Adipurush, now playing at a theatre near you, is actually an attempt at science fiction that coincidentally happens to draw from the Ramayana. Clearly aimed at a new generation of viewers, the film is trying to achieve the same feats of audience popularity and financial success that the Avatar and Marvel movies did with their lavish production and CGI, except the movie is tapping into the populist Hindu narrative to do so.
Some stories endure through multiple centuries, generations and retellings. Ramayana is that quintessential timeless morality play, with a rich array of characters enthralling Indians for centuries. Almost every Hindu knows the basic plot summary. But they still clamour to watch, listen and read it, no matter how good or bad they are. That is Ramayana‘s hold over the Hindu psyche. Novels, plays, TV soaps and movies have tried to keep up with this cultural capture for decades.
Adipurush is the latest in a long list of retellings of Ramayana that has captivated the audiences in ‘80s, ‘90s and even in the new millennium. Every era has had its own Ramayana. Be it the 1987 DD Ramayan, the 1992 animated movie Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama, the eponymous 2008 NDTV Imagine serial, and the 2013 Star Plus serial Siya Ke Ram. One stage adaptation of the epic achieved much acclaim when theatre doyen Aamir Raza Hussain brought it before the audiences. Even fiction based on the legend has received commercial success in the form of Ram: Scion of Ikshvaku, Sita: Warrior of Mithila, Raavan: Enemy Of Aryavarta and War Of Lanka—all written by Amish Tripathi.
At its heart, it’s the stuff of every human drama — with the themes of righteousness, love, sacrifice, and the eternal battle between good and evil. But Adipurush doesn’t give Ram and Hanuman the street cred that it hopes to.
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Retelling for a newer audience
In Adipurush, the intent seems to be to tell audiences that Hinduism is as extraordinary as something like the Avengers.
The makers of the movie barely try to hide their target audience of young Indians who grew up idolising the storytelling and technology of Western content, who are too modern to know about the niche aspects of the legend but are still gripped by the recent socio-political reemergence of ritualistic Hinduism. The Ramayana is filled with gods, moustache-clad demons and other mythological creatures. TV and movie adaptations have never before shied away from displaying the wide pantheon of Hindu gods, nearly human-looking monkeys, demons with unkempt hair and nails, and other traditionally religious stereotypes. But Adipurush, ends up deritualising its religious source material. From the vanars (Ram’s army of monkeys), who are blatant rip-offs of the apes from The Planet of Apes, Indrajeet’s Quicksilver like running abilities, demons that look like dementors from Harry Potter and a stunning lack of gods for a movie about gods, Adipurush could not be more clearly targeting the new globalised Hindus. All magic and powers seem digital and huge bats and birds have replaced the chariots that one associates with Ramayana. This reality-infused fantasy seems to be catering both to religion and grandiosity.
These stylistic choices, which one would expect from movies about futuristic dystopias, reveal quite a lot about how the depiction of the saga has gone from being a religious portrayal for older generations to a cinematic experience about religion for newer generations. The movie goes so far as to copy the battle scene from Avengers: Infinity War. The film tries desperately to turn this timeless classic into a cool, street lingo of the young. But it falls clumsily somewhere between a purist’s devotion and tapori irreverence.
Even the dialogues are confusingly current. When one thinks of Doordarshan’s Ramayan, one is reminded of a formal, traditional, respectful language. The new movie, however, has dialogues that are far more reminiscent of brawls outside Gurugram bars than they are of anything remotely historical. Consider this: “Teri bua ka bageecha hai kya jo hawa khane chala aaya (Is it your aunt’s garden that you just came to take a stroll?)” and “Toh jalegi bhi tere baap ki (a reference to Lanka being burnt down)”. This humour in high-stake scenarios is yet again an unimaginative attempt to recreate the same effect that Marvel movies had on viewers. Except, instead of making us laugh, it empties out the seriousness of the epic as well as humor that Marvel had perfected, and comes across more as an AIB like parody of Ramayana.
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A Ramayana of ‘dark’ ages
An obvious digression that Adipurush makes from the other Ramayanas is in its set design, costumes and colour palette. Most other adaptations are set in vibrant, colorful and well-lit settings, which hark back to the maximalist history of the continent’s Hindu rulers. Adipurush is exactly the opposite of that. Apart from a few moments in the opening scenes, the movie is committed to dark tones, dim lighting, dull colors, and sleek, minimalist set designs with black marble and gold lining, which seem far too contemporary to be the setting of Ramayana. Despite calling the tale a part of Indian history an exhaustive amount of times, any and all South Asian historical setting is completely erased.
This modernistic yet historical interpretation of Ramayana has had quite an interesting effect on the protagonist and antagonist of the epic. Ram (called Raghav in the movie) has always been the paragon of virtue in Hinduism. Earlier versions of media based on Ramayana could not stop with stories of and about Ram. Unsurprisingly, the titular hero had the most impact on-screen. This version of Ram not only doesn’t have much impact, he also doesn’t have much to say or do. Most of his adventures are simplified and traded off for battles that look animated and empty. Between Prabhas’s screen presence, which is as moving as a chair’s, writing that sounds AI-generated, and a non-existent character arc, Ram is one of the least impressive characters in Adipurush despite the movie’s explicit attempts to glorify him.
In trying to create a cinematic treat with a modern-day feel, the movie has, surprisingly refreshingly, ended up giving more nuance to its villain than to its hero. In Maniratnam’s Raavan (2010), Indian audiences were given an interpretation of the demon that was humanistic and evocative. He was a man fighting for his rights, in extreme but understandable ways. This Ravan is nothing like that. This Ravan is a tattooed warrior (all members of his family also have Jason Momoa like full body tattoos) that looks like the villains we see in current-day Bollywood. He seems to suffer from multiple personality disorder, an insatiable need for glory and is completely unstable. The previous Ravanas used to scream out at their deaths or apologise to Ram. This one laughs like a maniac till the very last moment.
“How many Ramayanas? 300? 3,000? At the end of some Ramayanas, a question is sometimes asked: How many Ramayanas have there been?” says Ramanujam in Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation. Well, now exists a Ramayana that is trying its very best to be itself while not being itself.
(Edited by Anurag Chaubey)