Sightlines · reception

How RRR was received

2022 · S. S. Rajamouli · RRR on Sightlines

The arc

A monster hit in India from day one, RRR's real arc happened in the West: a slow-burn 2022 word-of-mouth phenomenon fueled by Netflix, rapturous repertory screenings, and filmmaker endorsements, culminating in an Oscar and instant crossover-classic status.

What’s debated

Film fans still argue over whether its maximalist joy can be separated from its politics — critics of the film read a nationalist subtext into its history-remixing, while devotees insist that reading flattens what Tollywood spectacle is doing.

Its footprint

'Naatu Naatu' escaped the film entirely — a global dance challenge, a show-stopping live Oscars performance, and the first song from an Indian film to win Best Original Song; the interval-point 'friendship handshake' imagery is endlessly memed and referenced.

Where it stands

It's the film that made Western cinephiles reckon with Telugu cinema — an instant Letterboxd darling and the default 'you have to see this on the biggest screen possible' recommendation of the 2020s.

Did you know? The 'Naatu Naatu' sequence was shot over multiple weeks in front of the Mariinskyi Palace — the Ukrainian president's official residence in Kyiv — just months before Russia's 2022 invasion.

Named by the director

• The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) — Rajamouli cited it as the seed of RRR's premise — dramatizing the undocumented younger years of real revolutionaries, as that film did with Che Guevara.
• Mel Gibson — Rajamouli has repeatedly named Gibson his favorite filmmaker, citing Braveheart and Apocalypto as formative influences on his brand of visceral historical epic.