Why 'RRR', the Indian jingoistic superhero movie, became a phenomenon

It's crude.

Grotesque.

A superhero script for a movie with a patriotic message.

In the scenes of greater tension they begin to sing.

Nonsense wrapped in a flag.

But it's hard to take your eyes off the screen during the more than three hours that

lasts , the great blockbuster of Indian cinema that has become among the most watched on Netflix.

It does not come from Bollywood, Bombay's fertile audiovisual industry, but from Tollywood, another film center that has sprung up around Calcutta, and which uses the Telugu language instead of Hindi.

RRR

stands for

something like rise, roar and revolt.

It fits well with the new Indian nationalism embodied by President Narendra Modi.

It is set in the twenties of the 20th century and follows two brave fighters identified as real figures of the resistance to the British empire: Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem.

In this fiction they start from opposite sides, one in the colonial police and the other in the independence revolt.

An intimate friendship is fabled and condemned to confrontation between two national heroes who never coincided.

It does not matter: historians do not paint anything here.

The only thing that matters is the display of incredible combat, even with beasts, and of almost supernatural powers, an adrenaline show that refers more to Marvel than to any national memory.

The special effects are more clever than perfect, but they work.

It's Manichaean, of course.

The British colonists are evil and sadistic - the Indians in their service are not - and the rebels give everything for their country, even in suicide missions.

In an audiovisual market that longs for exotic products that break the monotony, the phenomenon reveals a new potential for nationalist propaganda.

An infamous idea is something else in the hands of a team, professional and with means, of action cinema.

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