Braveheart

Best films of all time
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S. S. Rajamouli was born in 1973, in the South Indian state of Karnataka, to a family from a dominant caste. He learned how to make movies from various odd jobs and apprenticeships, including a years-long stint working for his father, the successful screenwriter Koduri Viswa Vijayendra Prasad. In the past two decades, Rajamouli has earned a reputation among Indian moviegoers for a series of formally ambitious blockbusters, including the spectacular “Baahubali: The Beginning,” from 2015, which inspired a new wave of Indian historic epics. But he has found a new level of global success with his latest film, the joyously over-the-top action-fantasy “RRR”—short for “Rise Roar Revolt”—which is among the highest-grossing Indian movies of all time.

“RRR” was first released last March but caught on with American viewers over the summer, after an unusual U.S.-wide theatrical rerelease organized by the distributor Variance Films and the film consultant Josh Hurtado. The movie hasn’t left U.S. theatres since. A Hindi-dubbed version on Netflix has furthered its word-of-mouth reputation. For

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S.S. Rajamouli

Comments

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Braveheart

Braveheart is a clever film that brilliantly alludes to historical events. It beautifully integrates human emotions amid social and political drama.

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LINK TO THE SCENE

SS Rajamouli on BRAVEHEART, via The New Yorker

“I usually don’t like sad endings. Any story that I read, any film that I watch, I don’t like it when the hero dies. But I remember the end of Braveheart, when we can see the hero [Scottish freedom fighter William Wallace] being tortured and eventually killed. He shouts “Freedom,” and when the film ended I didn’t feel sad. I felt very emotional. I felt my spirit being uplifted. You can see the pain in his face, how he calls on his inner strength to say what he wanted to say, even though it is just one single word. That made a deep impact on me.

Later, when I wrote RRR, I wanted to show a shift in the tone of Bheem’s character. He’s an innocent person until this moment. Then he takes a hard stance against his oppressors. We thought that we had a hard emotional foundation for an action sequence and didn’t want to waste a chance. But then we thought a song would be nice. That’s how people in Telangana, the region where Bheem’s from, express their emotions. And I remembered Braveheart.”

SS Rajamouli on B