While Telugu cinema has used dialects and cultural specifics from its many regions over many decades, never have the details been so specific, the evocation of these life-worlds so deliberate. For a Telugu viewer, the most immediately palpable difference between older Telugu commercial films and recent offerings is linguistics. For years, the predominant dialect in Telugu cinema has been one based in the Coastal Andhra/Vijayawada-Guntur region. Films featuring characters from regions such as Telangana and Rayalaseema tended to feature patronizing and offensive stereotypes.
Following the bifurcation of Andhra and Telangana in 2014, partly due to filmmakers emerging from the Telangana region, partly due to commercial filmmakers waking up to the potential to speak to specific markets and allowing for their films to benefit from the infusing of “rooted” cultural specifics — commercial films now speak many Telugus. What is interesting is that the big mass commercial films are “rooting” themselves in Telangana, Rayalaseema, and hitherto unexplored parts of Andhra Pradesh.
Sukumar’s 2018 blockbuster Rangasthalam is set in a village in the East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh—a fertile agricultural region, and the villain, Phanindra Bhupathi, is a feudal brahmin despot who has monopolized control over the village and its resources, standing unchallenged as the sole nominee for the Society President year after year. The villagers passively accept his regime because of the myth of Bhupathi’s caste supremacy, even as he exploits the farmers and farm labourers with money-lending and appropriating their produce with the help of a few henchmen. The protagonist of Rangasthalam, Chitti Babu waters the farms in the village for a living. Thus, Rangasthalam’s “rootedness” goes far beyond the East Godavari dialect and cultural aesthetics — the conflict between protagonist and the antagonist is built around the caste-class axis that seeks to control the resources specific to its geographic location. Though ostensibly a callback to a certain kind of rural movie from earlier decades like Mana Voori Pandavulu (1978), there is a retrospective aspect to the film— allusions to the persistence of casteism across political parties and even revolutionary movements.