The Biggest, Baddest, Most Expensive Film Ever Produced in India – Sivaji: The Boss
The cheesiness of Bollywood films is pretty easy to make fun of. Bollywood films are in Hindi, India’s unifying language (English only unifies the educated). There is also Kollywood, films from Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu, the Indian state in India’s extreme southwest. These films are in Tamil, a language not even in the same family of languages as Hindi (did you know Hindi is in the same language family as English, French, German, and Spanish? Well, it is.).
Based upon my rudimentary understanding… Bollywood Hindi films are heavy into singing and dancing numbers strewn throughout the film, often for no reason other than because such numbers appeal to the masses. Kollywood Tamil films are heavy into action, and the actor who plays Sivaji, the Boss, is the undisputed bad ass king of the Tamil-speaking world. He is actually, literally worshipped as a god in Tamil Nadu. Because he is a god, he can only play the good guy, and in his films, the good guy always wins. My lawyer colleague Ganesh, who is a Tamil, went to see this film on Wednesday. When asked if he enjoyed it, he said hell yes, but to do so, he had to remove his brain from his head and set it on the floor for the duration of the film. But simple escapist pleasure is what appeals to the ticket-buying hordes in India, no matter what language the film is in.
The star of Sivaji is Rajnikant. He’s as big of a badass as the Terminator, Rambo, and James Bond rolled into one, and he is overweight, probably out of shape, and approaching the upper numbers of middle age. In one of his most famous scenes he was wearing aviator sunglasses, and while holding a soft pack of cigarettes, he jerked his hand, the cigarette flew ten feet into the sky, Rajnikant drew his gun, fired at the cigarette, lighting it, then caught it in his mouth and started smoking. In another famous scene, two bad guys were running away, and Rajnikant only had one bullet left. He shot the bullet and threw his knife at the bullet. The knife sliced the bullet in two, and the two halves killed both bad guys.
Do you see how Kollywood films are easy to make fun of? Please keep in mind that Kollywood special effects are laughable by Hollywood standards. Plus, Rajnikant is too old and out of shape to be killing young guys anymore. Remember, set your brain out your head.
I saw Bollywood’s most famous star, Amitabh Bachchan in a Bollywood film called Cheeni Kum. In this movie he played a 62 year old chef at a fine London restaurant. He fell in love with a younger woman, and this was the plotline. It was an appropriate role for an elder statement to play. Most of the film was in Hindi. Small pieces were in English. Overall the film was easy enough for me to understand. I actually liked the movie and think Amitahb is cool. But that’s the thing. Urbanites like myself and my lawyer friends like this movie. It only appeals to sophisticated urbanites, not the masses, and it will never be a massive hit like Sivaji: The Boss.
Sivaji was released last weekend, and it was headline news all weekend, even in Maharashtra, where people speak a language, unrelated to Tamil, called Marathi. People were paying $50, Rs. 2000, to see this movie last weekend. That is a fortune for anything in India. Also headline news were the comparisons of Amitabh to Rajnikant. Amitabh is probably a bigger star worldwide, as Bollywood is more popular and more exported. But Amitabh is not worshipped as the supreme god like Rajnikant is. Basically the gist of the comparison headlines were that Rajnikant makes more per film than Amitabh, and Rajnikant has more fan clubs, but Amitabh acts in many more films than does Rajnikant. And Sivaji: The Boss is the most expensive film every produced in India.
And if Hindi films are easy to make fun of, and Tamil films even easier, you should see the Tollywood films in the Telugu language, the language of Andhra Pradesh. Again, awful and rudimentary special effects make the masses swoon. Balayya is the superhero to end all superheroes for the Telugu-speaking. He looks just like Rajnikant to me (click here). I saw him jump his motorcycle onto the top of a train, and with a pistol, shoot out the axles of an airplane’s wheels while the plane was taxi-ing. The thing about the plane, it turned into a crude computer graphic, looking like a when it lost its wheels.
But the best was in the rip-off of Mission Impossible 2. I saw the part where Balayya was climbing the rock face like Tom Cruise did. Remember seeing Tom Cruise hanging from the cliff by one arm? Balayya was climbing the rock face when he spied a bunny stuck up there. He jumped to a place convenient to grab the bunny in hopes of saving it, but in so doing, he slipped and ended up hanging by one arm. What a guy. Kills bad guys. Climbs sheer rock faces. And risks his life to save bunnies.
Based upon my rudimentary understanding… Bollywood Hindi films are heavy into singing and dancing numbers strewn throughout the film, often for no reason other than because such numbers appeal to the masses. Kollywood Tamil films are heavy into action, and the actor who plays Sivaji, the Boss, is the undisputed bad ass king of the Tamil-speaking world. He is actually, literally worshipped as a god in Tamil Nadu. Because he is a god, he can only play the good guy, and in his films, the good guy always wins. My lawyer colleague Ganesh, who is a Tamil, went to see this film on Wednesday. When asked if he enjoyed it, he said hell yes, but to do so, he had to remove his brain from his head and set it on the floor for the duration of the film. But simple escapist pleasure is what appeals to the ticket-buying hordes in India, no matter what language the film is in.
The star of Sivaji is Rajnikant. He’s as big of a badass as the Terminator, Rambo, and James Bond rolled into one, and he is overweight, probably out of shape, and approaching the upper numbers of middle age. In one of his most famous scenes he was wearing aviator sunglasses, and while holding a soft pack of cigarettes, he jerked his hand, the cigarette flew ten feet into the sky, Rajnikant drew his gun, fired at the cigarette, lighting it, then caught it in his mouth and started smoking. In another famous scene, two bad guys were running away, and Rajnikant only had one bullet left. He shot the bullet and threw his knife at the bullet. The knife sliced the bullet in two, and the two halves killed both bad guys.
Do you see how Kollywood films are easy to make fun of? Please keep in mind that Kollywood special effects are laughable by Hollywood standards. Plus, Rajnikant is too old and out of shape to be killing young guys anymore. Remember, set your brain out your head.
I saw Bollywood’s most famous star, Amitabh Bachchan in a Bollywood film called Cheeni Kum. In this movie he played a 62 year old chef at a fine London restaurant. He fell in love with a younger woman, and this was the plotline. It was an appropriate role for an elder statement to play. Most of the film was in Hindi. Small pieces were in English. Overall the film was easy enough for me to understand. I actually liked the movie and think Amitahb is cool. But that’s the thing. Urbanites like myself and my lawyer friends like this movie. It only appeals to sophisticated urbanites, not the masses, and it will never be a massive hit like Sivaji: The Boss.
Sivaji was released last weekend, and it was headline news all weekend, even in Maharashtra, where people speak a language, unrelated to Tamil, called Marathi. People were paying $50, Rs. 2000, to see this movie last weekend. That is a fortune for anything in India. Also headline news were the comparisons of Amitabh to Rajnikant. Amitabh is probably a bigger star worldwide, as Bollywood is more popular and more exported. But Amitabh is not worshipped as the supreme god like Rajnikant is. Basically the gist of the comparison headlines were that Rajnikant makes more per film than Amitabh, and Rajnikant has more fan clubs, but Amitabh acts in many more films than does Rajnikant. And Sivaji: The Boss is the most expensive film every produced in India.
And if Hindi films are easy to make fun of, and Tamil films even easier, you should see the Tollywood films in the Telugu language, the language of Andhra Pradesh. Again, awful and rudimentary special effects make the masses swoon. Balayya is the superhero to end all superheroes for the Telugu-speaking. He looks just like Rajnikant to me (click here). I saw him jump his motorcycle onto the top of a train, and with a pistol, shoot out the axles of an airplane’s wheels while the plane was taxi-ing. The thing about the plane, it turned into a crude computer graphic, looking like a when it lost its wheels.
But the best was in the rip-off of Mission Impossible 2. I saw the part where Balayya was climbing the rock face like Tom Cruise did. Remember seeing Tom Cruise hanging from the cliff by one arm? Balayya was climbing the rock face when he spied a bunny stuck up there. He jumped to a place convenient to grab the bunny in hopes of saving it, but in so doing, he slipped and ended up hanging by one arm. What a guy. Kills bad guys. Climbs sheer rock faces. And risks his life to save bunnies.
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And what about Sajid Khan? Have you run into him yet? My class reunion approaches!