatu Naatu’s” nomination represents the next step in Indian cinema’s international presence, but when it comes to foreign blockbusters being recognized by the Academy or nominated as films themselves, she feel’s it’s a long way away.
“‘RRR’ brings together so many currents of global cinema,” she said. “From Hollywood to Hong Kong action, even to an earlier Bollywood style of the populist hero. In some ways, it represents a compilation of both national film history and global trends.”