Rangitaranga - The rise of Generation X !!

Today, on Aug 16th Sunday, i took my wife to watch the new sensation in Kannada movies - Rangitaranga. We live in New York City and It was a 1 n 1/2 hour train ride each way to reach the cinema hall playing the movie in Edison, NJ. As a bachelor, earlier i had travelled more than 2 hours each way to watch kannada movies in the same theater,  mainly to support and create a market for kannada movies in the US. But most of those earlier times, i was dissapointed with the kind of movies that i saw on screen. Forget the story telling, they were either badly presented or not enough care was taken to showcase the cinematic talent. The crowd used to be utterly dissappointed and make the kind of faces which would make me feel embarrased. Because i grew up in a family that was cinema crazy, i was always attached to movies. I have watched my fair share of good and bad movies in all languages. But everytime a bad movie was made in kannada and people made fun of it, i used to personally feel embarrased. Every bad movie that released made sure that the audience didnt turn up for a good kannada movie that followed it. Good kannada movies suffered among a ton of bad movies. After getting married for the past few years, it was obviously tough for me to convince my wife to go watch every kannada movie that released in the US. It was a different story altogether that kannada movies released very rarely in the US, even if they did, it was for one show on a weekend. With all this background, i was able to convince my wife to take the train journey to watch the movie. This post is a recap of my experience with Rangitaranga and the events surrounding it.

Rangitaranga - the build up

We were visiting my childhood friend Ravikiran in Dallas when we first saw the trailer of Rangitaranga. It was a pleasant surprise to know that it was directed my Anup Bhandary, who was 1 year junior to us in  high school in Mysore. Although i didn't personally know Anup Bhandary, i had seen him in high school. My friend Ravikiran had played circket with him in the school team, so i had heard quite a bit about Anup. Plus, Pran my college junior had assisted in direction. So it was a movie close to us from the very begining. The trailer was very captivating - breathtaking visuals, nice background score, good assortment of actors and pleasant music. It appeared as an interesting thriller and the main plus for the trailer was, it had reference to the music from Guddada Bhoota, a childhood favorite tv series. Anup had already shot a short movie "Words" and i had caught glimses of the movie and was very impressed. Anup's father Sudhakar Bhandary is a veteran director of television soaps and my father had also acted in a couple of his shows. I knew Anup was brought up in the right environment to pick up cinematic skills. Plus, i knew that guys from the new generation would break the boundaries with film making and other barriers with respect to the market for distribution. So, i regularly started to follow the hype getting built around this new movie from relative new comers and was waiting for its release. I closely followed the struggles the movie went through with the big release of Baahubali and how it lost the theaters in Karnataka. Nevertheless, i was waiting to watch it.

Rangitaranga - the movie

The movie starts off with a typical gusto of a thriller movie. The camera work and background score were captivating from the word go. A key area in which kannada movies had failed in the recent years was to hook the audience on the premise from the word go. Rangitaranga did that beautifully. The very first sequence makes you immersed in the movie. As the story unfolds, every character is introduced to the audience with the right detail. Each character truly blended in it's role and it appeared as if these were the characters you would interact in real life. Every supporting actor has given his/her best irrespective of how big or small the role is. The selection of the star cast is fantastic. The movie has shown enough reality to make us believe in the story premise and also taken enough cinematic liberty to give thrill to the audience. Not one sequence makes us question the point behind the story. In my mind, Anup has blended 4 tracks excellently. Memory loss track, a pure ghost story track, "bad guys mafia" track and personality issues track. Making a movie with only either one of these tracks would have resulted in a run of the mill movie. But the way Anup has held audiences attention throughout this journey, changing tracks just at the right time is fantastic. I couldn't hear a single negative comment from the audience during the movie. Even Angaara's character evoked laughter and sorry feeling in equal measure among the audience. Anup has worked very well with Nirup's acting limitations in certain sequences and has made the audience focus more on the situation. Like i mentioned earlier, the cinematography and background score have shouldered major burden in fulfilling the director's vision. South Canara's culture is so wonderfully shown without ever dominating the story. The songs are very melodious and have fantastic instrumentation, although two songs(party song and ee sanje ) were not at all needed in the second half. The accident scene could have been shot better. Needless to say, the show was housefull. It was wonderful to see a long line waiting outside for the next show. I heard from my friends that the last few days saw housefull shows as well.

The movie released in a record number of theaters in the US and is one of the largest releases overseas for a kannda movie. The collections speak for themselves, $76,000 from the first two days. It had 500+ shows overseas, 300+ shows in the USA alone. This release itself shows the confidence of the film maker. This confidence attracts audience, which brings to my next point.

The rise of Generation X in KFI

No matter how much the film makers in KFI deny, movies are a brand. It has to be built, maintained and grown in order to create a loyal fan following. The reputation of the film fraternity and past record play a huge role in the audience turn up for the next movie. Dr.Rajkumar, Puttanna Kanagal, Shankar Nag, Vishnuvardhan, Siddlingaih, Dwarkish all built their personal brands. B.R. Pantulu, G.V. Iyer, Girish Karnad built a legacy on their style of film making. Kannada audience would know what to expect from these film stars/directors. A level of quality was assured for their movies. But in 1990's this chain broke, a combination of factors resulted in few craps being made. Barring a few genuinely good movies, most of the movies made the audience move away from kannada cinemas. The KFI bodies started to behave like communists - "kannadigas must watch kannada movies, when telugu's and tamil's can watch thier movies, why can't you?" "lets ban outsiders from working for movies here" "we all belong to the union, every new movie must give work for us" "lets restrict other language movie releases"...and so on. When the country's economy had opened up to the world market, here was a film industry that was trying to go back to the "closed market" days. They started to break the rule no 1 of doing business - "Customer is always right !". When audience didn't turn up for badly made movies, KFI started to complain that kannadiga's do not watch kannada movies and they are nirabhimani galu. The same kannadigas that used to flock to watch Dr.Rajkumar's movies in hundreds were now called as nirabhimanigalu. Becasue of a few bad apples (directors), Kannada movies' brand suffered. It was similar to the maggi situation now - once its out that maggi contains lead, how will a mother feed it to her kid? 

Although things turned around with movies like Mungaru Male and Duniya in 2007, in my opinion it only showed the money making capabilities of kannada movies. Among the turbulent times, few sensible directors like Guruprasad (Mata, Eddelu Manjunata), Chaithanya (Aa Dinagalu), Sumana Kittur (Edegaarike), Jacob Verghese (Prithvi) were showing what kannada directors were capable of. But their movies didn't reach the wider audience due to the brand damage suffered by kannada movies. The arrival of electronic media didn't help either - tv channels that started promoting other language movies for money while deriding kannada movies. The brand continued to suffer.

In my opinion, the true change began to happen with Lucia and Ulidavaru kandante. The so called "class audience" was so much starving for meaningful cinema that when Pawan Kumar, the maker of Lucia reached out on Facebook for help in making the movie, the support poured in. Even i, along with my friend Ravikiran, invested in the movie purely to show that good movies have takers in kannada and talented movie makers should feel encouraged. A lot has been written about Lucia, so i will resist the temptation to write more. Rakshit Shetty's Ulidavaru Kandante was a revelation. The maturity in film making and showcasing of south canara's culture was top class. These two movies were on par with any other from world cinema. 

I want to highlight the business aspect of movie making and distribution that has changed. Both Pawan Kumar and Rakshit Shetty belong to the new generation X (born in 1980's) who have an open mind towards movie making and are willing to collaborate to make a meaningful cinema. They utilized the social media very effectively to reach out to the audience. Earlier, when the media was more of a broadcasting nature, one group (TV or newspaper) controlled the dissemination of information. The audience had to trust whatever came out from these media outlets. It was easy to manipulate opinion in such a scenario. A few vested interests in KFI, for whatever reason, promoted the view that meaningful cinema did not have an audience in kannada. People like me used to cringe by reading such views. But social media democratized the situation. An idea or a movie could only win on its pure merit. Anyone with a good idea or content could reach out to wider audience with a push of a button. The traditional hierachy was under threat. There was no mediator. The mobile phone penentration in india, especially karnataka, gave easier access to web for the "normal" kannadiga. They could easily reach out to the film makers directly on FaceBook. This is where generation x film makers are different from thier predecessors, by taking in the opinion of the audience on the kind of movies to be made. When meaningful movies/content started getting made, it could now reach a wider audience via facebook. Believe it or not, the "network effect" greatly matters in movies. A good trailer can now reach all over the world in a metter of seconds. In every network, be it in real world or virtual world, there are connectors and influencers. Connectors connect two diverse groups of people e.g.: A group of software engineers might have one friend who is closely connected to someone from the film industry. Influencers are those whose endorsements carry a great influence. I am not talking about celebrities here, although Rakshit Shetty and Pawan Kumar happen to be celebrities who are also great influencers. An influencer has to be neutral and genuie in their recommendation of a product. When influencers endorse a movie, it builds the movie brand. In my opinion, it happened with Lucia, Ulidavaru Kandanthe and now with RangiTaranga. These movies have been able to appeal to both domestic and international audience at the same time. And Anup has shown the business accumen and confidence to capitalize on this and have the biggest release yet for a kannada movie overseas. Watching this movie re-confirmed my feeling about the kind of movies capable of being made by kannada directors. In my mind, the story has just begun. Building the right expectations on the brand, Creating a movie with good content, cutting an interesting trailer and utilizing social peer groups to spread the message can go a long way in opening up the market for kannada movies. There is a whole new revenue model to be gained from overseas sponsors. For now, Rock on generation X :)

P.S: There are many more talented, path breaking movie makers, such as Giriraj B.M and others whom i might have missed mentioning. But since the post was getting long, i decided to end here