In the late 1990s and the early 2000s, a genre that has since been defined as ‘faction films’ had Tollywood in a chokehold. Loud dialogue, Rayalaseema pride, thigh-slapping, moustache-twirling, chopped heads, and bloody sickles fuelled this genre, which took various forms over the years before fading in popularity. Even though Rahul Sankrityan’s Ranabaali is fundamentally about Indians fighting the British rather than among themselves, the film’s overall tone took me right back to that time. Vijay Deverakonda plays the machete-wielding angry young man in this tale, which falls short of being engaging.
Ranabaali is a 2-hour-58-minute-long tale that puts the viewer and the characters through the wringer. But somewhere between answering the question and still ensuring enough mass moments for the titular character, the heart of this story feels lost. Because of the colonisers but also because of the Indians around them who enable it, eventually, Mallanna’s prophecy comes true not just.
Rahul employs almost every trope that he knows would be cleared by the certification board to show the extent to which the British rule in India went. He intersperses scenes he shot with historical images from the Great Famine of the 1800s to make his point. The issue is that it begins to feel like torture porn after a while. On one hand, you understand that you need to look at this imagery and sit with the discomfort you feel to honour what India went through. On the other hand, the film is filled with too many characters to care about, but you’re never given enough room to actually empathise with them. Arnold’s Hector and the British Empire as a whole might be the big bad villains of Ranabaali, but the film implies that enough harm is also caused by Indians to themselves. Ranabaali chops off a man’s head early on in the film when his life is threatened. He deals with the consequences of that later. Some characters are implied to be of the dominant castes, given how they behave when seated for a meal, even feeling discomfort at having to sit with a certain man who’s their friend. A character feels proud about how light-skinned her daughter-in-law is. British villains are rolled out one after another like Pokémon, with the characters almost blending into one another in their cruelty. Hector is the least interesting villain of them all. the film’s loudness seems off-putting after a while While it’s understandable that anyone suffering during this era would be angry. The titular character yells at his mother, wife, friends, colonisers, and even the Earth. There’s hardly anyone who hears him speak in a normal tone. Whether intentional or not, Rahul ends up packaging Ranabaali like one of the faction films. The themes of loyalty, vengeance, power, and dominance form its cornerstones, with rarely enough time given for these characters to seem like fully actualised human beings. The rising death count is not the issue; that is to be expected in a film like this. But he seems to choose violence over emotion as he tells this story. Ranabaali’s heart (both the film and the character’s) only seems to beat when Jayamma is around. Rashmika might not nail her lip sync during a key song, but her beautifully written character injects life and reminds you to give a damn. If only the rest of the film were like that.
There are only so many times you can hear Hector yelling, “Ranabaaliiiii,” or Ranabaali constantly yelling back before it gets tiring. Ranabaali answers the childish question, “Why didn’t Indians simply fight back against the Britishers?” pretty aptly.
