Indian cinema has produced something spectacular. And it's not
from Bollywood.
Hundreds of
miles from Mumbai, the hub of the nation's Hindi-language movie industry, a
South Indian director has attempted a battle epic that critics say has
successfully blended local folklore with Hollywood's technological grandeur.
"Baahubali:
The Beginning," directed by Telugu-language filmmaker S.S. Rajamouli, is
also billed as India's most expensive film ever.
Latest estimates
show the budget of the two-part movie neared $40 million, according to movie
website IMDb.
That figure may
seem small in comparison to many Hollywood productions, but it's unparalleled
in India, where costs for its highest-budget movies rarely touch $25 million.
A day after its
nationwide release in Telugu and several other Indian languages,
"Baahubali" -- meaning "Strong Man" in Hindi -- has
attracted rave reviews.
Critics have also generously drawn striking similarities with
Hollywood.
"Many films
have scale and spectacle. 'Baahubali' also has a story," wrote film expert
Shubhra Gupta in The Indian Express.
"You can
see S.S. Rajamouli's varied influences in places: James Cameron-like dreamy
vistas of hill, waterfall and greenery, Ang Lee's
flying-through-the-air-acrobatics, Peter Jackson's stretching-out-for-miles
crowded battlefields, J.R.R. Tolkien's plug-ugly trolls who talk in guttural
tongues," she wrote.
Special
effects-laden "Baahubali" is built on a traditional Indian "good
vs. evil" plot -- a lost prince rediscovers his blue-blooded roots and
sets himself out to reclaim his kingdom from the usurper.
"Spanning
generations, going back and forth between the present and the past, alternating
between vastly contrasting landscapes, it's an ambitious work from a visionary
filmmaker who skilfully blends a tale of old school palace politics with modern
VFX (visual effects) to deliver a consistently watchable blockbuster,"
wrote Rajeev Masand, the entertainment editor of CNN-IBN, CNN's India
affiliate.
"Baahubali" was almost three years in making,
according to IMDb; it took 200 days to construct all its sets on a 200-acre
lot, the film site says.
The film was shot
in locations including the mountains of Bulgaria, the forests of Mahabaleshwar
in western India and a sprawling film city in the southern part of the country,
according to IMDb.
"Rajamouli
has delivered a gigantic masterpiece in technical terms," said another
film critic, Bobby Singh.
One of the most
successful filmmakers of Telugu cinema, 41-year-old Rajamouli has won national
acclaim for many of his movies.
His most recent
hit was "Eega" ("Fly"), originally released in Telugu, the
native language of the southern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
It told the fictional story of a man reborn as a fly to take revenge on his
killers.
"Rajamouli
is indeed a visual storyteller," said Masand in his review of the
director's latest film.
The 160-minute
Baahubali ends in a cliffhanger, with a sequel expected next year.
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