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I watched RRR last night, a 2022 Telugu-language film directed by S. S. Rajamouli, starring two revolutionary Indian heroes of old, but re-imagined to make them meet and have cool adventures together.
It was a very fun movie. The dance numbers were quite impressive, I liked the "bromance", and the action scenes were pretty funny. Everything was pretty over-the-top, especially the British, which is why I'm writing this right now.
The British were not kind to India. I don't really know any specifics on what all horrible things they did, though I am familiar with the "Blowing from Guns in British India" painting that depicted the punishment they gave for some rebellion or other. However, even so, it is kind of odd how they portrayed the British in the movie. The movie opens with a British governor paying a few coins to purchase a child from a village because he liked how she painted and sang, and when the mother tearfully tries to stop the British convoy from leaving, a soldier is about to shoot her, but is stopped because the British governor considers Indians to not be worth the cost of the bullet. Other scenes of similar callous viciousness are common: an Indian man is brutally beaten by a British soldier because the soldier felt embarrassed and wanted to save face, the heroic sepoy who carried out the governor's orders is not promoted because only three white dudes were chosen to be promoted, or a man being flogged is made to be flogged much more than usual because the wife of the governor didn't consider him submissive enough.
The movie is really fun, but interspersed with this kind of atrocity porn, with Englishmen commonly saying that Indians are totally worthless subhuman trash, considering any Indian in the governor's palace a servant, or warning the nice British woman that cavorting with one is dangerous. It came across as an ethnic caricature. I don't think there are any British men favorably portrayed. The only British people favorably portrayed are the beautiful British women at the dance party, and the beautiful British woman who takes a liking to the protagonist. This sends the message to me "all you evil Brits, get out of India, except for your women, we'll definitely be taking those." Which, fair! That's definitely a natural inclination of many people throughout history, but it isn't really brave enough to come out and say it like that.
I was left wondering what other ethnic groups it would be appropriate to give this treatment to. I feel like if you swapped the British caricature with a caricature of any other (non-white) group of people, this movie would never have gotten so popular. People would be afraid to even mention it. I liked the movie, but I wish it didn't have this ugly portrayal in it. It made it less good. Also it was 3 hours long, what the hell.
Look, as an Irish person, it's very funny to have Alison Doody (Irish actress) playing the evil Englishwoman, and I'm sure she got a kick out of it for the exact same reason: it's the Brits versus the rest of us.
Is the nationalistic Indian movie being even-handed to the former colonial masters? No, you say? Oh let me fall back on my fainting couch in shock. Yeah, no surprise there. It's not a documentary, it's a rousing action-adventure movie that's about as historically sourced as any mid-20th century movie about Davey Crockett or George Washington. The two main characters never met in real life, but why let that get in the way of a good story to get the audience going "hell, yeah!" It's in the same spirit as Mise Éire (except we didn't have tigers).
Julie Davis of "Happy Catholic" gets it: review here, podcast here.
I haven't seen The Patriot, but isn't the way the British are portrayed in that movie similar?
Mel Gibson has form. Braveheart is an even better example. (Obviously English are the villains in Braveheart, not British, but I don't think that distinction matters to Irish-Americans.)
I'm reminded of the Monkey Dust "Jerry Brickhammer" parody of a fictional Hollywood production of Diary of Anne Frank with all the Nazis as Englishmen and the Jews as literally Irish, but it seems to have disappeared from the Internet along with a lot of other Monkey Dust material.
Or the typical A Very Irish Film.
Reminds me of this definitive encapsulation of Finnish cinema.
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