Rajinikanth’s Cinema And The Transformation of a Larger-Than-Life Hero

Big or small, Rajinikanth is only a star. There were stars before him and there will be more after him. But Rajinikanth and the kind of films that made him a star throw light on our relationship with cinema at a particular moment in time. That time might have passed, leaving behind shadows without substance.

A Rajinikanth film is not any film featuring the star. Kuselan (2008, Kathanayakudu in Telugu and remade with Shah Rukh Khan as Billu Barber, 2009), for example, features the star but is definitely not a Rajini film. Not just because he is not the centre of the narrative. But also because it is not a film in which we feel like screaming our appreciation or dancing in the aisles. A Rajinikanth film invites and incites us to do all that.

A disclaimer is in order at this point. Films that transform us into ecstatic collectives are not unique to Rajinikanth, or Tamil, or even Indian cinema. However, it is in the work of Rajinikanth, and Indian cinema in general, that some of the clearest and best examples of the cinema’s status as a community-forming institution can be found. A part of this community disperses after the viewing, while another part reassembles in street corners and other physical spaces, as fans of south Indian film stars have done for over seven decades, or in virtual spaces such as the fanzine, the Reddit forum, and so on.

The Rajinikanth film is therefore not a unique entity without parallels and precedents. It is a convenient starting point for a reflection on our relationship with cinema. The Rajinikanth film is a genre-like entity: it comes with a set of easily identifiable thematic and formal features and we go to watch it with certain expectations.

For the haters, it is a film in which an aging actor performs actions that are over-the-top even by Indian standards. But the faithful cheer the hero’s punch dialogues, which a helpful columnist glosses as “chunky short lines that make audiences go crazy”, grand entries, “mannerisms” or gestures that are repeated during the film, stylish dance moves, looks and getups that change with every film, and the judicious mix of action, comedy and melodrama. Not to mention, a hero who fights for the oppressed, and can never lose. If the above description seems too generic it is because the vehicles of other stars—Tamil and Telugu ones in particular—share some or most of these features.

What matters for us is that this is a cinema whose viewers come with a set of expectations and insist that individual films meet their demands. In the Rajinikanth film, viewers’ expectations are often centred on the star. The demands made on the star vary from the kind of roles he should play to how the character played by the star should be treated on the screen. For decades now, dying on the screen has not been an option for stars like Rajinikanth. Kabali (2016) and Kaala (2018) immediately come to mind as exceptions but even in them, the hero’s death is hinted at but not shown. That is about as far as a filmmaker can go in a Rajinikanth film.

The endearing games that the star plays with our expectations are evidence that we matter. Take something as routine as Rajinikanth’s direct-to-camera look, which is usually followed by a salute. According to director Suresh Krissna, the direct-to-camera look and salute, which subsequently became a part of Rajinikanth’s signature style, was invented in Baashha (1995, released in Telugu as Basha) by Prabhu Deva, the dance choreographer. Thanks and praises to Prabhu Deva for this contribution but the look and salute are illusory. Nevertheless, they give us the feeling that the star, and therefore the film, and by extension the industry, is acknowledging us, and the claims we—mere bums of seats—have on the star and cinema itself.

Sometimes, the limits imposed on the star—by us or his detractors—work like prompts for a novel act by our idol. The impossibility of dying becomes the basis for the spectacular (re)entry of Rajinikanth in Sivaji, where the titular character stages his own death only to return in a new getup as MGR. The fun doesn’t end there. MGR delivers the punch line to the villain: “I am Sivaji and MGR too.” A clever and audacious wink at viewers who know that Sivaji was the acting star while MGR was the action star. In the same sequence we see Sivaji/MGR perform a relatively new mannerism—tossing a chewing gum into his mouth. This gesture recalls his famous flip of the cigarette, which he replaced with gum in Chandramukhi and subsequent films (because he was criticised for encouraging smoking). Not smoking is the new cool.

These games remind us of an important point made by film theorist Christian Metz: cinema does after all owe its existence to us, viewers. In his words, “By watching [any] film I help it to be born, I help it to live, since only in me will it live, and since it is made for that purpose: to be watched….”

Our sense of entitlement, and the star’s obligation to us, stem from the undeniable dependence of the latter on us. Rajinikanth, the dancing maharaja, has to dance to our tunes. The exhilarating sense of control that viewers have over the unfolding narrative is among the main attractions of the Rajinikanth film. In the right place and among viewers who know their Rajinikanth, if we whistle and cheer loudly enough, the star appears on the screen and greets us. If the star makes a quiet entry, it is either because the audience doesn’t know the game, or the filmmaker is incompetent.

Enter, the New Rajinikanth

That Rajinikanth film, and the kind of cinema it is a prime exemplar of, is now history. It belonged to an era when cinema occupied pride of place in urban centres, and as a public space. The cinema hall was among the places where a wide cross-section of our society gathered together. During the high noon of theatrical viewing—the 1980s and early 1990s—film after film unfolded as if in response to our demands.

To his credit, Rajinikanth made the transition, from a cinema that was made for single screens and their unruly, socially mixed audiences, to films like Enthiran (2010) and 2.0 (2018) in which the star is essentially a prop for mounting a spectacle created by coders and miniature artists. One of the reasons Rajinikanth was able to make the transition was because he had grown large enough to anchor projects that ran into hundreds of crores of rupees.

The scale of these projects requires markets that transcend linguistic and regional barriers. Rajinikanth was already popular across south India and his Chandramukhi (2005) and Sivaji (2007) had proved that all over again. He had been acting in Hindi films from the 1980s and was familiar to viewers of Hindi cinema. He was therefore the natural choice for Enthiran, which simultaneously released in Tamil, Telugu and Hindi, a strategy that was hitherto limited to Hollywood and Hong Kong blockbusters.

In Enthiran we see two Rajinikanths. The first is a character who would have caused a fan riot in the old days: he runs away from a drunken toddy tapper who harasses his girlfriend. The other Rajinikanth—a robot—bears some resemblance to the familiar Rajinikanth but he/it is a villain that has to be neutralised. These Rajinikanths were presented to us at a time when insults to the star were unacceptable even if they were made in a film. Vaibhav Reddy was abused and threatened by Ajith’s fans for ‘slapping’ the star in the Tamil film Mankatha (2011).

Sivaji and Enthiran, as well as some other recent Rajinikanth films, were risky bets because they took considerable liberties with his image. That he did these films is an indication that a transformation of the star—and his relationship with viewers (not just fans)—was under way.

One of the key sites of this transformation is the blockbuster whose primary attraction is the scale of the spectacle. As is evident from 2.0, stars are important for the blockbuster but even a Rajinikanth can’t be its sole attraction.

The second is his work with Pa. Ranjith in Kabali and Kaala. Made on modest budgets, slow in pace and devoid of several key features of the Rajinikanth film, these films are also overtly political. Like Padayappa (1999) and Baba (2002), they too fuelled speculation that Rajinikanth’s crossover to electoral politics was imminent.

Interestingly, both films invite the viewer to recall Rajinikanth’s earlier films. At the same time, they draw attention to the difference between the Rajinikanth we have before us and the Rajinikanth were have been familiar with. Kaala’s lengthy introduction of the star appears to build up to a fight but there is no fight. Only weighty dialogues. The film has other confrontations which too don’t end in fights. Towards the end of the film, when there is a fight, Kaala and his people are defeated. Kaala himself is presumed dead. But he lives on as the spirit that inspires resistance.

Kaala was a box office disaster that had distributors demanding their advances back. It was released in the same year as 2.0, Rajinikanth’s biggest earner till date. By this point the new Rajinikanth film had properly arrived.

The new Rajinikanth is free from some of the constraints imposed by entitled viewers. At the same time, his films recall the old Rajinikanth. At times literally, with the help of reverse aging visual effects, and at other times by having the star perform gestures and dance moves from a bygone era. The most recent Rajinikanth vehicles are instrumentally nostalgic. Nowhere is this more striking than in the recently released Coolie.

In this film, we catch glimpses of a very young (VFX- enhanced) Rajinikanth. We also see him smoking a beedi, something he has not done on screen for decades now. The film lines up stars from Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Hindi cinema and has Rajinikanth tower over all of them. But the coolie in this film is a distant memory, an empty gesture at the mass film, the genre in which week after week the biggest stars danced for us, and because we summoned them with our whistles.

(The content and views expressed here are that of the author and do not reflect the views of Azim Premji University)