Sunday Watchalong: RRR! Noon Chicago Time!

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Happy Sunday!!!!  I did sooooo many errands this morning.

Hopefully we start at noon! It depends how long the check out line is at Costco.

Anyway, all things going as planned, at noon Chicago time i will put up an “and play!” Comment and we will go from there.

437 thoughts on “Sunday Watchalong: RRR! Noon Chicago Time!”

        • Essays are the easiest ones, but the tests are a bit tricky. Writing creatively really helps just making the essay work less stressful, since you always know more words to add.

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          • That’s actually the whole reason that I started writing about films. I was getting increasingly distressed about dissertation writing, so my advisor recommended that I start writing about something low-stakes enough that I could just wordvomit freely and not worry much about the end result. It’s honestly helped take the stopper out of my academic writing, I think. I’m still the world’s slowest and least facile writer, though : P

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          • I should have done that. Instead, film was my academic topic and I still haven’t fully recovered and made it “fun” again.

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          • Oof, yes, classic mistake ) : My topic is exorbitantly obscure but I still do recreational stuff that’s semi-adjacent and I’m trying to avoid blending those worlds too much.

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  13. This is so horrible, and yet completely in tone with what I know of colonialism. In some movies they have this “ho ho ho, I am going to rape the women in the public square” kind of thing. But this is a nice “white man’s burden” version. Yeah, they totally did take young children from their parents and not think anything of it.

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    • Again, totally accurate to colonialism!!!! The colonials always had some kind of logic on their side so they could feel in the “right”, often as ludicrous as this “she took the money, so it was even” argument.

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      • Mmhm, and there’s a lot of attention paid later on in the film to desi crossregional stuff (like when we get to the “revolutionary meeting” scene). I was surprised watching the Telugu version how much was in Hindi anyway because of the Delhi setting. Or even this bit, where there’s rioting in North India over political action in Bengal.

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  18. On behalf of Angie, who couldn’t be here, I will say “Ram Charan is a beautiful man”. And on behalf of myself, who is here, I will say “he is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more attractive than his Dad, I don’t care what people say”.

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    • Speaking about Ram Charan being beautiful – I wrote a tweet about how distracted I was during RRR because Ram Charan is too beautiful, and it went absoulutely crazy. Almost 60 thousand people saw the tweet and almost 1 thousand liked it! I’m shocked and amused because some of the comments are really crazy e.g Sombody called me a paid troll (like yeah, Rajamouli really needs to pay some random white unknown woman to promote his movie weeks after release). Oher person writes in telugu and from English words he throws from time to time, I understood he thinks I’m telugu who fakes being white woman by using fake photo . But my fav comment is this:

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  24. Again, excellent accurate colonialism! the upperclass dude trying to balance between his people and the British, not really evil himself, but also not fighting or getting involved directly in what is happening. Soooooooooooooo much better than the usual “all Indians are noble” or “all collaberators are super super evil” version.

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  29. One thing that I’ve noticed in watching and rewatching this movie is that splintering wood is very cool. Whenever somebody is going to whack a person/tiger/whatever with a piece of wood, they carefully select a dry rotted-out piece for max cinematic effect. (I actually kind of feel like the opposite would be cooler, but w/e.)

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  31. What meaning do we think there is in Jr NTR being really good at repairing engines, and also animals? Is it something about merging modern and ancient skills? Or that the underclass always has to deal with the messy realities of the physical world? Or just to show his intelligence versus Ram Charan’s book learnin’?

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    • TBH I’m pretty certain the out-of-universe answer is “We wanted to put one of them on a horse, and that was obviously going to be Ram Charan.” In-universe, though, I think it pleasantly complicates the duality of the two characters. Tarak spends a lot of time in Muslimsona, very successfully putting together this longterm subterfuge to rescue Malli. The people around him assume him to be simple and one-layered, but he isn’t and that’s what allows his method to work as well as it does.

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    • Another note: we have already seen Tarak getting misjudged once, by the Nizam’s officer who’s all “Those Gonds are peaceful until you hurt them, and then they’ll even break a tiger’s teeth to get one of their own back.” Immediate cut to Tarak fighting a tiger in the most apologetic way possible. . .

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      • Another awesome presentation of colonialism touch, we get the “othering” speech of “these Gonds” mixed in with the show of the normal love between mother and daughter that is driving this. They are just being human and feeling human things, it is the British who are trying to make it weird.

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  35. It must have been sooooooooooooo much fun for the Evil British actors in this movie. Just totally over the top performances, in really cool dress up outfits.

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  40. Some of the sound-design in this film is weird to me, but I really love that the train sound at first sounds like some sort of despairing noise that’s just happening in the soundtrack/in Tarak’s head, but is slowly revealed to be coming from an actual train.

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  44. I know Margaret and other have the colonialism discussion covered but I wanted to point out the depiction of Ram by Rajamouli in this movie. I have always found him to be a deeply flawed character (his treatment of Sita) and I think this movie does a perfect job of showing Ram’s flaws.

    Yes, he may be thinking of the bigger picture for his village but because of this he thinks the end justifies the means (very Machiavillian who is always depicted as a villain) and it doesn’t IMO. He hurts and kills a LOT of freedom fighters to actualize his vision. Did the end actually justify the means?

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    • YES! And the ultimate realization that you have to find the in between space where you can do the right thing in the moment, and think big picture.

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    • Interested to hear your Ramayana thoughts (I only know the vaguest outline of the story). It feels to me (SPOILERS for Kirre!) like the most charitable interpretation of their arcs is that, by being exposed to Tarak and his chums, Charan rethinks his whole ethos of freedom-fighting. Previously his and his family’s approach had been sacrifice for the greater good, but Tarak et al. are instead putting a similar level of effort into getting a single kid back to her family. And then you get that turning point where Tarak decides he can’t not do the same (ish) for Charan, that the humanistic life-preserving approach is in fact the more correct one.

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      • YES YES YES! NTR shows them that there is more than the end goal. He sees how Bheem’s intent is so pure and maybe not for a bigger picture but saving a little girl’s life is not more important that securing weapons for the whole village. And Bheem never hurts anyone. He in fact takes a beating to save his host family because he never wants to betray them. It shows Ram Charan that he may not be right.

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  45. On the other hand, I also love Rajamouli’s depiction of Bheem. He is emotional. He cares deeply. He may not be refined but he loves with all his heart. Dharmakshestra on Netflix is the other show that has done a deep dive into this.

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