Why South Indian Cinema Has a Newfound Love for Period Fantasies

Among the sea of compliments director Jithin Lal received for the trailer of Ajayante Randam Moshanam (ARM) was one YouTube comment that took away some of the excitement for this first-time filmmaker. “How can Tovino be wearing shoes like those in a period movie?” Lal paraphrases the comment. “How does this viewer know which period I’ve set my movie in?” he goes on, visibly annoyed at the premature fact-checking. “It is a world I’ve created, set in timelines I’ve not specified, but the ‘historical inaccuracies’ are already being questioned.”

Lal’s big-budget debut stars Tovino Thomas playing three main characters spanning hundreds of years. The 3D film is said to have cost upwards of ₹30 crore, making it one of the most expensive films made in Malayalam cinema.

In Tamil, Kanguva, another period fantasy, is also set to release in the next two months, while in Telugu, Devara is releasing later this month. In Kannada, there’s Kantara 2 — a prequel initially slated for December — lined up for release in the next two months.

However, what irks Lal is the classic two-edged sword that comes with most period productions. “On the one hand, there is an immediate curiosity when you announce a period film,” explains G. Dhananjayan, CEO of Studio Green — a film production and distribution company based in Chennai — that is currently juggling both Thangalaan and Kanguva, and both are period films starring Tamil superstars. “But even if one shot feels off or if the VFX feels substandard, the reactions are extreme,” Dhananyajayan says.

He adds that this risk is worth taking at a time when audiences consciously decide if a film needs to be watched in the theatre or on OTT based on the trailer. “With period films, you don’t have to worry too much. The viewer knows that movies like Kanguva, Devara or Thangalaan need to be watched on the big screen. The marketing then revolves around making the release an event.”

This is obvious in the way VFX elements become a part of the marketing blitzkrieg. Before Vijay’s Leo (2023) released, a stunt sequence involving a VFX hyena became the talking point. His recent The Greatest of All Time was marketed around the de-ageing tech used to create a 20-year-old Vijay. “This appeals to today’s viewer the same way it appealed to us when we thought we could see live dinosaurs in Jurassic Park (1993),” says VFX director Aneesh Kutty. “VFX is still new for Indian films, unlike Americans who’ve been using it for 40 years. The fact that such elements can be seen with an Indian superstar increases the excitement manifold,” he adds, stating how he is creating a CG housefly for a film called Lovely at the moment.

Higher Cost, Higher Returns?

In terms of production, budgeting is what makes such propositions complex. Dhananjayan says, “With experience, we’re now able to predict the budget of a contemporary movie to an accurate degree. But in such movies, we are often clueless because we’re starting with nothing. The VFX in such films costs between 10 and 40 per cent of the budget. This makes production unpredictable.”

So is there no way to manage costs? “The only way is to minimise corrections after the VFX work is complete,” says Kutty. A lot of Indian directors still look at VFX as “post-production” work, when it should be looked at as “pre-production”. The director should be sure of every second of a VFX shot, even before shooting.

At times, one sequence from the trailer is enough for the viewer to enter into the film’s world. “In a regular action movie or a social drama, it’s not easy to create a ‘wow-factor’ to lure someone to the theatre,” Dhananjayan says, adding that one has to keep forcing the audience to suspend disbelief because they are comparing what they see with everyday realities. “But in a period fantasy, there’s freedom because the filmmaker writes the rules. That’s why we never object to Ram Charan killing hundreds of soldiers to cross one bridge in Magadheera.”

This freedom is what has allowed Lal to go wild with the world-building for a film that was originally meant to be more sober. “ARM’s writer Sujith Nambiar had wanted a serious, realistic film. But by our thirtieth rewrite, the scale had changed. We had overcome COVID and the exposure of the Malayali audience had broadened. There was no point in attempting anything familiar,” Lal says. His references changed from what Malayalam cinema had done before, within a sub-genre of Kalari-based-action movies, to what major Hollywood films were doing.

It was this extra step that urged Lal to design an imaginary CG palace that was “part-Angkor Wat, part-Mysore Palace”. His other visualisations included a recreation of the Athirapally Falls in Kerala, “but 40 feet tall with a 45-degree curvature”.

As for historical accuracy? “I asked the VFX artists to create another palace against the Bekal Fort (the one featured in the Bombay song ‘Tu Hi Re’).” It’s his job as director, Lal says, to visualise a story to its maximum potential. These are just a few of the 2,000-odd CG shots that made it to the final 3D version.

The situation was different on the sets of Mani Ratnam’s Ponniyin Selvan (2022), which was set in the 11th century. The two-part epic was based on author Ramaswamy 'Kalki' Krishnamurthy’s bestselling novels by the same name, and the film needed to satisfy readers as well as a new audience that was discovering these characters afresh. “We were making a film based on real characters and events, so we could not take a lot of liberty,” says cinematographer Ravi Varman, who won the National Award for his work in the film.

In interviews, the actors revealed that potatoes needed to be removed from a scene because they didn’t exist in India then. Even the rice that was used in the film was based on studies of what might have been available in the 11th century. “As far as the look goes, we do not have too many references to rely on,” says Varman. “Not many movies have shown what it was like 1,000 years ago. For the look, we cannot go back to a period before the Mughals if you strive for 100 per cent authenticity.”

But the trick, according to him, was to “treat the film and characters as though a contemporary movie was being made about them in their period.”

This is why he chose to light a crucial scene inside a palace with just one source of light: the sun. “There was no electricity in the 11th century; there would only be that one light at that time of the day,” Varman says. It’s the same philosophy that led to a lot of shadows and greys in the film. “The characters themselves were grey, so we could play with darkness. Also, in our films, we are often so proud of the sets that both the art director and the cinematographer insist on lighting the whole set to show off. We wanted the palaces to look lived-in.”

Some of these decisions to create a forgotten era can even be too detailed for the regular viewer. Working with cinematographer Jomon T. John, Lal decided to use an anamorphic lens for the period portions of ARM alone. These lenses are not very commonly used today, but because of that, especially when they are used for wider shots, the lenses tend to add a vintage hue, reminding one of classics like Lawrence of Arabia (1962), which were shot on these lenses. “We used modern ARRI Signature lensing for the contemporary portions. This might not be obvious, but such decisions could subconsciously create divisions between time periods,” he says.

Baahubali and Beyond

For an outsider, this new love for period films might seem like the direct result of the mega success of the Baahubali franchise and its fictional kingdom of Mahishmati. But these films are not direct descendants of S. S. Rajamouli’s blockbuster, says Dhananjayan. “From the market, there is no demand that dictates an upper-hand for big-budget period spectacles. It has to begin with a captivating story that deserves a world of its own. After that, it’s up to the director to push through and immerse us into their world.”

That individual vision can make all the difference in a scenario like today’s, when multiple period projects are releasing simultaneously. We’re not too far away from feeling a “historicals fatigue”, notes Kutty. “With the success of Kalki 2898 AD, producers are happier to greenlight films that look like Kalki, even though they would reject something outlandish. But in terms of the general look of a period film, I feel our directors are a bit wary to venture outside some of the images we’ve grown up with when it comes to period films,” Kutty says. He adds that the aesthetic comes from Amar Chitra Katha, or the television series of Ramayana and Mahabharata, and that “creating a period film that looks totally different presents a risk filmmakers are not willing to take.” So when one makes a Ramayana, Lord Rama cannot look like a muscular Marvel superhero. He has to look more “spiritual”, according to Kutty.

This is also the reason why Lal opted for 3D, a technology he was not drawn to initially. “More than the pop-out effect, we have used digital 3D technology to create visual depth. It is a movie that includes the narration of not one but two grandma tales. It features a single time-lapse sequence that swipes past 100 years. To immerse the viewer, they must feel like they’re standing inside the village the film is set in.”

More than the ideas of Baahubali, it’s the possibility of a two-part film that made certain epic films like Ponniyin Selvan feasible, adds Varman. “Legends like MGR and Kamal Haasan have tried to make it right from the ‘70s. But it was just impossible to compress five novels into one three-hour movie. Baahubali paved the way and allowed a big movie’s budget to be split into two films. This made the movie safer financially without too many sacrifices on content.”

However, the excitement from the audience is not limited to period films alone. “This year’s Kalki was an example of the perfect balance between a futuristic tale connected with the Mahabharata. In Tamil, a time-travel fantasy like Mark Antony (2023) too played with multiple timelines to achieve success,” Dhananjayan says.

Kutty has another theory for why we’re seeing so many VFX-heavy period films today. “Until a while ago, VFX in Indian movies were limited to just one or two big-budget productions, that too from the biggest Indian directors. Indian companies were the ones that were doing the VFX work for most Hollywood productions, but they were beyond the budget for our films. However, when Hollywood shut down last year during the SAG-AFTRA strikes, Indian VFX companies felt the impact. That’s when they started working on Indian films at affordable costs, unlike earlier when they were after the dollar. This made it possible to plan period films within a practical budget.”

At the core of it, however, Lal believes these films are high risk, high reward, because they appeal to the child in you. “I have no interest in making films set in a time after the proliferation of mobile phones. Be it a mystery or a drama, the fact that characters have phones makes writing restrictive. The kind of films I loved as a kid were those that gave you the feeling that you watched three stories in one. Like Vaaranam Aayiram (2008) or Anniyan (2005). That’s what I wanted to do with Ajayante Randam Moshanam.”