Dano Nissen

R and R stands for rest and relaxation. RRR stands for anything but. 

RRR (Rise, Roar, Revolt) is a three hour Telegu language epic about India’s fight for independence against the British, replete with over the top gun battles, spontaneous dance-offs, CG rendered wild animal attacks and no shortage of gratuitous TNT explosions.

The film is a sensation, standing at the third highest grossing film in India ever. It’s also found quite a bit of success overseas.

Director S.S. Rajamouli sat down for a Q & A after a screening of his film at the IFC Center in lower Manhattan. On whether he expected the film to be such a success across the globe, the director said, “Absolutely not. I never thought I’d appeal to the sensibilities of the West.” But the universal themes clearly tap in to a broad audience. He said, “Any creator will agree: a good story is a good story across the globe for any race, any language, for any people.”

Rajamouli wrote the film with his father, V. Vijayendra Prasad, another commercially successful Tollywood director. Rajamouli cut his teeth in film by working as an assistant in the editing room on his father’s films. Rajamouli said that his father spurred him on to make his latest film. “Initially I was doing nothing,” he said. “He was constantly nagging me.”

After relenting to his dad’s nagging, the next step in the creative process was forming the film’s iconic images. The film is full of striking images: a tandem shoulder riding gunfight, a flurry of disparate wild animals escaping from a cage, a man draped in an Indian flag as he barrels through a raging fire to save a little boy.

“The iconic images come first even before the story,” he said. He had the basic idea for the film down at the beginning: “Let’s get these two freedom fighters together. Initially they would be against each other, then they would come together against a common enemy. That was the basic line. Then it would come into discussion with my father. Then I look for iconic images for scenes. I tried to figure out what iconic images would tell this story and build the scene towards it.”

RRR is in theaters and available for streaming on Netflix.