For decades, Bollywood has been content to churn out Hindi song-and-dance extravaganzas, secure in its position as the continent’s largest film-making centre.
But now a Telugu-language battle epic from southern India’s rival Tollywood has broken the country’s box office records and shaken Mumbai’s traditional big-screen dominance.
Baahubali: The Beginning, the tale of feuding brothers who fight for control of an ancient kingdom, has earned about R578 million at the international box office in just eight days, smashing all records for Tollywood – southern Indian – films.
Laden with special effects and gravity-defying fight sequences, Baahubali has won plaudits for its Hollywood-style production values, prompting comparisons to Lord of the Rings and James Cameron’s blockbusters.
The vision of film-maker SS Rajamouli, 41, based in Hyderabad, the capital of the southern state of Telangana, Baahubali took three years to produce and is India’s most expensive film to date, with a budget of R482m.
What has unsettled Bollywood’s establishment is the fear that Baahubali’s global success will shift the centre of a regionally divided Indian film industry away from Mumbai.
Baahubali (“Strong Man” in Hindi) was shot in Telugu, the native language of Telangana. Its release was accompanied by a marketing budget beyond most Bollywood films, with the producers unveiling the “world’s largest poster”, stretching to 4 738m2.
Opening in 4 000 cinemas worldwide and described as his “masterpiece”, Rajamouli’s film seduced critics and audiences with breathtaking scenes of mountain flight and a 40-minute climactic battle sequence.
Baahubali has also been dubbed into Hindi and immediately attracted Bollywood’s regular cinemagoers, setting a new box office record for a dubbed Indian film of R96.4m inside a week.
Salman Khan, the Bollywood star and producer, whose own new film Bajrangi Bhaijaan was overshadowed by the phenomenon, admitted: “Baahubali is a good film and our (Bollywood) cinema should try to match its success. These numbers of the film do scare you.”
Ram Gopal Varma, a Bollywood writer-director, said Baahubali should be “a wake-up call to all stars to look beyond themselves to become bigger… otherwise they will be relegated to the bottom rungs. In an industry jungle of lions, tigers, pythons and elephants, the Baahubali dinosaur arrived and now the survival rules will have to change.”
As well as the challenge from Telugu’s Tollywood, the Tamil-language cinema of Kollywood centred on the Chennai neighbourhood of Kodambakkam, is also setting new standards.
Tamil director Shankar demonstrates greater flair with camerawork and ingenuity in fight scenes than his Bollywood contemporaries, critics say.
Sudha G Tilak, an arts writer who is based in Delhi, opined: “Southern India is producing more films than Bollywood and with production values that compare to anywhere in the world. Bollywood’s stories have lived in a comfort zone for some time.”
Baahubali has succeeded, Tilak said, because it “tells a traditional Indian folklore story of warring princes matched with state-of-the-art special effects. It’s taken everywhere by storm”.
Tensions between the south and Mumbai are played out behind the scenes. Southern India produces many female stars who are accepted by the Mumbai industry, but male actors are not afforded the same opportunities.
Tilak said: “It’s similar to the way black actors do not get top billing in Hollywood. There is some resistance in the Hindi film industry. I look forward to the day when southern India’s stars have their own wax statues in Madame Tussauds.”
Rajamouli told The Times of India: “I know that if you have a universal theme and a good story told well, it will work everywhere. The success of Baahubali across the country proves my theory right.”
An edited version of the film, paring down its two-and-a-half-hour running time for international audiences who have yet to succumb, is being prepared.
The Independent