Koduri Srisaila Sri Rajamouli or S.S. Rajamouli have made 3 consecutive, Telugu Pan Indian blockbusters namely 2015’s Baahubali: The Beginning, 2017’s Baahubali 2: The Conclusion and 2022’s RRR which makes him the highest grossing Indian director of all time. RRR is still making waves in the international arena and won multiple awards including the Oscars. Image source: Wikimedia.
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Contents
RRR & Naatu Naatu Background
When Baahubali: The Beginning first came out in 2015, there was little most of us knew that it is going to be a blockbuster mainly because it was first marketed as a Telugu language movie (even though it was also recorded in Tamil) and SS Rajamouli did not have a major blockbuster before this, unlike the big names like Mani Ratnam or Shankar.
Then as it was clear that it is a good movie, we managed to watch it only to be shocked by the twist at the very end making us eagerly want to watch Baahubali 2: The Conclusion in cinema to know why Kattappa killed Baahubali. For RRR, we did not catch it in the cinema in time but we managed to watch RRR over & over again on Netflix.
From Wikipedia:-
RRR is a 2022 Indian Telugu-language epic action drama film directed by S. S. Rajamouli, who co-wrote the film with V. Vijayendra Prasad. It was produced by D. V. V. Danayya of DVV Entertainment.
The film stars N. T. Rama Rao Jr., Ram Charan, Ajay Devgn, Alia Bhatt, Shriya Saran, Samuthirakani, Ray Stevenson, Alison Doody, and Olivia Morris. It centers around fictional versions of two Indian revolutionaries, Alluri Sitarama Raju (Charan) and Komaram Bheem (Rama Rao), their friendship, and their fight against the British Raj.
In August 2021, the final schedule of the film took place in Ukraine.
The song “Naatu Naatu” was shot during the schedule at Mariinskyi Palace, Kyiv, which is the ceremonial residential palace of President of Ukraine, filming took place some months before Russia invaded Ukraine. Barring a few shots, the entire shoot was completed on 26 August 2021.
In an article published in March 2022, by News18, it was reported that at least 3000 technicians have worked on RRR, while nine co-directors also contributed to the film. It took over 300 days to complete the shooting of the film.
About 75 days had been allotted to film the action sequences, and 40 fighters from other countries took part in the film. At least 2500 crew people were also hired from London. Overseas locations including Netherlands was also used for shooting some important sequences.
(Source: Wikipedia)
It is mentioned that SS Rajamouli’s next movie after RRR is with Mahesh Babu who is another Telugu famous actor and one can rate Bharath Ennum Naan as one of his best movies. So it is going to be interesting to see the outcome of both talents. One will need to keep tabs on his next releases as he is now proven to be a great storyteller from the South.
Naatu Naatu Full Video
The song comes in after Raju & Bheem have become best friends and Bheem wants to impress Jenny only to be humiliated by a bully called Jake when Bheem & Jenny were dancing. Raju then comes over and asks Jake if he knows Naatu. Then we have one of the dance sequences by a duo which turns into a dance battle with Bheem winning it because Raju being a good wingman fakes an injury.
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Kudos to NT Rama Rao Jr and Ram Charan who did a great job on the dance sequence in the movie RRR. It would have taken them months of practice, shots after shots and a great deal of stamina to get the steps all right and in sync with each other.
Oscar-Winning Song
RRR’s Naatu Naatu interestingly won Best Original Song at the 95th Academy Awards and they even replicated the dance sequence brilliantly live on the stage before the nominations were announced.
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But the funny thing is whilst the award went to the composer and the lyrist for the song which they greatly deserved but somehow the key component that made the song famous is omitted from any awards namely the brilliant choreography by Prem Rakshith who had won multiple awards for Best Choreographer for Tamil & Telugu movies. It is because a foreign audience will not understand or appreciate the lyrics other than the translated ones but they understand and appreciate a brilliant dance move.
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Fortunately, we have this breakdown of Naatu Naatu by SS Rajamouli and this time he emphasized how the dance, the song sequence and the cinematography is accordance with the required storyline. This makes us see Naatu Naatu from a different perspective and understand the hard work that was put into making this song sequence and the challenges that the movie makers had and how they overcome them.
If you have not watched RRR till now, go and watch it on Netflix and you will appreciate the brilliance of story-telling. It is not perfect in all senses as there are some weird illogical moments but overall it is entertaining enough to ignore these moments.