Welcome back to Bahubali 2 complete detailed summary part 2! I’ve only seen it once in theaters, so forgive any slight errors in the order of scenes or stuff like that. Well, forgive and correct. If you mention something in the comments, I will either correct and update the post to show it, or else add a note to the beginning of part 3. (part 1 here)
The last section was literally two thousand words to cover the opening credits and song. Now we get into the real film! My theory of Indian film states that the first song marks the end of the prologue and the beginning of the film proper. Structured like that for the convenience of theater audiences, while you are waiting in line for popcorn or whatever, you can hear the song start and now it’s time to start making your way into the theater.
Right, so, song over! Plotty conversation time. The staging is a little boring here, reminded me distinctly of a similar conversation in Rudhramadevi. Royal Palace Pavilion Backdrop Type A kind of thing. But the character work is amazing.
(Rudhramadevi is really great, you should all watch it to try to cure your Bahubali hangover)
I talked about in my Bahubali 1 review how I was more interested in Rana’s journey than Prabhas 1. Because Prabhas 1 seemed already perfect, there was no where else to go. Of course, in this movie, we see all kinds of places he can go. But the promise of Rana’s backstory is more than fulfilled as well, starting with this scene.
The scene begins as a Nassar scene (ha! Finally learned his name and I can stop calling him “Rana’s Dad” or “Uncle King”). He is giving a monologue, how it is all happening again, he was wrongfully passed over for king because of his weak arm, and now his son is losing his place, because his unnatural mother has chosen instead someone who isn’t even of her own blood. And he ends by punching the stone pillar to prove how strong his remaining arm is. And finally, he suggests that the only solution is to kill Ramya.
This is a small scene, and notice the only 4 characters included in it, each representing a sickness in society. Nassar, the bitterness of old society feeling like power has been taken away. Rana’s bully boy, representing blind stupid quest for power. And the priest, representing the weakness of moral authority which has been pressured into justifying the unjustifiable. It’s the spirit, the body, and the mind of evil, all gathered together.
The most important part of the scene is Rana’s reaction. Which is no reaction. He just sits and listens. And pauses for slightly too long before simply telling Nassar that he is drunk, and he talks too much.
(It reminded me a lot of how he played his role in The Ghazi Attack)
The most powerful figure in the scene is not the one who is standing and talking, any of the three of them (Nassar has the monologue, but the priest and bully boy talk too), but the one who is sitting in judgement. And Rana is naturally taking that role among them. This is the first time we have seen Rana with his group, and it is the first time we are seeing him as a natural leader as well. Rana and Prabhas (both 1 and 2) are more similar than they are different. Both natural leaders, both naturally talented, both capable of playing the long game and holding their peace until the time is right. The difference is in the people they choose to surround themselves with. And this scene is where we finally get to start seeing that, to see the “real” Rana.
Oh, and then Kattappa arrives! Just as Nassar is sneering about him being Ramya’s dog. And he gives Nassar a great “oh snap!” response, indicating that he knows exactly how worthless Nassar is and how much he complains. He also, and this is important, reiterates again that it was NOT Nassar’s physical injury which made him a bad king. It was his mental unfitness, and that same mental unfitness is why he clings to the physical deformity. I wonder if Rajamouli added that line? Because it was brushed past very quickly in Bahubali 1, and I honestly don’t think it was in the Hindi version at all. Maybe after seeing the reaction to the character in Bahubali 1, he realized he needed to really clearly explain that the physical deformity was not a sign of mental instability, rather his obsession with the physical deformity was itself the deformity. If you see what I mean.
I also find it really interesting that Kattappa feels comfortable being so snarky to Nassar in front of Rana. That he finds Rana so non-threatening. Nassar has been a nonentity for years, but Rana is his son, and is sitting right there, for Kattappa to be this disrespectful without a second thought tells us something about how he sees Rana. Either that he believes Rana is so firmly under Ramya’s thumb, on the “good” side of the palace, that he could never be a problem. Or that he thinks Rana is so much less than Prabhas that there is no threat from him that Prabhas can’t handle. But we, the audience, are just beginning to learn different. Seeing the kind of talk Rana tolerates around himself, and the way he just sits and listens to it. There is just enough of a indication of what he will become that when Kattappa comes out and snaps back, you have a little shiver down your spine and a moment of “Ah! Rana can hear you!”.
After this scene of Nassar controlling his child, we get to see a parallel of Ramya controlling hers. She is in bed, recovering from her sacrifice with the burning coals. Her maids in waiting are attending her, but Prabhas is as well, massaging her feet and caring for her as a song about mothers and sons plays. Until she recovers and their positions are reversed, Prabhas lying in her lap while she does the business of state.
It’s presented as another scene or Prabhas’ virtue, the way he cares for and loves and respects Ramya. And if we hadn’t had the entire rest of the movie, that’s all it would be. But we did have the rest of the movie, so there is a slightly different level to it.
Yes, this is a sign of Prabhas virtue. But it is also a sign of Ramya’s flaws. It is good that Prabhas wants to care for her and defer to her. But it is bad that Ramya lets him. At a certain point, she should have sent him away. She should have said “stop massaging my feet, and go meet with the nobles of the city to prepare for ruling them”. Or “sit up and listen to what we are talking about, you are going to need to make these decisions yourself soon”. Their mother and son relationship is beautiful and wonderful, but it should not affect their relationship as regent and heir to such a degree.
This context comes from the scenes that bookend their mother-son time. In a way, Rana is a better ruler in his scene with Nassar than Prabhas with Ramya. Rana listens to his parent, but he is the one in control. And the same is true when we see Rana with Ramya after her time with Prabhas. Ramya is such a great actress, by the way. I don’t know if anyone else could have played this scene. She is still Queen Mother, all dramatic and powerful like always. But she mixes in a little tinge of motherly insecurity, normal human insecurity. It’s an odd mix, not peanut butter and chocolate but more peanut butter and tuna fish. And it’s supposed to be odd, Ramya is not meant to be a mother like this, she doesn’t know how to be a mother like this. It comes so naturally with Prabhas, she can be loving and indulgent with him. But she just doesn’t feel the same way for Rana, she doesn’t know how to be like that with him. And so when he calls her on it, when he points out that she is trying to over-compensate with her gifts of elephants , Ramya is relieved. She doesn’t want to have to be a “mother”, to try to show her love to Rana. She wants to retreat to her Queen Mother persona. But, see, this is what Prabhas should be doing. Not in the exact same way of course, but he should be gently indicating to Ramya that, now she has made her decision between her sons, she needs find a way to stop mixing her Queen Mother role with her just-plain-mother role. Rana is able to see that, and to take charge of the situation and make sure it is resolved.
(I find it hilarious to imagine the conversation with that poor elephant handler “sorry, can you take them back and exchange them for, oh, I don’t know, some swans or something? I will take store credit”)
I think, maybe, Ramya’s obsession with getting Prabhas a bride is because she see and is trying to resolve their power balance as well. She wants an indication that he is an adult, that he has someone else to rely on instead of just her. And she thinks a bride will be a quick fix. By the way, can we take a moment for the amazing shot of the table covered in hundreds of picture scrolls of brides? Incredibly unrealistic picture scrolls! They even have precise borders, just like you would on a photo printed off a computer. I’ve decided that we are meant to intuit some kind of high tech printing press is available in this country, some sort of wood block thing that can make up dozens of tiny perfect images to be sent out every time there is a proposal possibility. And, obviously, the whole “table o’ brides” image is supposed to be reassuringly familiar to the audience, since it is the same way marriages are arranged now, with lots of photos from aunties all over the world, instead of tiny picture scrolls from royal messengers.
I like that Ramya is rejecting all of these brides. She knows Prabhas well enough to know that he needs something special, not just a random pretty girl. Her blind spot is very specific, that she doesn’t see the most important thing is for Prabhas to choose his own bride. She still thinks she can pick for him, she can control his life and it will all work out. It’s the same thing through out the film, she knows him so well and can give him all the right things, except what he most needs, his independence.
(Bommarillu! The whole thing is an epic version of the conflict in Bommarillu!)
And that comes up again in her next scene with Prabhas, ordering him to make a tour of the outer areas of the country while she prepares for his coronation. Prabhas doesn’t want to, he feels like it is bad timing, like he should stay in the palace. But Ramya, nicely, overrides his feelings and tells him he should go.
The thing is, Ramya isn’t wrong. And neither is Prabhas. It would be healthy for him to prepare for ruling by traveling the country and getting a sense of the bigger picture. And it would also be healthy for him to stay at the center of things and watch Ramya ruling. But what is wrong is for Ramya to decide for him what he should do. Again.
It’s a small scene, but Rajamouli made a choice to play it this way. He could have accomplished the same thing by just having Ramya tell Prabhas to travel and Prabhas agreeing. But instead he included that moment of almost conflict, Prabhas doubting her decision and then bowing to it. And Ramya holding out the treat of a bride waiting for him when he returns. Again, putting off the real problem that Prabhas needs to stop having Ramya giving him things and needs to make his own decisions.
Traveling montage!!!! With Muslims. Where did they come from? This is such an olden times Mahabharata/Ramayana kind of place. It feels odd to have a community with a specific historical reference coming in. Mohammed lived and died about 1400 years ago, an actual real person. It took about another 200 years for Islam to spread to south Asia, so suddenly we are looking at a real time period for our fairy tale movie, around 800 CE. It’s just weird! Like if an airplane had flown overhead or someone had pulled out a cell phone.
On the other hand, obviously it is nice to have an acknowledgement of the Muslim community. This is such a Hindu story, I appreciate the filmmakers acknowledging that not all of their audience are Hindu. So that’s nice I guess. But still odd!
It’s nice seeing Prabhas and Kattappa traveling around together, even in just the song portions we can already see how much happier and lighter they are now that they are outside of Mahishmati. I just got into a big conversation in the comments with avani about how this is the movie that really starts to question the “perfection” of Mahishmati. And part of that is showing how much Prabhas enjoys getting the heck out of town. And getting the heck away from Ramya. Yes, he loves her, but he is beginning to feel the need to find out who he is away from Ramya.
dontcallitbollywood 
I have to say, going back through the movie like this, I really have to admire how Rajamouli created it. Baahubali gets this reputation of being a mass entertainer/Mahabharata ripoff, but it’s actually got these overarching character arcs and themes that get woven into the movie. And it takes cliches from the first movie and overturns them, too – in Baahubali 1, worshiping and sacrificing for your mother is presented as this ideal to aspire to (Prabhas 2 lifting the lingam for his mom, Prabhas 2 inadvertently saving his mom, Prabhas 1 literally not taking any major action without consulting Ramya) and when we see this song, it is a continuation of this, even using some of the same scenes, so that we expect that the same message is going to be pushed ….but no, instead, the movie goes for the more morally complex idea of what do you do when your parents/society are wrong?
– And something else I realized as I was typing this out, we kind of see the flaws in Ramya relying more on her own decision, rather than on what is more objectively right and wrong. In the first movie, while Ramya doesn’t outright say that whoever kills the Kalakeya king is going to be the next king, she implies it strongly enough that everyone else seems to take it for granted. And technically, Rana does kill the Kalakeya leader first and by the logic, does deserve to be king (and you can argue, in a way, that understood promise of Ramya is why he does become king-in-technicality in this one). Don’t get me wrong – Ramya’s choice to make Prabhas the king is absolutely the right one, and it’s a pretty stupid way to choose the king. But we see the roots of her tendency to make about faces back then, but at that time it just seemed like a deus ex machina to make a happy ending.
– Overall Ramya must have hugged herself when she got this script. It’s rare for an older woman to get a good, meaty role in Indian cinema, unfortunately, and even rarer when it’s a mother role ( they’re supposed to be sobbing sources of angst or benign sources of unconditional love). Instead, she’s basically playing gender-flipped King Lear!
– Oh, Rudramadevi! I watched the version on Netflix, and while it was fun enough (and I loved the feminist elements), it felt unsatisfying to me. It took me some time to figure out why, and I think it’s because while it has the epic plot and action of Baahubali (awful CGI aside), the only major theme is an unsubtle “SEXISM IS BAD!!!” (as in, everyone evil is sexist. Everyone good – the minister, Anushka’s parents, and Rana- are not. Except the citizens of her country and they are just misguided and change their mind in like five seconds anyway.) and it lacks the characterization that say, Rajamouli includes. I can’t imagine micro-analyzing every little gesture/offhand phrase in Rudramadevi the way I am Baahubali right now, and the only character whose personality interested me was Nithya Menon’s.
-And yes, exactly about Rana! In the first movie when you meet his older self, you wonder if everyone else in the past were huge idiots to miss what a danger he could be…and then you watch this and realize that he comes across as never doing anything wrong, technically. He’s much smarter than I ever guessed. I also appreciated that it doesn’t come across as Nasser corrupting Rana, really – in all their scenes together, Rana is clearly calling the shots (like when Prabhas and Anushka come back, and Rana keep Nasser from speaking out until the moment is just right – any sooner, and Ramya would have probably been more likely to go to Prabhas’ defense).
– You know, I thought of another reason why we need a Prabhas 2 + Anushka scene! Prabhas 2 clearly has no idea about ruling, and neither does Tamannah, and it’s clear Anushka is going to have to step in – but having seen the eventually toxic relationship that Ramya developed with her kids, I wonder how she would even approach a relationship with her son, knowing that she would also have to be regent.
– The other thought I had when Ramya was looking for brides for Prabhas was that thank goodness Ramya had not already picked out a bride for him (and heck, the way she functions, and given her belief that Prabhas will obey her no matter what, she had already had her chosen bride brought to Mahishmati) only to find out that Prabhas had already fallen in love with Anushka.
– The funny thing is that when Rana is chosen to be king, Ramya apparently just decides that she doesn’t care about this travel-around-to-learn-how-to-rule thing! A possible interpretation, too, though I’m not a 100% sold on it, is that she actually intends it as a sort of last-chance vacation for Prabhas to relax and spend time with ordinary people and enjoy himself — or get it out of his system, rather– before he settles down into kingship (her model at least). Like you say, she knows him very well, and I could see her thinking of it as a gift to a well-loved son instead of a definite requirement for a king-to-be.
– There are Muslims (sort of!) in the first one, too! Prabhas and Rana are coded strongly as Muslims in Manogari, and that might be why the Muslim community shows up not associated with a den of thieves in this one? Otherwise the other thing I liked was that they showed Prabhas going to other places and presumably growing and changing from his experiences there. And not just people, but other forms of justice and ruling, too — I specifically remember him watching a group of people who like psychically divined who the guilty party was or something like that? So it’s the whole journey away from home that changes him, not just Anushka, though it is mostly her.
LikeLike
-I saw Ramya changing the “rules” of choosing a king as a sign of her understanding a higher law. And that is what she loses in this film. That it isn’t about picking who is better based on some abstract theory, it’s about trusting your instincts and your judgement.
-I agree! Ramya has such a juicy part in this. All the actors do. well, except poor Tamannah. And they are all standard archetypes that turn out to be more. Ramya isn’t the usual “mother”, Anushka isn’t the usual “princess”, Prabhas isn’t the usual “hero”, and Rana isn’t the usual “villain”
-I love Nithya Menon in Rudhramadevi! I would have watched a whole movie just about her.
-Exactly with how Rana changed after seeing this film! What I really liked was that it doesn’t just change how we see “present day Rana”, but even “past Rana”. In the little bit we got of him in the last movie, he seemed just kind of petty and angry and bitter. And then in this film, we see those impulsive gestures harden into this whole combination of intelligence and anger and playing the long game.
-I kind of think that might be healthy, Prabhas 2 with no idea of ruling. Remember that his adoptive parents were the chieftains of the jungle people. So he knew how to order people about and talk back to Priests and things. and maybe it will be good for Mahishmati to be ruled by someone who has just those simple ideas of right and wrong and good and bad for the country, and none of the archan traditions of rule that Ramya was struggling with.
-I feel like I have seen this plot. The mother picking out a bride unaware the son is in love. But I have no memory of what the movie was! Anyway, you are right! I think it still would have turned out the same, Prabhas would have supported Anushka’s decree that a Princess should be allowed to pick her own husband. But it would have been a lot messier. Maybe that would have been the invisible woman that Rana married?
-I thought it was just because there wasn’t time? Prabhas was traveling to kill time before his coronation. But he returned just in time for the coronation. Although, I like your interpretation that part of Ramya’s order was to give him time to enjoy himself before the coronation. Although she still should have listened and respected his opinion when he objected, since he was about to be king after all.
-Good point! I couldn’t figure out what that thief/justice blindfold scene was about, besides just being an interesting scene. But it comes back up perfectly in Anushka’s judgement scene. When Ramya is following the traditions and asking questions, and Prabhas tries a new way, of judging the people themselves rather than their words.
LikeLike
Something in your analysis kept bothering me, did not know what. I managed to watch the movie again and found it – when Ramya wants Prabhas 1 to go on a tour, it is a minsiter-sort who objects. It bothered me because Prabhas 1 would certainly not have objected at that point of time when he believes whatever Ramya does has a meaning/ reason and also that there is no reason for him to get worried about safety. He is the most courageous warrior and he knows it too.
LikeLike
Thanks for the correction! I still think it is a bit odd that Ramya suddenly decides to send him off like that and barrels right over any objections. But you are right, it would have been out of character for Prabhas 1 to voice an objection at this point.
On Thu, Jun 1, 2017 at 8:55 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
>
LikeLike
I think it is like a prelude to how she is unopposed by Prabhas 1 and how it all changes when Anushka comes into the picture. Prabhas 1 had never said a word against her till then/ never gone against her wishes – he does not even think about not agreeing with her. It does not cross his mind at all.
LikeLike
– Okay, I like that interpretation of Ramya’s decision at the end of the first movie much better! And it makes sense too placed where it is if you think of the story the flashback being as much the story of Ramya’s rise and fall as it is Prabhas 1’s life story. At the end of the first movie, they are both at their highest, most idealized points, and that is why the first movie ends there instead of it just being a good cliffhanger.
– Tamannah had so much potential! But I don’t think her character was ever able to overcome the fact that it was an afterthought. (Though one wonders….in the original one movie draft, what was supposed to motivate to get Prabhas 2 finally up the waterfall? Or did we just not have Dhivara in that version and if so, how sad!)
– Me too! She was the one character I hadn’t really seen before: a princess who is unconventional (her sweet tooth, her shameless fangirling of male! Anushka) but also traditional when compared to Anushka and her cousin (? Maybe? The one who inexplicably wore miniskirts and obsessed over the bandit.)
– It’s surprising too how older Rana changes. By the time we meet him, Nasser looks like he is calling way more of the shots (for a second when the statue falls, Rana looks like he is going to get up and do something and we know that he is strong enough to have saved the people, just as Prabhas does, but Nasser talks him out of it IIRC?) and he is more into brute force than the long game. You get the impression that back in the day, he would have pretended to be delighted that Prabhas 2 had returned and lure him into a trap, Kamsa-style, instead of just going for the mindless attack on his forces.
– I forgot they were chieftains! That is right, he probably has enough experience to rule but is free of the weight of Mahishmati’s traditions!
– Me too, but I can’t remember….the closest thing is K3G, sort of, where Amitabh brags about knowing his son and wanting him to marry Rani as SRK is confessing his love to Jaya? The disowning scenes and setup are kind of similar too with the emphasis that the son is adopted and not biological (though Nasser says that, not Ramya) But where SRK plays his response as numb disbelief, Kajol is stuck crying and helpless in the background, and the wedding is a fait accompli so there’s no going back now, here Anushka has a voice and Prabhas knows exactly what he is doing and is firm in his decision, so maybe it’s not the same after all.
– The more I think about it, the more I’m buying it. Ramya just looks so indulgent in that scene, like she’s telling him to go play outside for an hour, then when he comes back, she will have dinner ready and a wife for him and he’ll have to go be king and behave instead of wasting time playing with kids and picking flowers and so on.
– Yes, absolutely, about the weird justice tradition foreshadowing the trial scene! (Though let’s be honest, Rana’s crony had probably signed his death sentence the second he put Anushka in chains.)
So part 3 is going to be Kunthala, I take it? Excellent!
LikeLike
-I was thinking of Ramya’s peak starting with her decision to keep her regency until both babies were grown. And beginning to fade as she kept putting off the decision. I joked about how obviously Prabhas was the better choice, because ie was such a saintly little boy. But after watching how things play out, I’m coming back around to that not being a joke. There was no reason for Ramya to keep putting off her choice, setting more challenges. She finally made a decision, the right decision, but it was almost too late. Heck, if Rana had been raised knowing he wasn’t heir, maybe he wouldn’t have had all his burning psychological issues.
-I just assumed that in the first draft they had something simple like a vision of his mother in danger, or of the city. And then he goes up the waterfall and immediately makes his way to the city, rescues Anushka, and we get the flashback.
-I wish Nithya and Anushka had gotten married at the beginning of the film, and then she had been Anushka’s partner for the rest of the film. Their relationship was so much more interesting than all the others!
-And I am back to my “Sita had conquered Ravan before Ram even arrived” theory! The constant inability to outlive his brother’s shadow, and to defeat Anushka’s spirit, just wore him down. He held on to proof of his physical powers to feel like he was in control of something, but he had lost his mental powers.
-Maybe I am thinking of K3G? The deleted scenes version where you have the “NOOOOOOO!” of watching Amitabh cheerfully planning the wedding while SRKajol are already getting married.
And yep, working on part 3 now! Anushka’s introduction and however farther I can get before I run out of energy/memory.
LikeLike
You are right! Prabhas and Ramya’s relationship is just like Bommarillu!
I definitely feel like “the mother picking out a bride unaware the son is in love” is familiar but I can’t think of where I’ve seen it before. Maybe it’s so common that I can’t even come up with examples.
Yes, K3G is something similar. I can think of Rajakumarudu, Mahesh’s debut movie, where he falls in love with Preity Zinta but his Uncle forbids him from marrying her. The Uncle wants Mahesh to marry his estranged daughter and then she eventually turns out to be Preity. Also one of the conflict in Badrinath (2011, Allu Arjun) is similar. Prakash Raj is Allu Arjun’s guru and he wants Allu Arjun to be his successor which means that Allu Arjun can’t marry. But Tammanaah is in love with Allu Arjun. So the conflict is between Allu Arjun’s love for Tammanaah and his devotion to his guru.
LikeLike
I wonder if it hadn’t been for Rana, if it would have turned out like Bommarillu? I mean, that’s what Prabhas kept saying to Anushka, “give Ramya time, let her get to know you, she’ll come around.” Only, she never did because every time there was a moment when she might have softened, Rana jumped in and blocked it. Oh, and the other really interesting difference is that Prabhas is a stronger and more mature character so he never reverted back. I mean, both movies show how falling in love and picking their own girl helped the spoiled son grow up. But Siddharth regressed a little once he was back to being around his dominating parent. But Prabhas, Anushka made him grow up a little more, and he didn’t lose that when he got back home, which was what set Ramya back on her heels, to have him say “No, respectfully, I disagree”. The same thing that happened way at the end of Bommarillu when Siddharth finally stood up for himself.
On Tue, May 2, 2017 at 10:28 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
>
LikeLike
You are right about Prabhas being more stronger than Siddharth in that he was able to go against the dominating parent earlier. In a way, Siddharth did go against his father when he asked for his father to get to know Genelia for a week. But then he just wanted to revert to his lifestyle where he listened to his father at home and did what he wanted outside. I think Siddharth was basically trying to avoid conflict for as long as he can while Prabhas was stronger and he wasn’t really afraid of the idea of conflict. Or you could think that Prabhas was not expecting this situation so he just acted impulsively while Siddharth on the other hand knew that this day will eventually come.
LikeLike
I think you nailed it with your last thought, that Prabhas was surprised and ended up acting bravely because he didn’t have time to think about it. Siddharth is introduced aware that his father will never let him control his own life. But Prabhas had the illusion that his becoming king would mark the end of his “childhood”. And then he just moved forward, assuming that Ramya would respect his opinion, and was surprised to learn that she wouldn’t.
On Tue, May 2, 2017 at 9:49 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
>
LikeLike
Yeah, I think you are right about Prabhas being surprised about Ramya not wanting to let go of the control on his life. I was wondering whether Rana would react in the same way if he was in Prabhas’s position. We know that Rana never really does anything that angers Ramya and he makes it seem like she has control over all the decisions We could say that he behaves this way because he’s seen how Ramya has reacted when Prabhas went against her. So how do you think Rana would have reacted if he was put in a position where he had to go against his mother.
LikeLike
I think Rana would have found someone else to speak up and avoided being the “bad guy” himself. Prabhas would have found that ignoble, to let someone else speak for him in that kind of a situation. Heck, he probably could have let Anushka speak for herself, and then arranged for Kattappa or one of the other level-headed advisors to talk some sense into Ramya. But that would be wrong, not to speak up as soon as he felt there was a wrong.
On Mon, May 8, 2017 at 8:35 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
>
LikeLike
That sounds right, Rana would probably have had someone else to take the fall for him.
Even after everything happened, I wonder why Kattappa didn’t try to talk some sense into Ramya. Is it his blind devotion to her that makes him believe that Ramya was right in making Rana the king. Or do you think that Kattappa feels that it is not place to tell her that she is wrong?
LikeLike
I don’t know if he thinks it is right for her to make Rana king, but I think he probably thinks it is a not-disastrous decision. We’ve been going back and forth in the comments about Rana as a ruler. In a lot of ways, he is a good one. He understands people and how to strategize and play the long game. He can be patient when he needs to be. And he really wants Mahishmati to love him, which is good in many ways in a ruler. And we saw that he is almost as good in battle as Prabhas. Maybe Prabhas would be the great ruler the kingdom needs, but Rana might make a decent custodian. Possibly no worse than Ramya, who kept the peace and made Mahishmati prosperous and safe for 25 years.
So it is a bad decision, but not bad enough to make Kattappa speak up. He doesn’t know everything we know, not just what Rana will become, but even the secret plotting Rana is doing now. He knows that Nassar hates Ramya and is useless, but he doesn’t know that Rana is just pulling the strings on Nassar.
On Mon, May 8, 2017 at 8:46 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
>
LikeLike
Good point about Kattappa not knowing everything we know. You may be right about Rana being a good king, but I think this would be true only if he was loved by the people which is what he was craving.
LikeLike
I think it would be true only if he was loved by his mother. Very Freudian guy, Rana. Can’t get love from his mother, transfers that need for love to the people, and then to Anushka.
On Mon, May 8, 2017 at 8:56 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
>
LikeLike
Yeah, that makes sense.
LikeLike
Avanthika is such an out of place character in BB1. in fact, it was because of her fierce warrior-to-mush arc and the garden sex song that made me walk of the theatre. I didn’t watch BB1 till again after I had watched BB2 (and I only watched BB2 because I was visiting my BFF after ages and it was raining and we had to cancel our party plans and there was nothing better to do than watch the only film playing at the theatre!)
As much as I like Tamannah, I felt her acting was very unconvincing compared to Anushka in the film. The colors from the cave scene make her eyes look expressionless. I think she said in an interview that she came into the film a year into the project and that too “by accident” when she was visiting Anushka on the set. I wonder who their original choice for the role was and IF there was an Avanthika sequence at all originally in the script!
If you take the “boy thinking with his crotch” thing out of the equation, Shivudu’s motivation for climbing the waterfall had been there since he was a child. He would have climbed it anyway and he would have followed the rebels into the cave out of curiosity in any case.
I hate the Avanthika arc entirely. She could have been so much more powerful, a total badass who could have been given a proper story in the 5+ minutes they wasted on the garden song. I would have much preferred to have had time to know her backstory, her previous achievements that qualified her to be the chosen one to go rescue Devasena. She could be like an agent that recruits him for the cause and they take the perilous journey together to mahishmathi where they fall in love.
It would have been amazing to have her killed in action in a totally kickass fight sequence with her dying wish being that Shivudu rescues Devasena. Losing your first love is a pretty big deal and that motivation would have made Shivudu’s “simple village boy to fearless leader” transition seem more organic. I also totally hated it that she was such a big part of BB2 promotions and Anushka and Ramya were not.
LikeLike
I’m going to assume for promotions that there were other concerns. Like, Anushka and Ramya were so clearly the standouts from B1, they were already busy working on the dozens of parts they were offered, where as Tamannah was not.
I don’t know if I would want Tamannah to die, seems awfully dark for this kind of film. But I would have liked more backstory, tell us how long she has been part of this rebel band, what drove her to join them, etc. And why she believes so firmly in their cause.
they could ahve easily found a different motivation to climb the waterfall, just like they could ahve found a different reason for Prabhas 1 to stand up to Ramya, but I guess a love story is traditional.
LikeLike
Pingback: Hindi Film 101 One-Off: Bahubali 2 and the Future and the Past of All India Hits – dontcallitbollywood
Pingback: My Sister’s in Chennai! Thus, I Missed a Post Today – dontcallitbollywood
Pingback: Wednesday Watching Post, Bahubali 2 Week Edition 2 – dontcallitbollywood
Pingback: Bahubali 2 Full Detailed Summary Part 3: Enter Anushka! – dontcallitbollywood
Pingback: Bahubali 2 Scene by Scene Detailed Analysis: Part 4! Anushka and Prabhas’ Unique Romance – dontcallitbollywood
Pingback: Bahubali 2 Detailed Summary (SPOILERS): Part 5, The Love Triangle Begins! – dontcallitbollywood
Pingback: Bahubali 2 Detailed Scene by Scene Summary Part 6: Most Romantic Battle Scene Ever – dontcallitbollywood
Pingback: Bahubali Posts Index – dontcallitbollywood