Bahubali, directed by SS Rajamouli, is a big, sweeping epic that runs for close to 2 hours and 40 minutes. Spanning generations, going back and forth between the present and the past, alternating between vastly contrasting landscapes, it's an ambitious work from a visionary filmmaker who skillfully blends a tale of old school palace politics with modern VFX to deliver a consistently watchable blockbuster. After repeated attempts to scale the mountains and climb up to the top of the waterfall, Shiva finally achieves his goal, only to encounter Avanthika (Tamannah), a female warrior and member of a rebel group. Avanthika leads Shiva to his destiny beyond the walls of Mahishmati, where despotic king Bhallal Dev (Rana Dagubatti) is installing a 50- foot gold statue of himself. including an escape from an oncoming avalanche that looks completely fake, the VFX in Bahubali are more sophisticated than what we've seen in most Indian films. Art director Sabu Cyril employs them niftily to give depth and scale to his magnificent sets, and cinematographer KK Senthil Kumar gives us beautiful vistas combining the real and the computer-generated more-or-less seamlessly. I watched a Hindi dubbed version of the original Telugu film. Rajamouli is indeed a visual storyteller, and he brings the curtains down on this first part of his two-film saga with a curious cliffhanger. I can't wait for Part 2, which comes next year.
Review of Baahubali: The Beginning
