Bahubali a phenomenon

*** Spoiler alert: No, I’ve not answered why Kattappa killed Bahubali. I strongly advise to watch the movies first and then come back to read this post. Those who are ok to read these details before or after watching the movie can proceed at their own risk ***

Let me start by telling you that the movies: Bahubali: The Beginning and Bahubali 2: The Conclusion, are by large the most entertaining movies I’ve watched in recent past. And that’s considering the Hollywood, Bollywood and South-Indian movies overall. I might not be a guy who watch 100s of movies every year but seeing the overall success across languages these movies are released in, one can hardly doubt my claim.

What I liked the most is the awe inspiring narration and execution of a simple yet beautiful story.

In spite of all the buzz and box-office records after the release of Bahubali: The Beginning, I hadn’t watched the movie. I mean, imagine the self-control I might possess despite all those “Why did Kattappa kill Bahubali” memes circulating. Perhaps it might be my nonchalant way of handling these movie buzz. I watched the prequel couple of days back only when my wife booked the tickets for The Conclusion.

The first part of the prequel, The Beginning, was ordinary with only VFX attraction and more about the buildup for the interesting part to follow. The story immediately switches to faster pace when the protagonist, Mahendra Bahubali, reaches the palace to rescue the unfortunate lady, Maharani Devasena, supposedly his mother, who was held captive by the ruthless king, her brother-in-law, since many years. Next the story is unveiled as how he was separated from his mother and who exactly he was. I will not go into details here but the movie then takes us through the fascinating part of kingdom politics and war. The war sequence is captured intensely and extravagantly. The first movie ends with the scene where the loyal and trusted guardian, Kattappa, killing this protagonist’s father, Amarendra Bahubali.

Now, after the first movie’s success the director and team had much bigger responsibility of keeping up to the expectations and bringing equally engrossing conclusion to what was now considered as a fantastic beginning.

The second movie reveals how Amarendra met Devasena; it was indeed love at first sight, how he gets closer to her and about all the circumstances that will indirectly help his cause. It further slowly reveals the conspiracy hatched by his cousin, Bhallala Deva and uncle, and eventual killing.

During this course of wonderful story telling, I loved the below moments:

• Devasena’s entry – Frankly, I’m so impressed by the scene and also by her beauty. Director has done a wonderful job in getting this scene done perfectly. Entry scene is followed by other interesting scenes like Amarendra teaching her how to fire multiple arrows during a fight sequence.
• Devasena boarding the boat scene – There is something fine, like an art, in South-Indian movies and directors, especially in Telugu and Tamil movies. You get to see some magical scenes between the hero and heroine that will give you goosebumps. I mean, those scenes will be really simple and trivial like exchanging a look, hoping on a bike etc but they turn them into something special and magical. In this case, Devasena’s simple act of boarding the boat was made interesting when she uses his shoulders to walk on like walking on a plank.
• Swearing-in ceremony – Amarendra was supposed to become the king which eventually doesn’t happen and his cousin, Bhallala Deva is sworn in as the king. He in turn becomes the army general. In this scene, the king doesn’t get much adulation but the whole crowd including the soldiers give such a great applause and support to Amarendra that the whole floor and platform is shown vibrating. Hell of a scene!
• Beheading scene – There was a scene when Devasena is taken to the king’s court for a trial, guilty of cutting a high rank soldier’s fingers. When Devasena, in her defense, gives the statement that she cut his fingers as he was touching other ladies inappropriately and she was gonna be his next victim. Here, Amarendra supporting her says, ‘Why did you just cut his fingers? In fact, this kind of act deserves beheading.’. While completing that statement, he beheads the culprit in one swing of his sword. Impressive!
• Game of Thrones similarities – It was hard to ignore the similarities in many scenes which seemed like borrowed from the famous TV series, The Game of Thrones. The mammoth statues while entering the sea gate to the kingdom, the huge courtroom, war scenes seemed more than mere coincidence.
• Social messages (IMHO) –
• Innovation, in current worldly political and economic situation, is given a lot of importance and I personally felt the director tried to emphasize this fact through the characters’ actions of using innovative techniques at different junctions, be it war techniques, building tools to break bigger stones into smaller ones, fetching water from river etc.
• A scene capturing a bull sport similar to that of Jallikattu.
• Women safety: Beheading scene mentioned above passed on a strong message in the matter of women safety and how it should be dealt with, i.e. strong actions.

Couple of matters at the end didn't fit the plot for conclusion like the Bhallala Deva's father not being killed and fall of the big golden statue through the waterfalls. So I wouldn't be surprised if the team decides to follow up with a third movie ;-)

Almost forgot to mention, all the cast have done an excellent job portraying their characters and everyone deserves an applause. They would be really proud of being part of the history in making in the Indian movie industry.

These days, when the current lot of movie makers and directors are busy making only tried and tested, regular, mass, romantic movies, it’s greatly appreciable that the director, S. S. Rajamouli dared to come out with this kind of a historical themed movie, and boy, how well did he come up with this!