SS Rajamouli, the creator of Baahubali is a potential auteur

In an industry where gods change every Friday and new stars are born by merely signing on the dotted line, a visionary is born rather rarely. Because, the competition in mediocrity is so high that someone with an eye on the ‘larger picture’ has all chances of being shooed away like a beggar. Then, the search begins for alternate pastures.

When Baahubai – the beginning happened, bollywood stood at the enormity of human imagination and execution that simply catapulted its creator and director SS Rajamouli from the seat of a director to an ‘auteur’ in the making. Is he there yet? Well, tracking his footsteps and an unassuming persona, it is highly possible that the new god will soon descend on his throne.

Baahubali – the conclusion, the second part of the film is what might possibly open the door to that highly secure room of cinematic auteurs, which only a selected few have been able to climb. The high house is for him to scale, and rescue the prowess of his imagination now. That’s as close as being an auteur is, for Rajamouli – a man from the hinterlands of south Indian film industry who has dominated the bollywood-led Indian cinema for now, but has also managed to have Hollywood sit up and take notice of the possibilities of an Indian mind at work.

He is what Indian film industry was able to churn out, among a lot others, all through its century long journey. Is there more excitement in the offing with Rajamouli making it to the list of auteur directors of the century and sharing a seat alongside Ingmar Bergman, Jean Renoir, or the more recent Steven Spielberg, or James Cameron or Christopher Nolan of the interstellar fame? Well, that’s a million dollar question that awaits the answers with Rajamouli’s next epic film—‘Baahubali the conclusion’.

Because an auteur is the one who holds his cards close to the chest and will plant a seed of hope with his every creation of what is in the offing.
Needless to say, Rajamouli has played his cards extremely well. Even as the film began to make waves, Rajamouli was speaking about his next one, which would follow this one in scale, imagination and visual extravaganza. All qualities of an auteur in the making, which will become evident in the days to come.

Theory per se suggests an auteur is a director whose films will bear his signature. Just as a musician bears his signature on his tunes, a painter on his creations – likewise a director has a surefire stamp of his own making on the canvas he has been able to create with his imagination and execution of the concept that possibly haunted him even in his dreams. Signature, like we mentioned earlier, would be the director using the commercial apparatus of his films or film-making process just the way a writer would do with his writings or a painter does with his creations.

Though with a writer it is a one-man work with inspiration flowing from the society or his own thoughts; and a painter’s is that of a colour and his paint brush, a director has a lot more going for him with the team work. That unique challenge in film-making makes it even more delectable when the success comes through, and his film is appreciated for ‘his’ or ‘her’ stamp on it. And this could be a recurring theme flowing through all the creations.

It is a medium of personal artistic journey and expression of the director alone. According to film theoretician Andre Bazin, being an auteur was a way of choosing the personal factor in artistic creation as a standard of reference that keeps progressing in a continuum through further works.

This theory is highly useful when analyzing the works of stars who operate with the conditions of a ‘star system’. Best example would be Star wars series, or comparing a canon of films with Terminator 3 with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s movies that he had acted in, prior to that.

World’s first auteur perhaps was Alfred Hitchcock where he briefly made a cameo appearance in all of them, in some form or the other. That was just a small part of his signature, apart from the films themselves. Set aside his cameo appearance, Hitchcock’s movies such as Psycho, Vertigo, The birds and the rear window all bore his unique story telling style that was well evolved.

Hence, being an auteur is some sort of a game a director engages the audience and spectators in. This set them waiting for the next offing.
Indian cinema has clearly moved beyond its conventional scale and production. Today, with the release of Baahubali, the world seems to be the oyster for the auteur in the making.
Image: indiatimes