Rangasthalam

Storyline

Directed and written with rustic intensity and storytelling genius by Sukumar, 2018's Telugu rural period action drama Rangasthalam (The Stage) shattered all box office records to gross over ₹216 crore, universally hailed by critics and audiences as a monumental milestone in modern South Indian cinema and one of the finest revenge dramas ever made. Set in the lush, sun-drenched, but feudal Godavari basin village of Rangasthalam in the 1980s, the community has been held in a thirty-year stranglehold of crippling debt slavery, land-grabbing, and caste-based servitude by the sinister, tyrannical village president Phanindra Bhupathi (Jagapathi Babu in a chilling villainous turn). The heart of the narrative is Chitti Babu (mega-power star Ram Charan in a volcanic, transformative, and career-best performance of raw physical naturalism and emotional vulnerability), a semi-deaf, cheerful engine driver who irrigates village fields with his water pump and uses his hearing disability to ignore gossip while expressing immense loyalty to his family and his spirited love interest Ramalakshmi (Samantha Ruth Prabhu in a radiant, deglamorized performance). When Chitti Babu's idealistic, educated elder brother Kumar Babu (Aadhi Pinisetty) returns from Dubai and dares to challenge Bhupathi's autocratic regime by contesting village panchayat elections, a brutal conspiracy threatens their lives. When Kumar Babu is ruthlessly murdered, Chitti Babu's grief ignites an incandescent, bloodthirsty crusade for vengeance that exposes dark layers of political betrayal and casteist duplicity. Propelled by Devi Sri Prasad's thumping, folk-infused musical score ('Ranga Ranga Rangasthalaana') and R. Rathnavelu's earthy cinematography, Rangasthalam is an epic masterpiece.