Rajinikanth Superstar!

Everything you ever wanted to know about a superstar you’ve never heard of.

Jackie Chan is the highest paid actor in Asia and it makes sense. In addition to produce, direct and act in his own films since 1980, he earned millions in Hollywood with blockbusters like Rush Hour and Karate Kid. Occupies second place in the charts? Oddly, this is a middle-aged man, balding, plump in the belly. A native of Tamil Nadu, a southern state of India, it is this kind of old-fashioned mustache since 1986. His name is Rajinikanth. This is not a single actor is a force of nature. Imagine a tiger and a tornado that mate and give birth to a tornatigre, which blends in turn with an earthquake: the child of this union is Rajinikanth! Aka “Superstar Rajinikanth ‘, as shown (this is mandatory) generics of his films.

If you did not know him before, you may have heard the 1st October in the worldwide release of his film Endhiran (The Robot). This is the most expensive Indian film of all time. And it is becoming the worldwide release the most gigantic in the history of Indian cinema, with 2,000 copies projected simultaneously. Yuen Wo-ping ( The Matrix ) has signed the action scenes, the studios Stan Winston ( Jurassic Park ) drew the creatures, “Industrial Light and Magic,” the company of George Lucas, took care of special effects, and the composer AR Rahman ( Slumdog Millionaire ), Oscar-winning, wrote the music. The funds invested are enormous, but the producers expect to go far in their charge. And for good reason: it’s not just a film is a film with Rajinikanth.

A man, a real

At 61, Rajinikanth has over 150 Indian films to his credit, and it’s not even really a Bollywood star. He works in the Tamil film industry, the poor cousin of Bollywood, known for the prowess of its cameramen and realistic crime scenes. The stars of Bollywood fans certainly have fans, but Rajinikanth is considered beyond reproach, beyond criticism, beyond good and evil. Ask the “Bollyfans” on their favorite stars, they will come the usual refrain was a kid, Hrithik, Shahrukh Khan is rotten spoiled, Amitabh Bachchan wears a toupee. But talk to them about Rajinikanth and their eyes light up. It is so rich, he made so many good deeds, his films are all cartons. Rajinikanth is not a movie star like the others, they hammer. Rajinikanth is a “man, a true”.

The forums are filled with Indian jokes Rajinikanth-the equivalent of Chuck Norris jokes. (“Rajinikanth was bitten by a cobra. After four days of intense pain, the cobra died”) On the screen, when Rajinikanth point the finger, a crack is heard. When he gets angry, the director introduced the sound of a cry gorilla beats his chest and growls of a tiger. It adds an echo to showcase his famous “phrases punches” to the pronounced when the drama is at its peak. “Nobody knows when I get or where I will arrive, but when I arrive I have to happen,” he roared such confused. Or, “I will do what I say. I will also say that I do not. ” Then it sends a punch a thug in the windshield of a van with such force that it leaves through the back window. Hard to argue after that.

Harmonica, dove and martial arts

Rajinikanth’s films are full of humor, action and musical interludes (usually composed by Rahman), and they take pleasure in toying with narrative logic. In Chandramukhi , in 2005, a psychiatrist interprets Rajinikanth so gifted that he can read someone’s mind just by observing facial expressions. The film begins with a wedding, then turns to horror movie and pause time of a song in which hundreds of kites register “Superstar” in the sky. In the end, Rajinikanth is fighting on a roof against a master of martial arts half-naked, amid fireworks and hundreds of doves. Chandramukhi has broken all records at the box office Tamil is the film which was broadcast as long as it has even been shown during 800 days in a theater and became a cult in Germany under the title The Geisterjäger (the ghost hunter).

When Rajinikanth is around, the camera is agitated in every direction, even during the most mundane scenes the cameraman zoom plays like a trombone. The development is overactive when the thugs knock Rajinikanth, so quickly that we do not even see how it strikes. All his films are called characters, and each begins with a song in which he presents in a dementia. In 1999 for example, in the first scene of Padayappa , asked “Hey you, who are you?”. It meets in music for four minutes, during which he plays the harmonica, performs a somersault and manages a huge demonstration of martial arts, before transforming into a baby. “This song was superb Padayappa,” says the village chief then. This is where the music starts again, Rajinikanth climbing a human pyramid of 10 meters high and smashes a clay pot, fireworks sound and the director’s name appears.

Superstar super stylish

As ridiculous as Rajinikanth is, it does not lack humor. In 2007, Sivaji: The Boss , he plays a computer engineer who returns home to fight against political corruption and tackle the guy with as full of Wall Street. The entire film is a mixture of populism and winks at the male audience, fights in the music store, in which the effect of bullet time in Matrix allows him to hit five thugs with a guitar and to a few dance steps before they touch the ground until the musical interlude before the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, where Rajinikanth, white complexion, sings “I once dark complexion / I am now incredibly white! ”

Rajinikanth is what provides its audiences: the style. The “Superstar” does not just wipe his forehead with a towel, he brandished like a bullfighter. When he puts his sunglasses, it’s like in a show in Vegas. Its action scenes are so sophisticated that it seems to attend a kabuki a new genre. As a song about him puts it, “Your approach is stylish / Your look is stylish / Your fights are stylish / All you do is stylish.” While Bollywood films increasingly mimic the conventions and mores of Hollywood, Rajinikanth remains respectful to his parents, with chaste women, and always on the side of the little people.

While Bollywood has a tendency to replace the choreography by MTV style montages, Rajinikanth remains committed to the tradition of cinema masala. There is “lush, hypnotic and victorious” as a song says about him. But it is also an irreducible Indian hero of the country that will never go Hollywood. Rajinikanth film without ‘superstar Rajinikanth “on the poster, not a crazy opening scene without cracking his fingers, without hyper-complicated plot, without the accompanying sound effects when he sends thugs in the giant power lines that explode, it would simply not a Rajinikanth film.

You can laugh all you want, but the cinema, the film Enthiran, Rajinikanth in which a robot performer, will raise a lot of money. Because such a Cyrano de Bergerac of Tamil Nadu, Rajinikanth is the incarnation of the Indian in the masculine, and, like Cyrano, when he will go out one day, it will remain something that no one can steal, what it matters most in life: his panache.

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