Rangasthalam

A village in the eighties. Chitti Babu runs an irrigation pump and does not hear well; everyone shouts at him and he shouts back. The village head has been the same man for thirty years. Nobody stands against him, because anyone who does falls into debt and loses their land. Chitti Babu's elder brother Kumar Babu comes back from the city and decides to stand for election. The village splits. Chitti Babu understands nothing of politics but protects his brother. Then something happens one night and Chitti Babu remembers a sentence he heard. Sukumar writes and directs. Ram Charan plays Chitti Babu and Aadhi Pinisetty his brother; Samantha Ruth Prabhu and Jagapati Babu are in the cast. The language is Telugu. The film did large business in Telugu cinema and was among the biggest earners of its time. The matter it treats is rural power; village politics works not as a matter of the state but as a matter of family. The character's hearing is functional inside the narrative; at the end a piece of information is missing because of it. The film builds the rural eighties in detail; the costume, language and places belong to the period. Ram Charan was judged on his acting for this part and it stands apart in his career. The music is by Devi Sri Prasad and the songs are part of why the film stayed popular. The last section closes on a turn and that turn changes the scenes at the start. Its limit is length; the narrative runs close to three hours, the interludes stretch, and the ending is overblown. Who it is for: viewers who like Telugu cinema and rural drama. Who it is not for: it is long, the violence hard, and the ending heavy.