Rangasthalam – 50 shades of brown

Clearly, there are just two colour filters that are used to showcase a village-centric film. Either, one goes with that pleasing-to-the-eye green to signify fertility, happiness, lushness and prosperity or one chooses a dull brown (yeah… sepia) to signify dreariness, dust and poverty.

Except for a few green plants/crops here and there during certain song sequences, Rangasthalam is definitely a ‘colour me brown’ type of village movie, despite having a myriad of colours stereotypical of most Indian movies during song sequences.

This 170-minute movie is about a particular village, Rangasthalam, and how they escape from the invisible clutches of their local president(read tyrant), who has been usurping their land and money.

If the one who helps these hapless villagers realise their solemn existence and instills in them a sense of righteousness and inspires them to fight against the systemic oppression is the protagonist, then the ‘Hero’ of Rangasthalam is Kumar Babu(An effective Aadhi Pinisetty in a role that finally doesn’t paint him in shades of grey).

Kumar, an educated and ‘Dubai return’ do-gooder, unable to adjust with the atrocities committed by the president (a menacing Jagapathi Babu) decides to put an end to it alongside his brother Chitti Babu(Ram Charan, in what is surely his career-best performance), a lovable ‘villager trope’ who is short-tempered, hard-of-hearing, dynamic and strong — the actual Hero who gets the whistles in his opening shot.

Someone once said that almost every second movie’s plotline in mainstream commercial cinema can be traced back to our Indian epics like the Ramayana and Mahabharata.

Rangasthalam is no different.

If Kumar Babu is Rama, the president is Raavanan and Rangasthalam is the Sita who needs saving, then Chitti is the faithful Hanuman.

He even wears a locket with Hanuman on it and in one of the fight sequences uses a mace to give a few eve-teasers a sound thrashing.

There is a strong caste presence in the movie that begs the question if it is the directors who are becoming more open with their caste depictions or is it just the audience who are more ‘woke’ now.

The president is a brahmin who doesn’t shy away from murder and animal sacrifices.

The president is a brahmin who gives his guests a glass of buttermilk, only to put them in their place by asking them to wash that particular glass to remind them of the hierarchy.

The president is a brahmin who doesn’t allow anyone to wear footwear while stepping into his palatial house.

The movie is in equal measures about caste oppression and the need for the oppressed to have political representation.

Kumar decides to take help from the local MLA Dakshinamoorthy (Prakash Raj) and fight the local elections against the president who has made the democracy into a monarchy.

Invariably, Kumar faces the usual threats and meets with a fate that wouldn’t have shocked anyone.

Rangasthalam isn’t interested in shocking the audience with the whats because all the proverbial twists in the tale are clear from afar. That’s where the director Sukumar’s decision to take his own time to move things helps the audience. The duration of the movie allows one to invest themselves with the characters so that the good, bad and ugly happenings to these characters affect us despite the eventuality.

There is enough happening on the sidelines to hold one’s attention. The motley of characters in the village have a certain character arc of their own.

Both brothers have a significant other who play important plot devices and are not just used for fulfilling the glamour quotient.

For that, we have Pooja Hegde in one of those god-knows-why item numbers that seemed completely out of place in this movie. However, considering the ear-splitting whistles and hoots that filled the entire duration of this song, well, what do I know?

Chitti’s love interest Rama Lakshmi(Samantha Akkineni) is not relegated to playing the cute village belle who acts as the soothing factor for an ever-angry protagonist in his quest for justice. She is headstrong, confident, falls in love for the right reasons and most importantly recognises the oppression much before her beau and voices out her protest even if a chauvinistic crowd puts her down.

On a side note, looking at Samantha’s performance in Rangasthalam, it gives off the vibe that she is much more comfortable in Telugu movies rather than Tamil where she shows considerable restraint in her performance.

One other character in Rangasthalam that piqued the collective interest of the audience was Rangammatta (Anasuya Bharadwaj, adding yet another impressive portrayal to her filmography) who is one of the best-written roles in the movie. Her place in the life of Chitti is dealt with impressive subtlety and devoid of any judgment and assumptions. The interactions between Rangammata and Chitti are some of the highlights of this movie that is set in the 1980s.

The best part about these peripheral characters is the fact that unlike most ‘commercial’ movies, they do not exist just to glorify the main characters. They have a life of their own, a story of their own and a reason for existence that is completely unrelated to the hero’s journey of self-realisation and revenge.

Rangasthalam is about revenge and it is violent. Very violent.

Though not much of bloodshed is actually shown, the guttural noises and the swishing of the sickles and skull-crushing blows become too frequent and louder as the movie progresses. An animalistic instinct takes over the protagonists as the movie begins to unravel and the plot gets clearer.

Rangasthalam becomes a completely immersive movie experience mainly because of the director of photography Ratnavelu(THAT night-time field sequence is shot brilliantly) and rockstar Devi Sri Prasad’s music(One of his best ever albums).

As mentioned earlier, the movie is set in the 1980s and the tone of the movie is certainly from then too. This is not necessarily a bad thing because Rangasthalam in a very good way takes you back to the three songs before the interval, three songs after the interval, two long fights, a few smaller ones, romance, songs, sentiment and revenge movies.

Those movies where despite the presence of police in the village, there are hardly any arrests made after repeated murders.

Those movies where a major turmoil is solved in the very next scene and no one speaks about it further.

Those movies where the hero believes seeing a girl bathing is the love-at-first-sight that everyone needs (It is not as crass as it sounds, but yeah…)

Those movies that still continue with the Telugu hero’s fixation with the waist of a heroine.

But, despite all of this or rather because of all of this Rangasthalam works on a multitude of levels. This is one of those movies where the staging, characters, acting, music, visuals, action sequences, choreography and direction somehow work together for most of the movie’s duration and considering it is 170 minutes, this is no mean achievement.

It caters to every section of the audience who get their money’s worth from various scenes that appeal to their interest levels.

And that’s more than one can expect in a movie that is headlined by a hero with the moniker ‘Mega Power Star’