Bhoomika Joshi
(writer is currently a Program Associate for an ICSSR sponsored research program in Uttarakhand and on her way to pursue a PhD in Anthropology at Yale University.)
Right from the opening scene, my mind began wandering to try and identify the kind of ecosystem the plot was unfolding in. Soon enough, it occurred to me that it was futile to do so. The film was supposedly a tale of fantasy and its landscape would also be a fantastic one – there were jal parvats (mountains of water) from where the Ganga was flowing into its body in an abundant forest in what seemed like an area of tropical vegetation and temperature, however right at the peak of the jal parvat, the ambience vividly turns into one identifiably beyond the snowline with a curious mix of temperate grasslands. The architecture everywhere, however, remains true to classic Nagar shaili of Dravidian architecture. I had to let my mind wander in the spirit of fantastic imagination, restraining the impulse of either historicizing and in this particular case, geographizing the plot of the film.
But fantasies, in so much as they render real the surreal may also take flight from the real and render subversion onto our cinematic imagination. While Bahubali holds out a promise only for the former, it also restricts the cinemascape by the limitations that it sets out with – limitations of a social imagination that it has neither the will nor the intent to challenge. Even as the story unravels in a fictional, almost mythical space, the substance for most of it constitutes not what may be alleged to be contemporaneously ‘real’ (though there is no way of knowing due to the opacity of the plot to any historicisation whatsoever) but what seems more like ‘desirable’ to the maker and to a large extent, to the viewer.
Take for instance, the erotic element of the film. Avantika (Tamannah) leads a group of young men and women who have vowed to take back their state Mahishmati from the evil trap of the evil Bhallaldev (Rana Dagubatti) and free their queen from his clutches. The sequence that introduces the viewer to Avantika depicts her fighting and chasing enemy soldiers, skilled in the art of war and weaponry, living frugally and stoically, known for her discipline and determination while the superhero Bahubali watches her only to exclaim to himself in wonder at her prowess. He, however, refuses to see her in this form, he has long imagined her as a water nymph and has arrived into the scene of war chasing what he believes was her apparition dancing and seducing him. He actively denies her real form, that of a warrior.
Soon enough, Bahubali begins a crusade to make Avantika realize her true form, that she is a ‘ladki’ and he a ‘ladka’ and that her essentially feminine form and beauty have been hidden from her for too long in her single minded pursuit to take back Mahishmati. In what is perhaps the most obtrusive dance sequence, he disrobes her to reveal her satin like innerwear, lets loose her hair, unfurls her warrior pants to make a skirt like garment and crushes wild berries to color her eyes in black and her lips in red and to top it all, spurt some blood from his thumb to mark a bindi between her eyebrows. Later, he tells her that she no longer needs to shoulder the responsibility of winning Mahishmati back, even though she may be have been identified to do so having led a life of discipline and commitment. He has arrived, and he will take over, and she lets him, without a word.
For a staple and generic Indian movie plot, this should perhaps, by no means be objectionable. After all, the task of saving kingdoms in war and statecraft is essentially a masculine one and women’s role in doing so can only be an aberration and if granted any modicum of respect whatsoever, must be accompanied by that of maternal care giving, much like the status accorded to Sivagami, that of the Rajmaata. And she too is held in awe because of her husband’s physical disfiguration which makes him unfit to be a ruler in succession. Sivagami too denies the throne for the gendered claims of succession allow that it be occupied only by the one who is entitled to it. But again, none of this should be a matter of surprise for a Baahubali is essentially a male messiah figure and if female characters took over the tasks of skilled statecraft (Sivagami) and war (Avantika), there wouldn’t be much left for him to do.
We must therefore set aside any expectation that a tale of fantasy may then conjure some fantastic norms of gender as well, and that if the film belies history, it should do it in its true sense. For the moment, even if we were to set aside the absolute historical faux pas that the film makes, I was initially intrigued and then dejected to look at the social canvas that the film weaves. One of the central characters that the film builds the narrative around is that of Katappa (Sathyaraj). From how the character is introduced in the film and from his self-description, it becomes clear that he is a low caste warrior slave to the throne of Mahishmati. ‘Anyone who is born into my family shall be a slave to the throne and I can’t disrupt that tradition’, declares Katappa with a stride of apparent pride to a Persian mercenary who wants to buy him his freedom from slavery. He therefore won’t sit and dine with the royals of the kingdom or with their guests but will (literally) take a bull by its horn to guard their life.
When Katappa reveals the truth of Baahubali’s identity to him, he takes his foot and places it atop his head and the camera pans the silhouette of the upper caste prince resting his leg atop the head of the low caste slave warrior. Contrast this to the sense of fear and anxiety that is expressed when Baahubali uproots a shivalingam from its place of worship to put it beneath a waterfall. There is as, you may have guessed, a stark contrast.
If one is therefore seeking a sense of social justice in the tale of a superhero, it only comes in the guise of the (not so) secular cathartic win of ‘good’ over ‘evil’. The second half of the film labours over a war sequence.Prior to that, the film digs itself another hole. As the plot unfolds in flashback, a traitor sells the secrets of Mahishmati’s defense to the evil (and dark) Kalikeya. Baahubali senior and Bhallaldev are entrusted with the task of finding out where the traitor has taken refuge, outside the perimeters of Mahishmati. Mahishmati appears to be a typically upper caste colony – and the region outside its boundary is not safe and a specific spot where the traitor is rumored to be hiding is seemingly a den for men of vices – gambling, soliciting sex and consuming alcohol. Guess what guise the two heroes put on at this point? A skullcap, a check scarf around their shoulders, kohl in their eyes and an amulet around their neck. You got it right, evidently a stereotyped Muslim male. Let’s come back to this, for the moment, let our wrath find way in the impending ridiculousity of the plot.
Even before Kalikeya is introduced to us on the screen, we are told that he and his tribe are inhumane and barbaric, that if they were to attack Mahishmati, they would not spare the women and children in war, and that they would spell death and destruction. It is once you see Kalikeya on screen that you begin to make sense of why those premonitions about him sounded so ominous. Kalikeya and his army is dark, nay, black, a lot of them are disfigured grotesquely and their strength in war is their brutality, for unlike the skills in war and fine weaponry that Mahishmati has, their strength is their numbers and their simple weaponry of bows and arrows. Kalikeya and his generals speak a language that nobody but the traitor understands.
That is where, once again, the filmmaker becomes a trap of his own limitations. Accepted that Kalikeya speaks a language that is alien to the residents of Mahishmati (who, for that matter, can be clearly understood by the audience), a language they have not heard before and for which they need the services of a translator. You have to see the film to realize that no effort whatsoever has gone into making Kalikeya’s speech alien but intelligent – at most point – it evokes a sense of comic gibberish, not without intent.
Kalikeya, at this juncture in the plot becomes the cinematic representation of a ‘barbaric primitive tribe’, which looks and behaves grotesquely, prizes death and brutality, speaks gibberish and uses stones, bows and arrows for weapons while flouting rules of war and diplomacy. While Baahubali Sr. opposes animal sacrifice (slaughtering a calf as a pre war ritual) in a reformatory zeal to purge the upper caste order of his kingdom of violent rituals, he avenges insult on Kalikeya and his tribe with great force and power. Mahishmati embodied in Baahubali thus expels from its legitimate public sphere – the lower caste slaves, women, Muslims and tribal groups – with varying but certain degrees of power. It either portrays them as non-citizens or as undesirable ones at the best. For a tale of fantasy, that is a lot of status quo, covered by a lot of C.G.I and V.F.X.
English