Best Dance Scene in Film this Year: RRR's Naatu Naatu

A couple of days ago, I saw a video on Twitter from a screening of S.S. Rajamouli’s RRR at Beyond Fest in Los Angeles.

It features a cinema audience dancing and reacting to the Naatu Naatu scene featuring Ram Charan and N.T. Rama Rao Jr.

I watched the film twice at the cinema in April, and at the time only a teaser clip was available online. The entire scene can now be found on YouTube and I wanted to share it here with you.


It is a rousing and joyous middle finger to white supremacy. If there are annual awards for best dance scenes in film, this one would have no competition. And if the televised Oscar ceremony is struggling with poor viewership and ratings, I’m certain if Naatu Naatu could qualify for Best Original Song and gets nominated, many people will tune in.

Despite the film’s epicness and unexpected success outside India, it faces criticism with regards to representation, castecism and nationalism which shouldn’t be ignored.

“The film is, certainly, admirably anti-colonialist with its searing hatred for the British Empire and the white man’s burden. Its contempt for the colonizers, with action scenes showcasing tigers and leopards devouring them, is delightful and resonant.

But it is also emblematic of a larger current trend in Indian film — movies that stoke the flames of nationalism in the current India and its troubling political climate. And it is the most successful film of them all to date, reaching a far wider viewership, which is why it matters.

In RRR’s case, the problem is that it is very much a fantasy of the upper-caste Hindu gaze, and all those willing to go along with its hegemony.” Ritesh Babu, Vox

 

But for a few minutes, let’s celebrate this scene which deserves a place in cinema history.

FilmHind MezainaBest Dance Scene in Film this Year: RRR's Naatu NaatuComment