RRR<\/em> finally made its way into my inbox on May 16, with the announcement of a \u201cOne Night Only\u201d return to U.S. cinemas, dubbed \u201cencoRRRe\u201d \u2013 and as soon as it announced, every film critic and movie geek I knew had bought a ticket. I nabbed one at my closest available venue, the Alamo Drafthouse in Yonkers, and prepared to take in something that seems increasingly impossible: an honest-to-goodness cult movie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s become one of the most abused and misunderstood phrases in the cinematic lexicon, a description so loose and ill-defined that it\u2019s all but burst. (Let us recall The Ringer\u2019s recent \u201c50 Best Cult Movies\u201d<\/a> list, which included no John Waters or Alejandro Jorodorwsky, but entries for Empire Records<\/em> and Rushmore<\/em>. Better yet, let us not recall that list.) And perhaps you cannot call a film that is, by all definitions, a blockbuster in one country a cult movie in another. But the way RRR<\/em> made itself known to its American ticket buyers \u2013 as a word-of-mouth hit, declaimed loudly by a few, picked up by a few more, and spread to those whose tastes run to the fringes as an immediate must-see \u2013 recalls the golden days of El Topo, Eraserhead,<\/em> or Rocky Horror<\/em>. And that\u2019s worth talking about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The voice at the beginning of the picture purred \u201cBraaaaace yourself,\u201d and it was a warranted warning \u2013 there\u2019s no movie you can see right now that works harder to entertain you. I\u2019ll not get into the specific plot synopsis, because there\u2019s so much happening in RRR<\/em> that a description could run as long as this piece, and then some. Suffice it to say that the story is set in the 1920s, in the run-up to the Indian revolution against the English, and it concerns Bheem (N.T. Rama Rao Jr.) and Raju (Ram Charan), whose intense friendship \u2013 they meet while saving a child trapped on a burning lake, like ya do \u2013 is tested by their secret intentions and political allegiances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What that simplified (and I mean simplified<\/em>) thumbnail description does not convey is the sheer volume of movie we\u2019ve got here. And I don\u2019t just mean running time, though the 187-minute duration is certainly daunting. It\u2019s that RRR<\/em> is a genre-juggling, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink affair, by turns an action spectacular, a caper, a buddy movie, a romantic comedy, a period drama, a war movie, and a musical extravaganza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It does all of those things exceptionally well \u2013 the action sequences are astonishing, the villains are comically reprehensible, and the songs are catchy (particularly when the lyrics comment very directly<\/em> on the events onscreen: \u201cWon\u2019t this friendship come to a point of betrayal,\u201d \u201cThis is an unforeseen turn of fate,\u201d that sorta thing). And it\u2019s impossible to overstate the value of its leads, of their burning charisma and fierce athleticism, each man playing like they\u2019re successfully stealing the picture. S.S. Rajamouli\u2019s direction is breathtaking in its scope, yes, but also striking in its verve and self-confidence; it\u2019s a film with the stylistic and narrative flourishes of a director drunk on devices, high on the sheer act of making a movie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s refreshing to watch a movie with a pop sensibility and sense of style \u2013 the camera moves gracefully, the compositions are both inventive and spontaneous, and there\u2019s actually some color saturation, for God\u2019s sake. And make no mistake, much of its appeal is that it\u2019s just batshit insane, taking the ornate action set pieces and bromance dynamics of something like the Fast<\/em> franchise and amping them up to operatic volumes. Yet what\u2019s most striking about RRR<\/em> is its unapologetic sincerity \u2013 a quality that\u2019s become, well, somewhat foreign in American cinema. The soapy playing, melodramatic music, the familiar types, and the visual cues (slow-motion, extreme close-ups, haunted flashbacks, other arch effects) skirt right up to the edge of corniness, and sometimes topple over. But because it\u2019s all so sincere, because it\u2019s done without a wink (or, perhaps, with the right <\/em>wink), emotional beats that might otherwise play as goofy come off as heartfelt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have a theory as to why a film like RRR<\/em>, and a filmmaker like Rajamouli, hits like this at at our particular moment. Watching his work, I was reminded of Sergio Leone and John Woo, foreign filmmakers who juiced up the conventions of American genre cinema with their own style, energy, and cultural DNA. Their films felt like subversive, smuggled contraband in eras (the mid-\u201860s and late-\u201880s) in which our homegrown entertainment felt increasingly risk-adverse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rajamouli, like those directors, shows a willingness to risk silliness, anachronism, and overkill; his movie, like theirs, is cool because it\u2019s so willing to do things that are inherently uncool. And that\u2019s refreshing, because we\u2019re in one of the safest periods of movie history \u2013 an era in which all that warrants a budget (and attention) is that which is based on something else. Few movies, particularly big movies, are willing to risk it all anymore; they\u2019d rather tell stories we\u2019ve already been told, and fill their frames with \u201cEaster eggs\u201d and callbacks and \u201csurprise\u201d cameos that we\u2019ve already heard about. In that environment, of course<\/em> we respond to a movie where literally anything can happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n RRR<\/em> has its problems, to be sure \u2013 the silliness of the full-on comedy material doesn\u2019t really translate, and there\u2019s a whole nationalist propaganda element to deal with (at one point, Bheem literally wraps himself in the flag to save himself). But the pleasures of this thing are undeniable. When Bheem leaps from a truck to save his sister, flanked on all sides by roaring wild animals, the cheers that erupt from the audience are what moviegoing is about; when Raju arrives in a literal flaming chariot, and they embark on a water hose and fireworks fight, one wonders what else we want out of cinema. And the cheers that continue through that fight also remind us, after two-plus years of watching most things at home, that the great movies are so often also communal viewing experiences; you can, at this moment, watch RRR<\/em> on Netflix, just like you could (from 1990 on, at least) watch Rocky Horror<\/em> on VHS. But why would you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n In light of the success of the encoRRRe, distributor Variance Films is beginning one-a-day screenings of RRR<\/em> in New York<\/a> and Los Angeles<\/a>, which will certainly increase access (and revenue), though I can\u2019t help but wonder if they\u2019re courting a comparison to the ill-fated conventional release<\/a> of El Topo<\/em>, which lost much of its magic when it became just another movie you could see anytime. And RRR<\/em> isn\u2019t just any old movie \u2013 it\u2019s an event<\/em>. “RRR” is now playing once\u00a0a night at\u00a0IFC Center<\/a>\u00a0in New York and the\u00a0Glendale Laemmle<\/a>\u00a0in Los Angeles.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/RRR-2-1024x576.jpg\")
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