Baasha | The Story Structure | Video Essay Script | Moving Images

Hi, my name is Kishor and this is MOVING IMAGES. Following the theatrical re-release of the 1995 hit movie Baasha, I watched the movie again to try and understand what makes this film a timeless entertainer. Director Suresh Krishna plays on the audiences’ expectations expertly. One would expect the hero Manikam, played by Rajnikanth to be this swashbuckling hero who would send goons flying left and right from the get-go, but instead we get a protagonist who shies away from violence for the first half of the movie. But we get hints and peeks at a violent past behind this man enough to keep us hooked to the story and wait for the reveal, and we do get to a point in the story where we might finally see him be the hero, but instead he gets beaten up, furthering our frustration. This was an excellent strategy by both Suresh Krishna and Rajnikanth, as when we finally get to see Manikam make a comeback it is even more satisfying. And the reveal is the most exhilarating scenes in the movie and one of my all-time favorite. But I’ll get to that a little later.

The storyline of Baasha has almost become formulaic that many Tamil films that came after it till this day follow it. And it has proven time and time again to be a successful formula. But the screenplay of Baasha follows a structure that is quite older than you think. Meet the 8-point story arc structure. The 8-point structure splits a story arc to 8 different parts. Countless classics and even modern stories still use this structure and Baasha follows the structure twice for each of its two halves. The 8-points are as follows,

Stasis is the everyday life of our protagonist, Manikam is an honest, hard-working auto-driver. Trigger is an event that usually makes our protagonist go on the quest. In this case, Manikam’s three step-siblings each bring a trigger that makes Manikam go on a quest to fulfil their life-dreams and his promise to his dead father. The quest is peppered with surprises in the form of events that hint Manikam’s past and new characters. This is essentially there to keep the audience entertained as the story moves forward, until we reach the critical choice. This is where Manikam decides to show who he truly is. This leads to the climax, the big battle. The reversal is the consequence of the critical choice and climax. Manikam beats the goon the same way he was beaten. And finally, we have the resolution, where our protagonist reaches a fresh stasis. Now Manikam’s violent tendencies have been found out by his step-siblings, this leads us to the second half of the movie, where the structure starts from the new stasis and follows the 8-points again.

I promised I would talk about my favorite scene from the movie and here it is. The set-up to this one scene is a brilliant piece of film-making. We just witnessed our hero, Manikam being dealt some serious beating at the hands of Anandraj. Manikam’s brother arrests Anandraj but he is back that same night with vendetta. The scene starts with an aerial shot of the place Manikam and his family dwells. Notice the sound of a train running in the background, this will come back later as a key aspect. It is a normal day for Manikam’s family until Anandraj arrives and he has Manikam’s sister. All hope is lost for this family, until our hero makes a classic last-minute entry. He sees his sister hurts and makes the critical decision to just let loose his violent self. We get a POV shot of a goon running towards Manikam, only for him to go flying as Manikam hits him with full rage. What we get next is the background sound of the train again as Manikam’s sister slowly backs away, followed by a solo, slow-mo shot of Manikam turning to Baasha. The train symbolizes the auto-driver from Chennai going back to Bombay to be a don. What a treat for the audience and fans of Rajnikanth. The long-awaited comeback is finally here and it is truly satisfying. Baasha will remain a classic example of timeless masala entertainer and though many film have tried to emulate what Baasha did, it is a film I’ll revisit countless times because it is the original and it is the best. Until next time, this is Kishor signing off saying…