Tele(gu)vision Addict

Gotta admit, I never saw this one coming: a Telugu film among the top 10 most popular hits on Netflix America. Howdy, folks, it’s your canny cultural critic here, Pinky Tourette, with a recommendation on what to watch when your Tinder date ditches you, the damn fool.

Most westerntype folks think strictly Hindi when they deign to think of Indian cinema at all –films that certainly have their own identity, their own cliches and tropes (interminable running time, multiple songs with elaborate choreography in exotic locations, yadda et yadda) – whereas Telegu films (along with Tamil, Malayam, etc.) get short shrift. Except, that is, with those nutso film aficionados like Dopey, who consistently drags me and the rest of the band kicking and screaming into her bizarre cinematic obsessions like the freakshow film aesthetic of Bijou Telugu. Where else would you find a beloved action hero who’s a dead ringer for John Belushi?

Enter N.T. Rama Rao Jr, (aka Jr. NTR), one of the biggest ***SUPERMEGASTARS*** (no other way to write it) of Southeastern Indian cinema. He's joined in RRR by another box office champ, Ram Charan, and together they kick the shit out of anything western cinema has delivered in the past, um, ever. Granted, the Netflix version is dubbed into Hindi, with Bollywood heavyweight Ajay Devgn in what amounts to an extended cameo, but still. Telugu? Topping the U.S. pops?

Back in the 1980s, folks in the know abandoned American films in droves to focus on Hong Kong – a city, a style, an attitude, a complete reinvention of filmmaking stripped back to the earliest days of visual invention, surrealism, and mayhem (thank you Jackie), mixmastering it with the extremes of world cinema from Jean-Pierre Melville to Akira Kurosawa (thank you John Woo), and peppering the stew with equal parts amateurish enthusiasm, hyperkinetic psychosadism, and a paranoid fear of the HK’s impending sword-of-Damocles reversion to Chinese rule in 1997. (A paranoia that proved 100% justified.)

By the time the red flag rose over Hong Kong, their national cinema was effectively dead, with limited exceptions. Smart cinephiles had already pinned their hopes to other locations across the Asian map. Thailand had an astonishing but sadly short-lived run as the heart of horror and martial arts filmmaking, the latter thanks almost entirely to Tony Jaa, Panna Ritthikrai, and Jeeja Yanin. Japan continued doing what Japan did, cranking out smart, tight, captivating thrillers in various genres, with Takashi Miike becoming an industry unto himself. Korea quickly snatched the mantle of gangster/crime melodramas, incorporating HK’s mean, cynical, existentialism… sanitized and Hollywoodized into a national formula, making a killing (you’ll pardon the expression) in the process. Some terrific films were produced in the process, but still.

What they largely lost along the way was the madness of the best Hong Kong films. The recklessness. The randomness and unpredictability. The anything-can-happen-ism. The… what’s the word? Oh yeah. Fun.

Enter Telugu cinema. Catch pretty much any NTR or Ram Charan Film –or Mahesh Babu, or Chiranjeevi, or Allu “Bunny” Arjun – and you’ll be transported. Logic is out the window. There’s nothing resembling reality in their toolbox. Who the fuck needs reality? Reality is day jobs and pandemics and paying bills. Telugu cinema is larger-than-life-ism. Just like old HK. And there’s no film larger than RRR – the most expensive Indian film ever made (at least at the time of its release) and the most popular.

And now, it’s among the most popular on Netflix. Its theme, if it can be said to have one, is simple: white people suck. I’m not sure if that makes it an even more surprising candidate for western popularity nowadays or a shoo-in. Either way, it’s got all the hallmarks of Telugu cinema: the macho, the melo, the eye-popping over-the-top action, the visual stylization that makes those Wachowski cats look like doddering documentarians.

Basically, it’s a John Woo movie. Two fiercely hetero men can’t keep away from each other and will do anything, including die in extreme agony, for their bro. They engage in violence so slo-mo it’s practically no-mo, complete with bullet’s-eye-view (make that arrow’s-eye) snatched from Michael Crichton via Ringo Lam. And what the hell, let’s toss in some peplum, spaghetti western, and bits of the Ramayana, and hey, why not, the Bible. You remember when Jesus broke into song while being lashed, right?

American superhero films may be slicker – RRR’s CGI is all over the place, from the sublime to the hilarious – as if that mattered a whit in the eye of the true celluloid genre junkie. There’s more heart and invention and genuine grandeur in any 10 minutes of RRR than in the entirety of the DC and Marvel universes combined. Who needs silly spandex costumes when you’ve got real-life superheroes battling against true oppression from the British Imperial Empire.

Wait, didn’t I mention this a was a docudrama about two legendary characters from Indian history? My bad. In fact, every single word and action in this film is meticulously documented and historically accurate. With the minor exception of the whole plot, which is entirely made up.

Oh, and while we’re on the (sorta) subject of Indian docudramas, you’ve seen Delhi Crime, right? Based on the savage assault, rape, and torture of a young woman and her boyfriend on a bus in India – a crime that shocked not only the nation but the entire world by its brutality and savageness – the seven-episode Netflix miniseries is a smartly-written, superbly-acted, and deftly-directed program that recalls The Wire in its procedural autopsy of not only a crime but an entire system and ultimately society in general. Shot docustyle with numerous long, complicated, and revealing shots, it’s a gritty journey through the underside of both the big, bad city and parched, broken villages withering in poverty and resentment. Originally released in 2019, there’s a second season promised. You’ll want to see it. Trust me. Better yet, trust Dopey.