It is often said that the Ramayana is about how people ought to be, while the Mahabharata is about how people are. In the epic, Ram, the symbol of ideal behaviour and practice, is a young prince who renounces his right over his kingdom, and leaves for the jungle in the company of his equally young wife and brother. His trials and tribulations don’t end there – and each time he is tested, he must choose the path of righteousness.
Beyond religious reasons, the story has such a hold across generations also because it has such fantastic drama. A family feud, a noble hero who is deprived of his birthright, a beautiful woman who is abducted by a lustful villain, loyal friends, and a righteous battle with many challenges. It is already blockbuster material – if only the director is willing to trust it.
Unfortunately, Om Raut does not. Adipurush, starring Prabhas in the lead as Ram or Raghav, is a superficial, CGI extravaganza that lacks conviction in every frame. Take the world-building in the film. Ram and Lakshman (Sunny Singh) are in a time period where they’re using bows and arrows, and are dressed in simple, saffron garments. Ram’s army – faithful to the epic – is composed of monkeys and bears. It all looks similar to the dated cinematic renderings of the Ramayana that we grew up with. The only difference, of course, is that Ram and Lakshman are way older than they are supposed to be, and when Hanuman (Devdatta Nage) addresses Lakshman as “balak” (boy), you have to wonder if the former is seeing the same Lakshman we are seeing.
When we traverse the ocean to Ravan’s (Saif Ali Khan) Lanka, however, Raut borrows heavily from Western sensibilities and representations. Lanka is portrayed as a dark, gloomy land (the same place Hanuman describes as being similar to the city of gods in the epic) with towers as tall as the Burj Khalifa. Everyone roams around in black – casual wear or war gear – and the styling is of the kind you’d expect to see in The Lord of the Rings or a Game of Thrones. You’d be forgiven for thinking Vibhishana (Ravana’s younger brother) and Indrajith (Ravana’s eldest son) are runaways from the sets of those films, what with their costumes and hairstyles.
Meanwhile, Ravan has kajal in his eyes and plays a black veena. His pushpak viman (flying chariot) is a giant bat that looks like it was manufactured in Tolkien’s Dol Guldur and imported into Adipurush… because why bother coming up with original interpretations and imagery when you can lift generously? The only spot of colour in this dreary place is the Ashok Vann where Sita (Kriti Sanon) awaits her husband, weirdly full of pink cherry blossoms.
Prabhas is wooden as Ram, and is barely able to emote. Sunny Singh as Lakshmana doesn’t fare too well either. The screenplay doesn’t bother establishing the bond between the two; we’re expected to have come to the theatre already feeling the warmth between the brothers. The same goes for Ram and Sita – sure, everyone knows they’re considered the ideal couple, but a film needs to do more than just giving two characters those names and expecting the audience to imagine the rest. There is a Bollywood-type love song between Ram and Sita when they’re serenading each other in different landscapes, but that hardly screams epic love.
Adipurush inhabits a strange space where the body parts of some characters are VFX-enhanced, a few characters appear entirely human, some are competently rendered entirely in CGI while others look like comic disasters. Take Prabhas, for instance. Only his face seems real, and when he moves, his gait looks slow and stilted. The addictive Jai Shri Ram chant elevates the scenes when Ram takes charge, but Prabhas is unable to achieve the Baahubali effect here. This is partly because of the lines (and this includes one on saving Bharat’s ‘daughters’…sigh) and mostly because of the performance.
The battle between the CGI Jatayu and Ravan is among the few sequences in the film that stand out, and the death of the bird moves us at least a little bit because it looks realistic. But Jambavan, the bear, doesn’t seem to have fit into the extra VFX budget that Adipurush got after its teaser triggered a tsunami of trolling. The assorted monkey species of Sugriva’s army haven’t got an upgrade either – or if they did, one dare not imagine what the original versions looked like.
The writing never rises above that of an average Hindi mega serial. In one scene, Ravan is covered with writhing snakes, and someone says they’re sorry for interrupting his massage. It’s the sort of over-the-top villain scene that becomes necessary when you’re too lazy to really examine the nature of evil and the forms it can take. Saif is adequately leery and manic as Ravan, but there’s only so much he can do with such a shallow script. The final battle between Ram and Ravan has a lot of light and sound, but without the soul of the Ramayana and its many nuances, it might as well have been Tom and Jerry.
With its massive budget of Rs 500 crore, Adipurush could have truly been a spectacular cinematic experience. Sadly, that isn’t the case. Not everybody can pull off a Rajamouli, and that’s painfully obvious in Adipurush.
Watch the trailer for Adipurush here:
Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the film. Neither TNM nor any of its reviewers have any sort of business relationship with the producers or any other members of its cast and crew.
Sowmya Rajendran writes on gender, culture, and cinema. She has written over 25 books, including a nonfiction book on gender for adolescents. She was awarded the Sahitya Akademi’s Bal Sahitya Puraskar for her novel Mayil Will Not Be Quiet in 2015. Views expressed are the author's own.
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