Has the Maharaja Stopped Dancing?

To his credit, Rajinikanth made the transition from cinema that was made for single screens and their unruly audiences to new-age films in which we see his young, VFX version

- S.V Srinivas

BIG or small, Rajinikanth is only a star. There were stars before him and there will be more after him. But Rajinikanth and the kind of films that made him a star throw light on our relationship with cinema at a particular moment in time. That time might have passed, leaving behind shadows without substance.

A Rajinikanth film is not any film featuring the star. Kuselan (2008, Kathanayakudu in Telugu and remade with Shah Rukh Khan as Billu Barber, 2009), for example, features the star but is definitely not a Rajini film. Not just because he is not the centre of the narrative. But also because it is not a film in which we feel like screaming our appreciation or dancing in the aisles. A Rajinikanth film invites and incites us to do all that.

A disclaimer is in order at this point. Films that transform us into ecstatic collectives are not unique to Rajanikanth, or Tamil, or even Indian cinema. However, it is in the work of Rajinikanth, and Indian cinema in general, that some of the clearest and best examples of the cinema's status as a community-forming institution can be found. A part of this community disperses after the viewing, while another part reassembles in street corners and other physical spaces, as fans of south Indian film stars have done for over seven decades, or in virtual spaces such as the fanzine, the Reddit forum, and so on.

The Rajinikanth film is therefore not a unique entity without parallels and precedents. It is a convenient starting point for a reflection on our relationship with cinema. The Rajinikanth film is a genre-like entity: it comes with a set of easily identifiable thematic and formal features and we go to watch it with certain expectations.