Before you dive into Modern Masters: SS Rajamouli, the 75-minute documentary about the RRR filmmaker that hit Netflix on Friday, you already know where you stand with regard to Rajamouli—whether you are watching this as a relative outsider to the filmmaker’s life (you know, someone who discovered him only with Baahubali) or as someone who has grown up with his films and been part of the euphoric journey. Either way, though, Modern Masters: SS Rajamouli comes up somewhat short in giving a deep look into the filmmaker’s journey.
In all honesty, I belong to the former club. I watched Eega when it released and became an instant Rajamouli fan, but I never made many attempts to explore his filmography prior to it. So it came as a big surprise to me that Rajamouli, at some point in his career, directed TV episodes. It is practically impossible to imagine someone like Rajamouli, someone so skilled at creating big-scale spectacles, ever being compelled to harness his talent for a small screen. Similarly, there are interesting bits, like when Rajamouli’s son, SS Karthikeya, casually lists more than half a dozen family members who are part of Rajamouli’s film team in some form or another. It’s astonishing the amount of support the filmmaker has received from his family, both emotionally and creatively. There is a great story about how Rajamouli found a way to incorporate his auteuristic imprint in his film’s credits without offending the bigwigs, after an initial bitter experience with one of the producers. So, on a basic surface-level exploration of Rajamouli as a creator and a human being, there are a few stretches that will enthral you with their information, though not as much as insight.
Director: Raghav Khanna
Cast: SS Rajamouli, Ram Charan, MM Keeravani, Jr NTR, Rana Daggubati, James Cameron
Streamer: Netflix
I love the bit where Rajamouli compares commercial filmmaking to the process of making Upma with cashew nuts. It’s funny, and acutely observant about what keeps the commercial cinema format relevant even after all these years of consumption. For someone who isn’t familiar with Rajamouli’s pre-Baahubali trajectory, though, Modern Masters: SS Rajamouli doesn’t do a very good job at introducing the viewers to his earlier celebrated works like Sye, Maryada Ramanna, and Vikramarkudu, which, despite having their own fanbase in Telugu pop culture, have been completely skipped. It wouldn't have hurt to have a brief glimpse at these works.
The documentary also fails to utilise some of its own conceits on a cinematic level. There is an elaborate anecdote about the use of VFX for a sequence in Magadheera where Rajamouli wanted flower petals in a certain way, even at the cost of continuity, and even had a heated discussion with his VFX supervisor Pete over the same. However, the documentary never shows the clip to help us truly visualise what Rajamouli was going for. We are left wanting for more, and this feeling springs up throughout this pacey but hurried documentary, produced by Film Companion Studios.
As a human being, though, Rajamouli comes across as an interesting collage where several puzzle pieces sit together in a joyfully imperfect structure. It’s a pleasantly bewildering insight when Rajamouli’s wife describes him as a lazy man when not on sets. At the same time, Rajamouli seems like every bit of that perfectionist that you would imagine him to be, someone with a tour guide-like shtick even on vacations, with a 7 am wakeup time and a well-planned itinerary for everyone to follow, as his family recalls from one particular holiday experience.
Rajamouli is clearly a perfectionist, someone who wants things a certain way. So it is not unsurprising that the documentary zeroes in on the making process of Eega, which apparently started off as a much smaller film and had to be started afresh many months into the VFX process. It sounds gruelling, but not unexpected, considering the kind of ambition Eega had. It was a first for Indian cinema in many ways. So it’s perfectly understandable that Rajamouli struggled to communicate his vision to a team that’s not used to his idiosyncracies.
James Cameron, one of the two Hollywood stalwarts interviewed for this documentary, talks about how Rajamouli’s cinema celebrates a ‘muscular’ style of filmmaking. At one point, Rajamouli himself describes the relationship between a director and actors as akin to a launch pad and missiles. These observations are rather serendipitous, as we realise later on. At another juncture, interviewer Anupama Chopra asks Rajamouli about one of the heavily criticised scenes in Baahubali: part 1, where Prabhas’ act of disrobing Tamannaah’s warrior character is portrayed as romantic. And after a somewhat wishy-washy explanation, Rajamouli concludes about that section of his audience: “They don’t understand drama. They don’t understand storytelling.”
And suddenly it hits you—there were no actresses interviewed for this documentary. Actresses like Anushka Shetty, Kajal Aggarwal, and Tamannaah Bhatia, who have played significant roles in some of his films, are conspicuous by their absence. Its evident that the makers of Modern Masters: SS Rajamouli cast a narrower net at the outset. We get a feeling that the only reason why Simhadri and Magadheera’s stories are part of the documentary is that its leading stars, Jr NTR and Ram Charan, later played key roles in RRR, which can be called Rajamouli’s definitive work as far as global recognition is concerned. For a film about someone who is defined as a big-scale visionary, such limited ambition ends up being rather ironically underwhelming.
Also, there are not enough attempts at examining Rajamouli’s inner life as a taskmaster, and the complexities of navigating a space like that, both for him and others around him. In a dramatic, epiphany-inducing moment on his first day as a director, Rajamouli apparently began to yell and throw instructions when he found himself feeling nervous about his job, which somehow gave him the confidence and self-assurance to keep going. It’s an amusing little memory where the filmmaker speaks candidly, with no pretence or qualms about his inherent lesser-than-ideal self. Yet, the documentary takes a light-handed approach to making the filmmaker look deeper into this subject. There is also little discussion about the reason Rajamouli continued to be drawn to a certain kind of stories, more mythical and larger-than-life than an average Indian film. There is one captivating moment of inquiry, though. At one point, Anupama Chopra raises the question of the alleged casteism in Baahubali, but we never get an answer to that. In the same line of thought, Rajamouli talks about the need ‘to be himself’ while aiming for an audience as large as possible. For a moment there, we are left pondering about Rajamouli’s resistance to change and whether he deems change as some form of creative corruption.
The one chapter I wanted to learn more about was, ironically, not solely about Rajamouli. It was about Baahubali producer Shobu Yarlagadda. When you willingly spend over a hundred crores on such a project, only to realise the film is going to cost so much more, how does a money man process it? When Rajamouli and Prabhas talk about Shobhu Yarlagadda completely zoning out those last few days up to Baahubali part 1’s release and early days of hysteria despite the ‘weak’ reviews, I found myself completely invested in Shobu’s state of mind. It couldn’t have been easy to know that there’s no returning from a project like that from trusting a filmmaker like Rajamouli, where there's a ‘go big or go home’ energy throughout, and still march ahead.
This is one of the fewer segments where the documentary rises above its subject and paints a fascinating overview of a certain moment in Indian film history. And that’s what a good documentary is about. I just wish Modern Masters: SS Rajamouli had more of these moments.