RRR has a distant cousin in Django

Quentin Tarantino is undoubtedly a path breaking film director and, needless to say, a favourite among many, including yours truly. Having given films like Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, and Jackie Brown, Tarantino's best box office results came from movie Django Unchained. A movie based on slavery and featuring a protagonist fighting a dramatic, stylized, superhuman-style fight to save a woman trapped among white aggressors. Django Unchained might claim to be a tribute to black people by Quentin, it was certainly not the  best movie to be made about slavery. Twelve years a slave, released in the same year, was a much better take on slavery. At best, Django Unchained was a masala mass entertainer, having some highly processed themes of slavery.

 

Like Quentin, SS Rajamouli is a great filmmaker already at the age of 47, poised to become even greater and take Indian cinema to unconquered heights for sure. His latest offering, RRR is breaking all box office records and is the best Rajamouli movie at the box office. While watching RRR last night, reminded me of many things, obvious Ramayana reference in the main protagonist, Hanuman taking a ring to Sita, burning of Lanka, the putting fire on Hanuman Tail, it it also reminded me of Django Unchained.

Similar to Django, here the hero does unimaginable, almost impractical, stylised, whistle worthy stunts and gets the captive out of the aggressors' reach. He also destroys the whole abode of aggressors and does it with almost ho harm done to them. There are many similarities in events and screenplay. Even the method of punishment to the captive, which is to keep the captive in an underground cell as a solitary confinement, is the same in Django and RRR. Both movies are set against the backdrop of imperialistic British empires whose atrocities are shown without any filter or censor. Both films have heros who are exceptionally good with guns and hit targets with bullets flawlessly. There are two main protagonists who fight in tandem. And both are either completely fictional or fictitious to the max.

 

 RRR is as far from our freedom struggle as Django was from the real slavery battles. However, both are mass entertainers and box office blockbusters, but certainly not the best movies from their maverick directors aka Tarantino and Rajamouli. Having said that I would remind you that RRR is a great movie but you should watch it on a big screen to enjoy it fully. However it is certainly not the best from the house of Rajamouli.

About the similarity in plots and their similarity with epic Ramayana may be due to the fact that Ramayana and and Mahabharata are such perfect stories that it is almost impossible to avoid it's effect while any one wrote his or her story. May be Tarantino has also read Ramayana before writing Django Unchained as the effects are quite visible.