Bāhubali: Breaking Records and Crossing Borders

Forty-three million people have already watched Bāhubali 2: The Conclusion’s trailer on YouTube. Bāhubali 2 – which hit screens across India in late April – is the sequel to Bāhubali: The Beginning, a movie that rocked the Indian box office in 2015. While its South Asian style may not appeal to a large part of the Western audience, what is particularly interesting is how it straddled India’s regional divisions. Bāhubali was made in the Telugu language and yet managed to storm the so-far impenetrable fortress of highest-grossing Indian movies, where Hindi-language movies have reigned supreme.

Two common myths about Indian cinema are that the entire Indian movie industry is Bollywood and that it alone produces the staggering 1,000 movies made per year in India. In reality, Bollywood refers mostly to the Hindi-language movie industry based in Mumbai (formerly Bombay, thus the name) and while it is certainly the biggest film industry in India, it takes many more regions and languages to reach the record 1,000 movies-per-year mark. This misconception about Bollywood shows not only the predominance of the Hindi language and of Bollywood in India, but how the external image of India has been dominated by the Hindi-speaking north.

A closer look at the numbers shows where Bollywood actually stands and which other industries boost India’s massive movie production. The Central Board of Film Certification maintains statistics on the numbers of movies produced in various languages in India. In 2016 alone, there were 340 movies made in Hindi. Not far behind were the 291 Tamil movies, 275 Telugu movies, and 204 movies made in Kannada. Three other languages were used in more than 100 films – Marathi (181), Malayalam (168), and Bengali (149). India has 22 officially recognized languages, and many more beyond that.

The two movie industries that follow in the heels of Hindi-Bollywood are films in the Tamil and Telugu languages, called Kollywood and Tollywood respectively.

The state of Tamil Nadu, where the Tamil language is spoken and most Tamil movies are made, has a population of 72 million people. Meanwhile the joint population of the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, in which Telugu is spoken, is nearly 50 million. To call Kollywood and Tollywood regional industries would be true in the Indian context but this would not do justice to the size of the states and their audiences, which surpass that of many independent countries.

What is equally important is that while Hindi is predominantly spoken in the north of India (and parts of central India), the south speaks mainly four languages that belong to a completely different language family. These are Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam and, as the above data shows, all of these languages boast a vibrant cinematography of their own. While many languages close to Hindi or dialects of Hindi failed to develop their own strong film industries in the shadow of Bollywood, the strength of the southern movie industries lies partially in the strength of regional identity. A speaker of a language close to Hindi (say, Punjabi) faces less of a challenge in learning Hindi and presumably has less problem in accepting the fact that his TV screen and the screens of his local cinema are dominated by Hindi movies. The speakers of the Dravidian languages of the south (particularly the Tamils) have been more resistant to the imposition of Hindi and thus more attached to movies in their own language.

The limits of movie popularity can in some respects serve as measures of India’s identity challenges and Hindi’s predominance. The audiences in the south are proud of their languages and their movies but also know the biggest names and movies in Bollywood. The average movie-goer in the north can stick to Bollywood and may be found to be completely ignorant of which stars and films are popular amongst Tamil or Telugu speakers. A strong sign of these regional identity divisions is that if a movie emerges as a very strong hit in its core language constituency, it is often not dubbed, but rather remade in another major language. The new film will have largely the same plot, but with different actors, slightly changed regional idioms, and so on. Thus, a highly popular Hindi movie will be converted into a remake in Tamil with Kollywood actors, and the other way around.

Hindi and Bollywood’s edge over its rivals is undoubted. Hindi has the highest number of speakers in India and by far the highest number of people that are able to understand it. Bollywood not only produces the most films but earns the most money. Until 2015 all of India’s top-grossing movies were in Hindi.

Then Bāhubali: The Beginning hit screens.

The movie is a child of Tollywood, the Telugu film industry. Most of the leading actors (including the main one, Prabhas), as well as the producer (S.S. Rajamouli), belong to the Telugu cinematography industry. Yet the producers seemed to harbor great ambitions to attract a wider audience. The movie, rather than being remade, was released simultaneously in Telugu, with dubbing in Tamil and Hindi. The songs that accompany the dance sequences – a crucial element of most Indian blockbusters – were prepared separately in Telugu, Tamil, and Hindi, with the same melody but different backstage singers. The gauntlet was thrown right in the middle of Bollywood’s turf and the northern audiences were as enchanted as the southern ones.

As things stand now, Bāhubali is the third-highest grossing Indian movie of all time. Among the other 15 top-earning films, 13 are Hindi-language movies. One more imposer on Bollywood’s fortress of top-scorers was the Tamil-language Kabali, which came out in 2016 and is now the 13th highest grossing Indian movie.

To be sure, Bāhubali is not particularly “Tollywoodish.” The movie had a large budget and its visual effects are made to stun the viewer, regardless of native language. At the same time, the plot, the landscape, and the aesthetic of the movie is acceptable and interesting to most typical Indian cinema-goers.

The plot may not be particularly original (or very logical, to be honest). The exploits of a hero who is an undefeatable superman may not cause much nail-biting. As such, the main protagonist neither seems to have any plan for his actions within the main plot nor does he need one. Yet, among the typical Good-defeats-Evil and He-meets-Her blockbusters – especially the Indian ones – the story holds its ground. The special effects failed to impress me but I guess I am not the type of guy that falls in love with heroes jumping over 10-meter-long abysses without even needing a running start, kings killing gigantic buffaloes with their bare hands, and armies defeating invaders by shooting large pieces of cloth tied to arrows and setting them ablaze once they land on the enemies.

But I cannot deny the monstrous work done by the movie crew to generate a specific climate and a beautiful world. On one hand there are huge undertakings such as building an artificial waterfall for the hero to climb or shooting a part of the movie in Bulgaria. The second part, by the way, was completely unnecessary, as the snow-clad forests could have been found easily in India, the scenes showing them are few, and insisting on including snowy mountains in the story made little sense. Then there are nice touches and details. For instance, the invading bad-guy-army speaks an artificial language called Kiliki, which was invented for the movie (some few hundred words, that is).

While the canvas of the movie seems to suggest it belongs to the fantasy genre, it was possibly not intended this way by its creators. The central location in the plot is the kingdom of Mahishmati and indeed some sources do suggest the existence of a city with such name in the late ancient or perhaps early medieval India. The river Ganges appears to flow not far away from cinematic Mahishmati. This would be historically impossible if Mahishmati, as suggested by some source, was located in central India; yet, this solution also shifts the venue of the story to northern India. The inhabitants of the land are clearly of the Hindu religion, as they worship the gods Shiva and Durga and follow Brahmanic traditions (including the caste system). Moreover, the leader of Mahishmati’s army is visited by Aslam Khan, a merchant from Kabul who mentions other real-world locations such as Baghdad and Greece. On the other hand, the kingdom is invaded by the Kalakeya tribe, which seems to be strictly mythical. Thus, the movie is set in a loosely historical landscape, although not particularly married to facts or realism. This general but vague “Indian” spirit and lack of regionalized characteristics helps make the film appealing to a wider audience.

I would also risk one interpretation, though it may be a controversial one. Another aspect of Bāhubali’s popularity is the way it addresses its female audience. The visual side of the movie is a continuous celebration of Prabhas’ physical charm: in the opening sequences his clothes are drenched in river water three times. And as he walks about half-naked or a least with his arms fully uncovered, the camera closely scrutinizes how the muscles strain in effort. It is not particularly novel to flavor a film with a touch of eroticism aimed at both men and women. Still, the tactic of soaking the clothes of the heroes in water to underline the body’s curves are more commonly used with regard to heroines. That we also often see Prabhas dancing is nothing extraordinary for Indian movie heroes, but Prabhas’ skills in this regard are particularly noteworthy.

Bāhubali: The Beginning ended with a cliffhanger of sorts. Bāhubali 2: The Conclusion hit theaters on April 27 with expectations running high that it is to rule the Indian box office like the first. But is Bāhubali the beginning of the end of Bollywood? Does it mark the commencement of an era when Kollywood and Tollywood will reign supreme across the country?

The answer to the first question is certainly not. Hindi is and remains the leading language in India. Bāhubali did not win by changing the rules but by adapting to other languages and raising the pitch in terms of visual effects. What we may see instead is Tollywood and Kollywood dubbing and simultaneously releasing movies in Hindi to tap into the northern market. It will simply mean that the Hindi language film market will no longer be the preserve of films originally produced in Hindi. Bollywood may perhaps be forced to share some space at the box office with other industries but overall it would be a good thing. This would introduce southern stars to northern audiences.

Finally, I can’t stop myself from adding three additional fascinating parts that I found in the movie:

1. In the story, queen Devasena is twice shown fighting and killing enemies while holding an infant. This reminds me of a historical Indian persona: Lakshmibai, the 19th century queen of Jhansi who is sometimes depicted as riding a horse during the war while holding her son close to her. Both these images reinforce the belief that women must be above all good and caring mothers, even in battle.

2. The unsuccessful sword merchant Aslam Khan is dumbfounded to learn that Kattappa, the commander of Mahishmati’s army, is a slave. This is actually a reverse of historical roles. Kattappa is a low-caste Hindu and Aslam Khan is obviously a Muslim. Historically speaking it was the Turkish Muslims who introduced the system in which slaves could be made commander of armies in India.

3. It is easy to note that in the title of the movie – Bāhubali (which is the dynastic surname of the hero and which means  “very strong”) – there is line above the first “a.” This a diacritic symbol used by people learning Indian languages and not traditionally used in Indian scripts. It is, in other words, an academic solution that is not known to most Indians and is not needed by them. It is interesting to note its usage in a title of a popular movie.