SS Rajamouli retrospective: Sye – A bolder filmmaker takes generous amount of inspiration from Any Given Sunday
In this retrospective series on SS Rajamouli’s career, we try to understand what makes him tick as a storyteller. We are hoping that this exercise will reveal certain recurring patterns, themes, tropes, and cinematic elements which Rajamouli has perfected over the last 20 years to reach where he is today.
On any given Sunday, if somebody asks you, what is your favourite SS Rajamouli film, what will you say? If you’re a newly minted Rajamouli fan, the chances are you will either say Baahubali series or RRR. And you wouldn’t know that he did a film based on rugby called Sye back in 2004. Like his previous movie Simhadri, Sye is also a highly derivative work. This film is heavily indebted to filmmaker Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday. And if you’re a cinephile, you can spot a few other inspirations — such as Prudhvi’s first fight, which generously borrows ideas from the memorable duel between Achilles and Hector in Troy.
Rajamouli goes so far as even lifting a whole bunch of words from Tony D’Amato’s climax monologue. Maybe he did it as a form of homage. But, in hindsight, such things leave me with mixed feelings. I enjoyed Sye so much when it first came out. This campus-based film is about a bunch of reckless youngsters, who eagerly go to college every day without fail but rarely attend classes. It connected with me for some reason (wink, wink).
Also Read |SS Rajamouli retrospective: Simhadri – a story of a fledgling director and actor (Jr NTR), and its obvious inspiration Baasha
Re-watching Sye again made me realize that it was rather the only film in SS Rajamouli’s career that he made for a teenage audience. The story is set against the backdrop of a property dispute. MK College sits on costly real estate. And it attracts the evil eyes of Bhikshu Yadav, a bruiser with a great taste for theatrics.
Bhikshu, played by a wonderful Pradeep Rawat, who butchers the entire gang of seasoned criminals in a blink of an eye, seems clueless in mental games. Prudhvi (Nithiin) and his teammates send Bhikshu and his gang into a tailspin with their clever ploy. The man, who has solved all his problems with brutal violence, can’t respond to the little mind games of college students. But, soon he corners those giving him nightmares. Instead of killing them, he comes up with an innovative solution. He challenges the youngsters to a rugby match. He promises that if they beat his team, he will leave their college alone. So the wager is made and the match is set.
SS Rajamouli has staged the final rugby match in a very entertaining way. Back then, he introduced young adolescents to a whole new game, which was fascinating and terrifying at once. While Rajamouli has taken certain key ideas from a few Hollywood movies, he makes that plot points his own by adapting to the Indian conditions.
For example, he’s very well aware of the fact that Indians don’t care about American football. There is no point in making a technical sports drama like Any Given Sunday. At the time, I would have never cared for the mind-boggling football rules, which involve imaginary transverse lines. What does that even mean? Or I would never be bothered to learn about quarterback or blindside.
Rajamouli takes the core idea of Any Given Sunday — American football is a modern-day gladiator match. And he weaves the narration around it. He builds on the pure physicality of the sports, which allows men to intentionally bump into each other with great force and impunity. Rajamouli latches onto that idea and he doesn’t bother to explain the rules of rugby, besides the cursory knowledge about the game’s scoring method.
He introduces us to the rugby game as an excuse for the rival camps of MK College to settle their scores in plain sight. And this simplification of the sport, allows us to dig into it. It becomes a more engaging alternative to conventional street fights. That’s the cleverness of Rajamouli that has helped him reach where he’s today. He knows who his audiences are and what they want. And he delivers just that.
Bhikshu Yadav and his bumbling group of henchmen are the best part of this film. If not for their bad track record, one would feel the urge to root for them in the climax. Bhikshu and his men bring the circus to the rugby field. A giant buffalo, which is the insignia of Bhikshu’s team, is led into the field, followed by a war dance, which sticks in your brain.
In Sye, SS Rajamouli seemed more confident as a filmmaker than he was in Simhadri. So much so that it’s in Sye, he used his signature stamp for the first time in the end credits. An SS Rajamouli film since then came to be associated with high-octane, quality entertainment.