Larger than life, and larger than imagination, the appropriately titled, nearly four-hour “S.S. Rajamouli’s industry-shifting action duology — “Baahubali: The Beginning” (2015) and “Baahubali: The Conclusion” (2017) — but maintains the filmmaker’s vision and his pulse-pounding visual splendor. Upon their release, the grandiose period myths usurped the Hindi-language Bollywood industry and irrevocably changed the face of mainstream Indian cinema, en route to Rajamouli’s global crossover hit “RRR” in 2022.
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Fans of the latter who haven’t experienced his other work will have the chance on Oct. 29, via a combined Telugu re-release with a built-in intermission and some technical updates overseen by the filmmaker himself. It’s a refashioned edit of the sword-and-sandal “Baahubali” saga that, despite some languid scenes and occasionally discomforting optics, yields some of the most magnificent big-screen action and melodrama of the last decade.
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Set in a nebulous past, “Baahubali” follows a prince raised in rural anonymity, who learns his true lineage — a detailed flashback that plays out at feature length. It draws on the hallmarks of Hindu mythology as seen in the “Ramayana” and the “Mahabharata,” with its regal tale of exile, warring cousins and sprawling battlefields. In fact, the re-release is framed as if the story of Mahendra Baahubali and the father he never knew, Amarendra Baahubali (both played by charismatic “Rebel Star” Baahubali: The Epic” broadcast a major twist. This isn’t to say the new edit is hostile to outsiders, but rather that its telling is akin to fables and fairytales with unavoidable cultural omnipresence.
Beginning with an elderly queen, Sivagami (Ramya Krishnan), desperately saving her infant grandson from an onslaught by royal guards, the film announces its style and tone with gusto — not to mention, its Hollywood influences. Rajamouli is a noted fan of James Cameron, so a scene that combines unapologetic soap opera with an iconic death borrowed from “Terminator 2” ought to come as no surprise. Still, apart from some minor changes in color timing, this prologue doesn’t really depart from the original edits, nor does the movie’s chronicle of a young Mahendra (named Sivudu by his adoptive parents) trying to scale an enormous waterfall over several years.
When he finally succeeds, the film’s gargantuan scale fades into view, as the sprawling, ornate kingdom of Mahishmati sits atop this mountain, and its ongoing conflicts and conspiracies suddenly flow towards the fiery, unassuming Mahendra like a deluge. News of the crown prince’s return spreads like wildfire and perturbs the ruthless ruling king Bhallaladeva (Rana Dagubati) — seen either shirtless, or clad in armor adorned with a lion’s maw — and his scheming father Bijjaladeva (Nassar), who’ve held Mahendra’s fearsome biological mother Devasena (Anushka Shetty) prisoner for 25 years. But when palace guards are sent to dispense with the returning prince, a general once loyal to Mahendra’s father, named Kattappa (Sathyaraj), discovers the invader’s true identity and regales him with the tale of his father’s upbringing and heroism. At this point “Baahubali” shifts gears and begins to focus entirely on the story of the benevolent, smooth-and-smizing Amarendra from decades prior, and his superhuman feats of strength.
The two-part “Baahubali” saga remains structurally unchanged when combined into “The Epic.” But in watching the whole story at once, the extended proximity of past and present allows Prabhas’ double role to feel more like sides to the same character separated by a generation — or like a king reborn to enact vengeance against Bhallaladeva. However, this streamlining comes at the cost of some awkward speedbumps. Mahendra’s love story from “The Beginning,” with the warrior Avanthika (Tamannaah Bhatia), is reduced to a minute-long montage and a few lines of voiceover. It may as well have been cut entirely. Then again, there’s no neat way to compress nearly six hours of storytelling into four, and the parts that made both original “Baahubali” movies tick remain firmly intact. Some action beats amid larger set pieces still have a tendency to drag, but it’s hard to complain when the apotheosis each time is an applause-worthy denouement, set to composer M.M. Keeravani’s rousing horns.
While the duology’s influence may have been a net negative on Indian action — spawning numerous two-part releases and overstuffed Matryoshka doll narratives — “Baahubali: The Epic” is a reminder that Rajamouli channeled the motifs of ancient religious texts better than anyone has since. He did so with an unparalleled panache. The drama, shot largely in close up, is broad and deeply moving, with sweeping operatic delivery set against fire or lightning (sometimes both). Meanwhile, the widescreen action frequently peaks with slow-motion tableaus and overwhelming crescendos akin to “The Lord of the Rings.” In Rajamouli’s cinema, violence is a dharma — a sacred duty — and there’s no more appropriate place to channel the ritualism of this uncomfortable instinct than in a tale of inheritance, writ large as a war film that borrows set pieces from “Ben-Hur” and turns them cheer-out-loud ridiculous by adding spinning blades to the chariots of antiquity.
However, now a decade since the original release, the rightward shift of India’s Hindutva government has only made some of these optics stick out more sorely. “Baahubali” is a film in which heroism is hierarchical, and in which the stakes are about who has the divine right to rule with an iron fist — to say nothing of some of its heroes’ explicit references to caste ideology as motivation. Some of its villains are brutish, dark-skinned hordes who speak a made-up language involving click sounds (whether this bodes poorly for Rajamouli’s upcoming Africa-set adventure film remains a concern). These dynamics, in totality, make it all the more difficult to separate “Baahubali” from the ongoing systemic atrocities of the milieu in which it was birthed, wherein the aforementioned Hindu epics are cast as factual history, and used as justification for violent oppression — the kind treated here as a perquisite to rule.
And yet, there’s no denying that Rajamouli’s attempts to construct his own mythology in parallel are, for better or worse, a smashing success. Between the graceful, strong-jawed Prabhas as both Baahubalis, the deeply conflicted Kattappa as the film’s dramatic heart, and a host of other characters who fit broad folkloric types, “Baahubali: The Epic” builds to jubilant cinematic delights. Its lack of subtlety is not only not on obstacle, but may even be its biggest strength. Human bodies are flung helter-skelter as if completely weightless, but iron swords dropped in moments of betrayal clash like thunder, and teardrops sound like falling rain, helping create a tapestry you can’t even be tempted to look away from.
