![]() Occasionally, as Ravana is busy hammering iron and forging a weapon, he seems to be channelling his inner Thor. Meanwhile, Sugriva and other ape friends feel like substandard attempts at recreating characters from the Planet of the Apes films. Later, when Rama and friends stand ready to take on adversaries around them, the camera circles, as each of them pose with their weapons… like the Avengers. Lanka itself looks like a dystopian habitat from some bad superhero film. Ravana’s pushpaka vimana is reinterpreted as a demon-bat-dragon. At some point, it seems that the makers, exposed to work like LoTR, GoT, the Marvel films… decided that there’s scope within the Ramayana for such execution. Since I have mentioned Thanos, we may as well speak about how many creatures in this film seem like Hollywood knockoffs. It also doesn’t help the protagonist’s mass hero image in the film that actor Devdatta Nage (playing Bajrang) is made to look like a man whose mouth is overstuffed with food. It’s much like how the high-pitched, choral chants of ‘Jai Shri Ram’, without the backing of emotional payoffs, only come across as desperate pleas. However, for lack of layers to his personality and the repetitive use of his bizarre, floating heads and his strange walk-with arms held still a long distance away from his body-even the guttural scream that constitutes his theme music begins to feel like humour. ![]() Why bother with this woman who shows no personality? It’s perhaps why his advisor, Vibhishana, and wife Mandodari behave like they couldn’t care less.įor a brief period in the beginning, Saif’s Ravana seemed interesting and physically imposing, somewhat like our version of Thanos. If Ravana saw this film, he would change his mind about risking his kingdom and life for Sita. In Adipurush, Ravana abducted Sita not so much for revenge but because his sister Surpanakha motivates him by pointing out that he has everything, except the perfect woman (apparently, she’s not a big fan of Mandodari for unspecified reasons). She’s mostly AWOL in the film, and in that final battle sequence that drags on for half an hour-even as unrelated CG creatures jump at each other and Rama looks fed up too-actor Kriti Sanon (who plays Sita) is simply throwing repetitive far-away glances of concern. She’s the most significant woman in this epic and is yet reduced to a mass film heroine whose chief duty is only to prop up the hero with forgettable dialogues. His heartbreak never registers as it should (given that the whole story emerges from this suffering)-and as for Sita/Janaki, the only real desperation she might feel perhaps concerns wanting to do more in this film. There’s a strange emptiness about his performance in this film, and he seems horribly miscast as a god-king who’s noble and dutiful to a fault. Ramayana is about obsession and revenge and honour and heartbreak… But this adaptation is emotionally as vacant as Prabhas’ eyes. In this film just short of three hours, there are few minutes of visual joys and even fewer emotional payoffs. People would pay lakhs to live like them, as shown in the film. ![]() In fact, at one point, when Rama talks of Sita suffering for him, I wasn’t sure what he was talking about. Their white clothes contain careful saffron touches, and the early portions capture Rama-Sita’s idyllic forest dwelling with an artificial, paradisical beauty (that belongs more in the CG world than in the real). As for Rama and his friends, they are, naturally, resplendently white-like they all came fresh from a detergent advertisement. ![]() He’s a jet-black character with an A-grade salon haircut also black along with his soul, are his clothes, and all objects in his vicinity, including a glass he drinks out of. Ravana, who shows little kindness even towards his pet demon-bat (don’t even ask), is cartoonishly evil. The only interest it seems to have in Ramayana’s characters is in using their aliases. It steers completely clear of interpretations (which perhaps is the most fundamental joy in a story that is part of our individual and collective subconscious). Adipurush, rather disappointingly, has no take on the story. ![]()
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